[lukewrites]

There's really interesting research about children/people learning to read without formal instruction; as John Taylor Gatto points out in Dumbing Us Down, back when Thomas Paine was writing, there were ~600,000 copies of Common Sense printed for a population of three million. People learned to read on their own or with very little instruction because they were interested in reading.

There's a convincing body of evidence that the way you get kids to read books is pretty simple: read them books that interest them and then give them access to more interesting books as well as time to read to self. Unfortunately, the lethal combo of Common Core and No Child Left Behind has left teachers at best too time-strapped (or, at worst, uninterested) in doing so because of mandatory curriculum and testing.

I read to my kids, make sure they see me reading, and talk to them about both what I'm reading and what they're reading. They've done fine despite awful reading instruction at school.