End Illiteracy in English

A stroll up and down the aisles of any large research library looking at the many of hundreds of books on teaching reading would be an eye-opening experience for most people. There are hundreds of books and about 3,000 articles on the difficulties of teaching reading published every year. A recent version of the Encyclopedia of Educational Research devoted 151 pages to reading research and only two to five pages to each of the other school subjects.

Statistics show that nothing done in the last 90 years has made an overall statistically significant improvement in the success of teaching children to read. After reading instruction throughout the first three grades in school, almost half of U.S. students do not become fluent readers and cannot hold a job requiring functional literacy after leaving school. Most people have very little knowledge of how difficult it is to learn to read English compared to how difficult it is to learn to read other languages. What is badly needed is an understanding of the shocking extent and seriousness of the problem and of the simple, proven way to end English functional illiteracy. After carefully, honestly evaluating this website (by clicking on “end English functional illiteracy”), those readers who are compassionate about the problems and suffering of functional illiterates will want to know what they can help end our very real literacy crisis.