Before the advent of the progressive education movement and the concept of "whole-word" theory of Gallaudet in the early twentieth century, reading was taught using phonics. This is because english is an alphabetic language, where the words are based upon the stringing together of syllables.

However, so called progressives such as John Dewey, Edward Burke Huey and the International Reading Association promoted the whole language, sight words and the look say methodology. This may have caused one of the most drastic roadblocks and destruction of time honored and successful reading instruction, and have lead to an increase in the dyslexia in our society.

Prior to the 20th century, children were taught cursive writing from the first grade. Contrary to the theories of the progressives, this was not detrimental to the attainment of reading and literacy skills. The rationale of the progressives was that children should be taught to write in manuscript first, as the books they would be reading were printed in text, not in cursive. However, subsequent research has shown that the reading and writng processes are intimately wired together on a neurological level. Moreover, the actual physical process of forming cursive letters has been shown to advance the development of reading skills.

By the 1930's the progressive philosophy of education was firmly entrenched in American educational systems. The teaching of reading utilizing phonics may have been totally lost to the children of America, and the children who were truly dyslexic may have been the most ill-served of our population.

Fortunately, a group of master teachers and researchers, led by Dr. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham investigated the proper way to teach reading to dyslexic children.

The Orton-Gillingham Multisensory Method was developed in the early 1930's They designed a complete new teaching method.

It ws designed to be sequential and multi-sensory. This approach was taken since research had shown that people who are dyslexic learn much more efficiently when exposed to audio, tactile, visual and kinesthetic stimuli. It also involves exposing the learner to the material in a specific sequential way, introducing concepts of phonemic awareness, and teaching the actual structure of words, constructing and breaking down words and syllables to show how they are related. As time has shown, Orton Gillingham methodology is the right way to teach dyslexic children how to read. Indeed, the Orton Gillingham methodologies have a lot to offer to readers who may not be truly dyslexic, but who's learning differences are such that whole word reading instruction may have actually held them back!