My father was a volunteer teacher at my school for reading classes and was told to use this top-down method of whole words, guessing, etc. Having struggled with

My father was a volunteer teacher at my school for reading classes and was told to use this top-down method of whole words, guessing, etc. Having struggled with dyslexia his whole life, but being an avid reader despite it, he simply disregarded what he was told and taught everyone in the class using phonics instead. To this day, even as a very late reader (I was probably 9 before I picked up my first real book, period), I'm astonished how much difficulty people have with reading when it comes to unfamiliar words or even familiar words that they haven't seen written before. I'm also astonished how much difficulty people have taking written words and integrating them into their speech. I used to think it was simply the product of my being such an avid reader, but I'm starting to suspect it may be because I have that base in phonics. As someone completing my Masters in Applied Linguistics, I see this focus on top-down strategies as an example of teaching people to run before they can walk. Sure they might get good at running, but sometimes you need to go slower, and while walking forms a strong foundation for the former, it's easy to conceive how the converse is not true. Meanwhile many kids get left in the dust with both a subpar run, and no ability to walk properly. Just because people develop the ability to read words as a whole and use inference and other strategies to read quickly, doesn't mean those are the skills we should be teaching as "reading". When I was younger I used to sometimes look at my father's disregard for academic knowledge as a flaw, but I'm understanding more and more that his skepticism is often quite healthy.