Why did American schools replace spelling with sight word instruction?

From the Greeks to the Romans to the English, spelling was the precursor to reading throughout Western civilization. It was the foundation for all literacy. Colonial Americans continued this classical tradition by teaching their children how to spell well to read well. After the revolutionary war, Americans followed this time-tested methodology by adopting Noah Webster's American Spelling Book. Webster, who is now known as the father of American English, did not create a radical approach to reading but rather standardized spelling instruction so that reading became an inevitable byproduct of spelling, pronunciation, and writing. Webster defined his "spelling book" as "A book for teaching children to spell and read."

From the 1780s through the 1800s, Webster's spelling book was the most effective and prevalent way to teach reading. The results were staggering: literacy rates rose rapidly around the nation. Why? Schools taught children to learn the English writing code through spelling because spelling required children to focus on analyzing, pronouncing, and writing down sounds. First, teachers (or parents) taught children to spell the phonemic sounds represented by letter names. Then they taught them to spell syllabic sounds, which were simple vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel combinations of the phonemic sounds. Teaching and reinforcing phonics through syllables is called "syllabic phonics."

Despite this extraordinary legacy of excellence in literacy through spelling instruction, spelling became a sideshow in America's reading curriculum. Adams writes: "Despite our heritage, the word spelling can hardly be found in the indexes of contemporary reading education textbooks." She continued: "In 1980, Richard Venezky wrote that neither spelling instruction nor spelling reform occupy central roles today in education or in public life. Similarly, the public schools exhibit limited enthusiasm for spelling. Some have no systematic spelling instruction at all while the average class offers perhaps a few minutes for it each week." 

What happened? Why did Americans abandon this time-honored, effective way to teach reading? The answer is simple: as early as the 1830s, parents and teachers became enamored with a new philosophy called whole word reading. Instead of starting with phonemic sounds and seeking to train children to analyze the written alphabetical code by focusing on its phonemic and syllabic sounds, educators and parents scurried towards a system of teaching whole words and sentences so that students could "enjoy" reading. This catastrophic change began slowly and took complete control of the reading curriculum by the 1950s. A perusal of reading scores from that time on is sufficient to show how much educational damage has occurred.

For centuries, throughout western civilization, spelling had been the road to reading. This method produced exceptionally high levels of literacy. And though it wasn't broken, spelling was "fixed" by replacing it with the wholly ineffective "whole word" reading system—the failure of which has caused immeasurable and unspeakable social, economic, and psychological damage to children. It's time to return spelling instruction to a central place in reading instruction. Spelling from spoken words facilitates auditory training, phonemic awareness, phonemic analysis, and exceptional reading skills because students are taught to focus on sound instead of sight.