Bob Cleckler is a retired Chemical Engineer. After receiving his B.S.Ch.E. (Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering) degree from The University of Texas, he worked as an Aerospace, Product, or Safety Engineer for Hercules, Inc. for 29 years. In his last assignment he was one of only two people who reviewed every proposal for any change in materials, equipment, facilities, or procedure which could in any conceivable way cause an unintended explosion in the manufacture of solid propellant rocket motors at the $600 million rocket motor plant in Magna, Utah. The need for extreme caution in manufacturing the solid propellant motors is due to the sensitivity of the nitroglycerin based propellant. If he and his boss approved the change, it was presented to the Plant Process Control Board consisting of the Plant Manager, Asst. Plant Manager, and the head of all the departments. This experience prepared him for the attention to detail needed to solve other serious problems.
After reading Jonathan Kozol’s 1985 book, Illiterate America, he was shocked at the serious physical, mental, emotional, medical, and financial problems that illiterates must constantly endure—problems that we would consider a crisis if they occurred to us. Illiterates must endure at least 34 different types of problems in order to “get by” in our present complicated society. Many simple daily tasks we take for granted are beyond the abilities of many illiterates.
Cleckler began researching to find a solution to the problem of English illiteracy. He spent over a year reading every book available from the Marriot Research Library at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake City main library on the subject of his research. He studied dozens of books, many of which are never considered in Teachers College courses on teaching reading. He discovered that there is a simple solution to the problem which has never been tried in English. He wrote a book about his findings titled Instant Literacy for Everyone, published and totally financed in 1993 by Northwest Publishing.
About the time his book was published he read the 1993 Adult Literacy in America report, the most accurate and most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the federal government. It was a five-year, $14 million study involving lengthy interviews of 26,049 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, location (urban, suburban, and rural from twelve states across the U.S. including 1,100 prisoners from 80 prisons) to represent the entire U.S. population. The study divided the interviewees into one of five groups, depending upon how well they responded to written English material they were given to read. Among other things, data was given on the number of adults who were in each group, Level 1 being least literate and Level 5 being most literate, and then the following data was given by Literacy group: the number of days each year that each person worked full time and part time, the hourly wages earned when working, and the percentage of adults in the group who were in poverty. The report did not provide the U.S. Census Bureau threshold poverty wages. A 1148 word article about the report appeared on the front page of The New York Times (and perhaps syndicated to other newspapers) and a 304 word article by a Washington Post writer appeared in other newspapers On September 9, 1993. Both articles badly understated the seriousness of the study. The New York Times article even had several factual errors. About the worst either article could say about U.S. adult literacy based upon the study was that “Nearly half of all adult Americans read and write so poorly that it is difficult for them to hold a decent job….”
Although that statement (from the Washington Post article) was true, and although the data in the Adult Literacy in America study were shocking, it did not take a rocket scientist (as, indeed, Cleckler had been for many years) to see that a better analysis of the data in the report was badly needed. A few simple ratio multiplication steps by Cleckler provided average annual earnings for each literacy group. Comparison of that data with the threshold poverty level wages for an individual in the 1993 U.S. Census Bureau report showed that a shocking 48.7% of U.S. adults (the average earnings of everyone in Level 1 and Level 2 groups) read and write so poorly that they do not earn above-poverty-level wages. Similar calculations showed that 31.2% of adults in the two least literate groups were in poverty (48.7% times 31.2% equals 15.2%, the percentage of all U.S. adults in poverty, a figure similar to estimates of total U.S. adult poverty calculated by other means). Only 10.1% of adults in the three most literate groups were in poverty. Since there were no provable differences in those in Level 1 and 2 groups versus those in Levels 3 through 5 groups except their literacy level, the 10.1% poverty can be attributed to all causes other than illiteracy. When 10.1% is deducted from 31.2%, the 21.1% of poverty can logically be attributed only to illiteracy. In other words, more than twice as many (21.1 vs. 10.1) U.S. adults are in poverty because of their illiteracy as for all other reasons combined. We are not aware of such levels of illiteracy and poverty because illiterates are extremely good at hiding their illiteracy, because most families have more than one employed adult, and because low-income families receive financial help from government agencies, family, friends, and charities.
When Cleckler studied his findings after carefully analyzing the Adult Literacy in America study, and when he saw statistics that an estimated 600 million English-speaking people around the world are functionally illiterate in English, his incentive to solve the illiteracy problem increased tremendously. In 2001 Cleckler formed the non-profit educational corporation Literacy Research Associates, Inc. , did additional research, and completely revised his book. His new book, titled “Let’s End Our Literacy Crisis,” was published and totally financed by American University & Colleges Press in 2005. This book won finalist awards in two book competitions. It was one of six finalists out of 49 entrants in the Education/Academics category of the USABookNews.com Best Books competition with between 1000 and 1100 total entrants and one of eight finalists in the Education category of the Foreword Magazine Book-of-the-Year competition with 1540 total entrants. It received unsolicited testimonials from several reviewers including Dr. Michael Shaughnessy, Professor of Special Education at Eastern New Mexico University who emailed the author, “I have read the book, from the local public library and I agree with you 100 percent!”
Most significantly, Gary Sprunk, M.A. English Linguistics, read the book purchased from Amazon.com and decided (without the author’s request or even suggestion that he do so) to form a non-profit company to promote Cleckler’s proposal. His corporation, NuEnglish, Inc., is also a 509(a)(2) public charity corporation. He has established three websites, http://NuEnglish.org, http://NuEnglish.com, and http://NuEnglish.net. He wrote and published “Beginners’ NuEnglish Workbook,” based upon his experience as a teacher of English in a Korean elementary school and a high-school in Thailand. He has produced a computer program titled Respeller which will respell up to about 25 pages of traditionally spelled English into NuEnglish in a couple of minutes. It has a database of more than 506,000 English words. Respeller is free for all to use on his .org website. He is now preparing a NuEnglish dictionary.
A follow-up report was issued in 2006 by the same group that did the 1993 Adult Literacy in America study, using a slightly smaller database (19,714 interviewees). This report did not show any statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy.
Cleckler updated his book, removed some duplication and unneeded material, and rearranged the text to be more effective, and his revised edition was published and totally financed by American University & Colleges Press on May 1, 2009. The revised edition is a 286 page paperback book with 162 pages of text, 10 appendixes totalling 57 pages, 174 end/reference notes, an extensive bibliography (including a few references that are not quoted or paraphrased in the book), a glossary, and an extensive index, among other things.