> [A school teacher] told me, "I find this idea offensive—that kids who come from poverty areas need a more structured and disciplined approach to learning than middle-class kids do. They may need more time on the decoding skills. But why shouldn’t they be exposed to the same kind of enjoyment about reading as other kids?"

You find this kind of attitude across many subjects, not just basic literacy and it's always been quite puzzling. My own guess is that the idea of "structured and disciplined" teaching is a lot more offensive to teachers than students at the proper level. In fact, it can introduce a sort of enjoyable 'gamification' to the task of building up competence in any skill.