> I think your can use the worst possible teaching technique and by that age most kids should be able to read. According to the "sold a story" podcast (discus

> I think your can use the worst possible teaching technique and by that age most kids should be able to read. According to the "sold a story" podcast (discussed recently on HN too), that's not true: until kids acquire the skill of decoding the letters on the page, they cannot read unfamiliar words. Teaching them to look at the first letter, then take a guess only makes it worse as you're actively teaching them not to decode, this is how you get the andecdote from a middle school teacher on the podcast about the kid who "read" that "in 1939, Germany INVITED Poland".