I would much prefer a single understandable, actionable insight. Without it, this interview seems rather hollow. From this interview, I'm led to expect that the real insight from the book is that "teachers should study behavioral science, congnitive science, and brain development," which is too loose a central thesis to capture my interest.

I suppose what I've really gathered from this interview is two things: firstly, I would like to know a bit more about the gap is between how kids learn to read and how they should learn to read; secondly, I do not intend on reading Seidenberg's book (i.e. the book this interview is centered around) to find out.

I got the recommendation here in HN and I used the book with my 2 daughters. I started with my first daughter when she was 4.5 years old. I started with my second daughter at an older age because she was showing a slight case of dyslexia. It took 2 years to finish the book with each of them. After they were done they could read everything. My second daughter is 9 and is almost done with Oliver Twist. Read this comment by tokenadult: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466

This is almost certainly wrong and even logically absurd. I am sure there are more optimal ways to learn to read but any kind with a fair IQ who aren't dyslexic can learn to read.

My son isn't a genius, but he have been practicing reading since he was 5 and today at 8 he reads Harry Potter.

The trick (as with almost any other field)? Practice, practice, practice. That's it. There is no magic sauce there.

One thing that we found that actually increased his lust for reading (he definitely would rather play soccer, Minecraft or Rayman) is to give him a Kindle which has a kids app with achievements and daily reading goals.

It's sad that so few kids read at their grade level but it's not because of sub-optimal teaching methods that much is for sure.

What we learned works is:

1. Take them to the library a lot. Let them check out whatever they want. Let them check out as many books as they want (up to the limit allowed by the library - ours only allows 100 books per library card and we frequently run up against that limit).

2. Let them get their own library card as soon as the library will let them. When they are older let them ride their bikes to the library (obviously this depends on your location and situation) so they can check out things on their own.

3. Read to them from the time they are young, a lot.

4. Check out audio books from the library and let them go to bed listening to stories when they are too young to read. When they are older make sure they have a flashlight or two so they can read after lights out.

5. Greatly limit access to TV and game systems. We don't have cable or streaming subscriptions. We only use our TV for movies or TV shows on DVD from the library which they can watch on occasion when their chores and homework are done (unless it's a nice day outside then they have to be outdoors playing or reading in the hammock).

6. Fill the house with books. We have thousands of books across all age groups and topics. There are books everywhere in every room just in piles. The kids beds are covered in books.

7. Don't be a book snob. If they want to read comic books, let them read comic books. It doesn't matter what they are reading, as long as they are reading. Like any skill, the more you do it, the better you will get at it and the greater success you will have at reading more advanced material when the time comes.

8. Let them see you reading. Talk to them about what you are reading. Recommend books to them.

9. When they are older, get them jobs at the library. Libraries always have a need for people to help shelve books! One library in our area has a service night when the library closes early and volunteers help clean the library. There is pizza and soda and the kids absolutely love this night.

10. Listen to books on "tape" in the car. Get them used to both reading and hearing things being read to them.

Should it be challenging? Yea, sure - but ten short books or two long ones doesn't matter a bit. They just need to read more.

Source: I'm a k12 English teacher. The data that makes it into my hands almost always comes back to this point.

Kids learn to read best out of interest -- with reading material they are interested in and when they are ready to learn. And it makes them better.

My parents fought not to teach me to read. I didn't learn to read until I was 11. When I was 12 I went to school for the first time (unschooled) and was the top reader in my academically inclined private school.

Everyone else learned phonics and other permanent reading crutches and I read shapes because I wasn't told how or when to learn when I was little.

I still read weirdly fast compared to classically trained people who are otherwise smarter than me. What is faster I/O worth to your future?

All it involves is not ramming phonics and other Prussian nonsense down your kids throat and waiting for intrinsic motivation to kick in.

The political solution was called "balanced literacy," which called on teachers to use the best of both approaches. But it left it up to teachers who had been trained to dismiss phonics and brush off the science.

There's the key. Teachers get their educational ideas from their education and spend the rest of their career defending them from parents, administrators, ideological "reformers," and other random bystanders who are mostly well-meaning but who are all convinced they have a magic trick to fix everything if the teachers would just stop being dumb about how they do their job. Everybody's got an easy answer, 99% of them are just arrogant bystanders, and teachers very quickly start tuning out. And the teachers are not scientifically literate, so they don't know the difference between a scientist who does research on reading and a random yahoo.

Plus the calls for educational "reform" usually have a partisan tinge. Republicans say just drill harder and longer and keep the desks separated in 90º grids instead of circles and other commie bullshit; Democrats say give kids books that connect to their unique cultural heritage and respect their cognitive differences and they will magically know how to read. All the more reason for teachers to ignore all outside input and assume they know best.

Not to mention the educational companies that have to manufacture excitement about new teaching fads every year so they can sell new classroom materials.

With all this bullshit going on, you can't blame teachers for being closed-minded and cynical. Most of them receive an idea of what progressive, smart teaching looks like in college, when they're still optimistic and open-minded, and cling to it for the next forty years. So I think this guy will be pleased by the response of teachers who are currently in college. They'll take in the current consensus and run with it.

Then you just read with them over and over and over. Every night you read with them, and then you provide them with access to books. Take them to the library check out as many books as they want and then you sit and read with them every single night. That is how you teach kids to read.

I presume that at some point in the past most kids could read at grade level, because presumably when it was initially decided what grade level was it was based on how kids actually performed at the time.

So how was reading taught then? They certainly did not know today's latest research on language and speech development in a child's brain.

Did they just stumble into the right approach, and so a reading program based on the latest research would end up being similar to how reading was taught in, say, the 1920s?

Or was the 1920s (or whenever kids were at grade level) approach also flawed, and it is just that today's approach is even more flawed, and so if we based reading programs on the latest research most kids would end up above grade level?

One of the motivations we have used is comic books. (Yes, that death of classic reading!) Both of our kids are My Little Pony fans, so we read a lot of those comic books for story time and gave them the books as they were learning to read. Wanting to read is a requirement for learning to read.

"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" has been recommended ancedata-ly to me.

We used it with our son, with fantastic results. He’s now almost seven and reads voraciously.

Edit: on review, I got the rec from the same user you did. Years later and I’m even more grateful he shared that book here.

Practice isn't the only ingredient to the magic sauce. The learning input also has to be in a form which the learner can understand. If i tell you to practice a backflip until you can do it you'll likely injure yourself - or walk away, frustrated - before you can do it. If i would analyze the and split up the movement and teach it to you in little steps you will most likely learn it faster. If we could use a trampolin you'd learn even faster.

How to break things down into little steps is one of the most important parts of teaching. The other one - you're correct there - is how to foster motivation.

> It's sad that so few kids read at their grade level but it's not because of sub-optimal teaching methods that much is for sure.

My observation as a teacher is, that some are frustrated. Maybe they hit a wall (a steep learning curve) with their learning and weren't motivated enough to push through. More motivation could help, but so could a learning design that doesn't have walls/steep learning curves.

There seemed to be a set of knowledge that makes things easier. And separate category of knowledge around choosing the book the kid has a chance to like to read.

That sounds so strange to me. I was an avid reader for as long as I can remember - and my motivator were interesting stories. I also had parents and grandparents who themselves loved to read. Of course, I didn't have the alternative of computers until I was almost an adult, and the web only was developed while I was at university already. So I am not putting too much of an emphasize on my own experience.

I could even imagine that setting a motivator that lies outside the task itself may have long-term negative consequences. It should be the task itself. I know a lot of people think things like work are counter examples - we work because we want something else, but I think that too is wrong. I always loved work, even mundane routine jobs, from early on I worked in factory settings (e.g. during longer school breaks, I grew up in East Germany) and even boring things like working on a machine the production line of a brewery (doing the same simple things over and over all day long) were fun, knowing that my job had a purpose. Only when people treated me like I had to be "motivated" (by pressure), for example when some supervisor in a chocolate factory saw me doing nothing (I had just carefully prepared a machine and was now observing its progress - it was the opposite of "doing nothing") my job motivation went from 100% to 0 in a heartbeat. I think when motivation is not there it probably is a pull issue, not a push issue. When I see purpose (incl. the one of serving society) at the far end I like doing even boring tasks, was my experience since childhood. Okay, that last comment leaves the topic at head behind, there only is what I said in my first sentence.

Who knows if this will make him a stellar reader or not, I just enjoy spending that time learning with my son. Eventually I suppose he'll hate my guts and just want the passphrase to the autonomous vehicle shared service account.

I don't think one approach fits all and I'm certain teachers are sick of being told they are doing this or that wrong. My advice: leave the kids and teachers alone, they'll figure it out.

All children will eventually come around to the idea that reading is useful. Some children are traumatized by do-gooders trying to force them to learn how to read before they're ready.

As I said in another comment here, "I think John Taylor Gatto pointed out that some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference."