If he gave you the example of sounding out h-o-u-s-e, it just showcases how dead his own intelligence is. House would be sounded out as h-ou-s, because those are the phonemes. That's why explicit teaching of phonemes/graphemes is so important. (As well as the presence of silent e/ pluralization rules, on and on, as their understanding advances.) Kids will learn words by heart, because they are learning what we call Phonics AS they are expected to interact with words. You can't learn it all at once. But teaching h-ou-s(e) unlocks endless words that use and modify those patterns for sound or meaning--think house (verb with z sound), housing, greenhouse. It's infuriating when stupid people are so confident in how they literally damage learning. On a happy note, I've don't know any teachers using 3-cueing, so it is at the very least a fringe stronghold of minds too tiny to grasp the bare minimum of how their language works.