Page "Phonics" Paragraph 41

The whole language emphasis on identifying words using context and focusing only a little on the sounds ( usually the alphabet consonants and the short vowels ) could not be reconciled with the phonics emphasis on individual sound-symbol correspondences.

Thus, a dichotomy between the whole language approach and phonics emerged in the United States causing intense debate.

Ultimately, this debate led to a series of Congressionally-commissioned panels and government-funded reviews of the state of reading instruction in the U. S.