I learned to read when I was three. Accordingly, I have only pinprick memories of the process. When I entered K, the fact that I could already read was a showstopper; I was kicked upstairs into first grade with panicky haste. In first grade, they were "using" "phonics" to teach what I already knew, and it wasn't working, because have you seen English? The approach was to lay out a sprawling tree of special cases and leave the children to draw the only possible conclusion, which was that the spelling and pronunciation of each word must be memorized.