because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s

Yes. There is much research to back this up.

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about...

Phonological awareness (being able to divide words into sounds, simply put) is a learned skill that not everyone learns. It has implications for two issues we are discussing under this subject:

1) A country with a large number of speakers of regional dialects of the national language will find it harder to have people's speech converge to the national standard language without a boost from alphabetic (or at least syllabic) writing,

and

2) once a learner is well acquainted with alphabetic writing, phonological awareness can become so "second nature" that it feels natural, and the sound processing happens below the level of conscious awareness.

The Gifted and Talented magnet school in St. Paul now has the name Capitol Hill. I don't know if that is a successor school to the one you remember.

In general, I'm not sure how schools have been teaching reading in specific places in the relevant generations, but I would agree with the critics who say that reading could have been better taught than it usually was in school over the last few generations.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Johnny-Cant-Read-about/dp/00609134...

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about...

http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Dyslexia-Complete-Science-B...

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Reading-Instruction-Science-Brad...

Best wishes in your continued efforts to add to your technical vocabulary. I learn new words fairly regularly here on HN.