I first came across the idea of fads within the education system upon reading Reginald Damerall’s book Education Smoking Gun. In it, Damerall details the total lack of scholarship in the education colleges, which leads to a vulnerability to faddishness in teaching. Teachers are led away from time tested teaching methods to methods that seem more exciting, more progressive, and less intellectual, in an effort to be more inclusive and make learning more fun. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the area of reading instruction.

Reading is a basic skill all children must learn if they are to be educated. It is ground zero for all other learning. If a child cannot read, he cannot learn history, grammar, logic, math, or any other subject. Reading is one of the most powerful tools we can give a child to empower them. And yet, the teaching of reading has been hijacked by one of the worst educational fads in recent decades.

The fact that teaching children to read is so easy and the fact that the education establishment—which claims a monopoly on the educating of the nation’s children—is using methods that make learning to read unnecessarily difficult is just one of many reasons parents across the nation have chosen to homeschool. But even non-homeschooling parents are alarmed at how big of a problem this is. Many parents interviewed in the aforementioned docuseries found out for the first time, during the pandemic, that their children were unable to read, and began asking uncomfortable questions. Reports from school had said everything was just fine according to the assessment materials based on the faulty methods. But it wasn’t fine. The realization that the education system they trusted to teach their kids had, in fact, failed them miserably was a wake-up call, and understandably produced anger and disillusionment. Some parents, as a consequence, even started to homeschool.