"According to all the research, what you should see in every school is a heavy emphasis on explicit phonics instruction in the early grades. There is no evidence this turns kids off to reading or makes reading harder. In fact, it's the opposite. If you do a good job teaching phonics in the early grades, kids get off to a quicker start.  And they accelerate their progress faster and read more and like it better and so it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. Whereas the converse is true. When you don't give kids insight into the code and don't arm them with insight into language, both spoken and written, what happens is, "This is a mystery. I'm not sure I'm getting what these words really say. Therefore, I'm uncomfortable. And therefore, I don't really like it."  *SOURCE: Louisa Moats in Hard Words: "Why Aren’t Students Being Taught to Read?” Hanford, Emily.  American Public Media, September 10, 2018.