The huge universe of potential combinations of contexts and words also precludes the possibility of learning or using inference skills, since little can be inferred from large numbers of generally unrelated situations. Even though a phonics teacher is not explicitly trying to teach logic to his or her students, it is simply impossible to avoid doing so. The logic lessons of phonics are taught by example during the learning and the application of phonetic rules. Even though a child of 4 or 5 might be incapable of comprehending direct formal logic instruction, it is quite clear that children of that age can implicitly grasp logical concepts that are taught by example. Decoding and encoding are themselves well-controlled logical operations, embodying many concepts that facilitate the student's future understanding of more advanced concepts in mathematics and various sciences, most especially computer science.
Students learn how to recognize and discriminate among a small, manageable number of symbols.
This implicitly teaches the logical concept of identity . In well-designed phonics programs, children are first taught to associate only one sound with a particular letter. This implicitly teaches the concept of analogy . Thus they learn the concept of graphic symmetry , and to distinguish symmetrical objects from one another. Thus blends are analogous to chemical mixtures, where the components retain their original chemical properties.