Henny Wenkart, wife of an electronics engineer in Cambridge, Mass., was sure that their four-year-old son Jonny was ready to read because he knew all the letters and relished their sounds. So she bought some standard primers and set out on her own to teach him—only to find that Jonny couldn't read.
The reason, she soon saw, was the primers' "look-say" method of teaching. Rather than sound out letters to form words, Jonny had to memorize long "sight" words like airplane. It was too much for him. "I was so sorry I'd started,"...
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