Glenn Doman founded the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in 1955 to help brain-damaged children.

His studies of the brain led him to explore how well children might learn to read using a "word or "look-and-say method."

a His 1963 book How to Teach Your Baby to Read, which hs sold 13 million copies, claimed that children from birth to age six are capable of learning to read better and faster than older children.

In 1971, Felicity Hughes, an elementary school teacher who taught her children to read at ages 2 and 3 using Doman's method, wrote a book Reading and Writing before school. Hughes criticizes Doman's argument that the study of phonetics is not necessary for learning to read.

She wrote...

Doman has seen that understanding written words is exactly comparable to understanding spoken words. He points out that if we do not need to know phonetics in order to hear, then we do not need to know phonetics in order to read...

But then comes the catch. Doman implies that because we do not neecfto know phonetics in order to hear, and because we do not need to know phonetics in order to read, then we do not need to know phonetics.

And that is where he is wrong...

For a child needs to be able to see a word in two quite different ways, for two different purposes.

He needs to be able to see it as a meaningful symbol, so that he can understand it.

And he needs to be able to see it as an arrangement of sounds, so that he can translate it [into speech].