I have no idea how I learned to read. It’s been a while ago, clearly. Yet, I imagine I learned through the tried-and-true method of phonics.

In the raising of our now-grown daughter, I watched the chaos that ensued when she was not taught phonics. In addition, she was attacked by something called “free writing.” We were assured that phonics was old-fashioned, while the “free-writing” would unlock her creativity. (She had no shortage of creativity, that I can assure you!)

These pedagogical approaches were trendy, apparently, and maybe worked for some, but not for her. Instead, they were disasters. She was changing languages, alphabets, and cultures, coming as she did to us from Russia at age six. And while I cannot prove it, had she walked into a classroom where phonics were taught as the key to reading, I am convinced she would have sailed smoothly through the stormy sea each child must cross in order to acquire written language.

That’s all the more reason why I am charmed to watch our grandkids learn to read through phonics. I have been astonished, seeing them grab letter combinations and spitting out “peh as in pig, peh-peh-peh” or “eeee as in elephant, eh-eh-eh,” just as gaily as if tossing a ball into the air. Phonics charts look like chemistry to me. But so what? The system works. Kids largely understand it and quickly are able to sound out words and gain confidence.

Can someone explain to me why educators decided teaching phonics was obsolete? For that matter, why do allegedly smart people overthrow the tried-and-true in so many aspects of our lives (especially here in the United States)? What are we thinking?

Here’s another example—an initially humorous, ultimately painful experience that lives in my memory from seventh grade: the introduction of “New Math.” Plastic must have been big then, because we each received a cool, blue plastic notebook constructed like a flip chart, with one side flipping at the left edge, probably with a spiral binding, and a plastic flip-plate at the top. The teachers seemed excited: maybe they sensed less teaching, less grading, although teachers back then still pretty much did hands-on work.

So suddenly those blue contraptions were sitting on our desks. The mathematical problems were printed in long rows with (gasp) the answers in the back.We did something odd with the top flipper. Beyond that, I remember filling out lots of bubbles, looking (not even sneaking, but looking) at the answers as needed, while swiftly parading through page after page. And I learned nothing.

Memory may fail me, but I liked and understood math before then. (Thank you, Mrs. Shelton, the sixth-grade teacher juggernaut whom I still thank for many things.) But from seventh grade on, math became confusing. Oh, wait, it was “new” and trendy and we got through it fast, somehow. But it was a blur. I survived Algebra I, sort of. Geometry, I loved (the teaching of geometry was not yet infected by the disease of novelty). Thereafter, in Algebra II, I was lost again.

Only in college, during a required calculus class with a marvelous teacher, did I reconstruct the lost principles and heal the situation. It turns out I could understand math when taught by traditional principles, which this dear man definitely employed. After earning an “A” the first quarter, and to my surprise, the second quarter, I was determined to make it a “straight-A” experience and I did. (Note: A’s were pretty hard to come by in the Stone Age.)

Let me not pretend to be a pedagogical specialist. Yet, I’m pretty sure the generations before us did figure out the principles needed to start a six-year-old on the right path. The phrase “inherited wisdom” also encompasses pedagogical efficacy.

Certainly much new and wonderful pedagogy has developed to address the challenges some children face, beginning with dyslexia (which few would have recognized in my day). I thank heaven for all curricula recently created that meets so many special needs, starting with the beautiful one developed by Cheryl Swope for Memoria Press. So please do not misunderstand me on this issue.

Still, solid methodology has survived and flourished for a reason. And right up there is this thing called phonics!

Meanwhile, school for the grandkids was closed this week, so I’ve been Drill Sergeant Carol instigating the (actually quite good) recorded classes and overseeing the accompanying worksheets. Several worksheets for our kindergartner didn’t make it into the packet, so I drew them, which means a seriously weird set of penguins, spiderwebs, pillows, wagons, and camels are moving into the manilla envelop headed back to school on Monday. Good luck to that dear teacher! Still, it is sweet when a little one says “Grandma, those are really good drawings!”

My hat is off to all of you, whether in homeschools or brick-and-mortar schools—all of you who are in charge of teaching rudiments, be they numbers, or letters, or any other concept. My gratitude is unbounded.