Logical Germans Reject Ineffective Methods
I read on the Internet that around 2002 Germany banned (outlawed) the use of Whole-Language in schools. In most Western countries it is a rival against phonics as a style of teaching reading. Whole-language as a term evolved from sight-word approaches and was aggressively promoted as a total new paradigm from the 80s in most Western countries.
In Germany it was used since the 80s but after disastrous results it was declared bad practice. Then around 2002 it was banned altogether.
The rest of the world that suffers illiteracy is too politically correct to call a spade a spade.
The rest of the education world pays little attention to research or proven standard practices to take decisive action when poor results from fads and theoretical preferences produce poor results.
An international group with prominent academics is now committed to bring about practices that improve the life chances of children through effective teaching of reading. See IFERI http://www.iferi.org/ and look up their topic EVIDENCE for convincing research and arguments to help tackle the illiteracy problem. Our teacher training institutions need to connect with this group.