🔍 A Decade of Decoding, One Sound at a Time
I’ve spent over ten years teaching kids to read—real reading, not guesswork. It starts with clean consonant sounds, not “buh” for B. My book Shut Down Kids lays it out: teach the right sounds from day one, and no child shuts down. My follow-up, Teach Your Child to Read, has helped parents worldwide turn bedtime into breakthroughs.
In Sabah, I’ve taught 80+ kids to read fluently.
In India, ESL learners thrive with sound-first methods.
Several children in Australia.
In California, a grandma is reversing “dyslexia” labels at home.
I have even taught a child in Kenya using Whats App.
One dad wrote: “Your simple steps got my 5-year-old reading fluently in months.” One mom said: “My son was labeled dyslexic. Now he devours chapter books.”
📣 The Tweets That Fell Flat
I’ve tagged Vivek Ramaswamy for two years. No reply. Not a like. Not a DM.
Feb 2025: “Many children will not be sent to prison if teachers teach correctly.”
June: “By grade 1 we should know who can’t read.”
Oct–Nov: “Why are kids shutting down from learning to read?”
Vivek talks school choice, meritocracy, and curriculum reform. But decoding? Silence. And he’s not alone.
Emily Hanford: ghosted since 2017.
Sam Bommarito: promised airtime, never aired.
Pamela Snow, Jo Anne Gross, Jennifer Buckingham: block rather than banter.
Reid Lyon, Timothy Shanahan: softened, but no engagement.
💰 Is the Fix Too Simple?
Maybe it’s not ignorance—it’s inconvenience. A $10B reading industry thrives on complexity. Apps, interventions, “balanced literacy” band-aids. But the truth?
Illiteracy is a man-made mess. The fix is consonants first. Blend by week 3. Decode by grade 1. Intervene early.
Singapore drills sounds. U.S. chases vowels. Result? 40% self-rescue, the rest shut down. That’s not equity—it’s engineered inequality.
🧠 Vivek’s Moment Is Now
Vivek, you’ve called out corporate capture in pharma and tech. Education’s next. Illiteracy isn’t a brain glitch—it’s a teaching failure. You’ve got Ohio roots. In 2019, Tennessee’s ed site cited my blog for busting the PAD myth. Let’s scale that:
Teacher PD on sound purity
Parent toolkits from Teach Your Child to Read and Shut Down Kids
Metrics tracking miscues from 30% to near-zero
Prison rates drop. Trades rise. Kids thrive.
🔥 From Silence to Spark
This isn’t a complaint—it’s a chronicle. Every blocked DM, every shelved podcast, every unanswered tweet fuels the fire. I’ve got the wheel invented. Now we need drivers.
Parents: Grab the books on Amazon or Payhip.
Teachers: Zoom me—what’s your decoding roadblock?
Policymakers: DM me. One call. Let’s decode the future.
Luqman Michel is a Sabah-based educator and author who’s been decoding dyslexia myths since 2010. His blog Dyslexia Friend is a no-BS guide to reading reform. Follow @MichelLuqman on X for the raw cuts.
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