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K-12 Education | End Illiteracy in English

End Illiteracy in English

The problem of English functional illiteracy is a very real nightmare, but the solution is easier than you would ever dare to dream.

Teachers of Reading Education

A very revealing newspaper article appeared on page A11 of The Salt Lake Tribune on June 25, 2011. It was an article titled, “Education’s dearth of well-trained teachers,” written by Marti Watson Garlett, the founding dean of the Teachers College at Western Governors University and a member of the National Council on Teacher Quality board of directors.

Near the start of the article, Ms. Garlett states, “A new study by the National Council on Teacher Quality shows that the majority of teacher preparation programs in the United States offer inadequate training to aspiring teachers, leaving them unprepared to enter classrooms ready for the instructional goals of public schools.” She follows with some of the details proving that statement.

From the standpoint of reading education, however, Ms. Garlett made a very revealing statement. “As for instruction across the country, the review found that nearly three quarters of the programs evaluated are not providing elementary teacher candidates with practical, research-based training in how to teach reading.” She did not explain why this was true. That was not her purpose. She was concentrating on the fact that U.S. elementary school teachers are not adequately trained. A similar statement, however, was not made about any other subject taught in elementary school. If she had extensively studied reading education, she would have found that, although numerous reading experts know how to make the teaching of reading English a little easier, NO ONE in public education knows how to make reading English EASY. My website, http://LearnToReadNow.org shows the only proven way of making English as easy to read as almost all other languages.

After presenting additional statistics, Ms. Garlett concludes with the following.

“These trends are underway as political leaders impose one policy du jour after another, from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top to the Common Core State Standards.

“And all this is happening as countries like China and India, with populations that vastly outnumber our own, are pouring enormous new resources into education to prepare more of their people for jobs in the global economy.

“Worse yet, many U.S. teacher-prep schools have resisted making critical changes that would improve their programs’ effectiveness.

“Those of us in leadership positions need to take these NCTQ findings to heart and push for instructional strategies that align more closely with needs in the classroom. Our country can afford no less.”

 

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Debunking All Reasonable Objections to Spelling Reform, Part 1

This is part one of a five-part series. This blog is presented in an attempt to promote our humanitarian project which is a proven way of ending functional illiteracy.

For several reasons English illiteracy is very much a hidden problem. As a result, very few people except the closest friends of some of the illiterates know the serious effects of illiteracy.

The most statistically accurate and thorough study of U.S. illiteracy ever commissioned by the U.S. government proves that 48.7% of U.S. adults are functionally illiterate (defined as reading and writing so poorly that they cannot hold an above-poverty-level-wage job), proves that 31.2% of functional illiterates are in poverty, and proves that functional illiterates are more than twice as likely to be in poverty because of their illiteracy as for all other reasons combined.

People may have developed some misconceptions if they have not carefully researched the effects of English spelling upon illiteracy. Certain items, upon brief examination, may seem disadvantages of spelling reform, although they are not. The supposed disadvantage also may be counterbalanced (or even overbalanced) by a corresponding advantage.

Will Existing Writings Become Inaccessible?

This is perhaps people’s most serious objection to spelling reform. Conventional wisdom states that if a completely different spelling system is adopted, all the existing material in English will become inaccessible. However, learning a new language will not make us unable to understand our first language. Learning a new way of spelling will not erase all memory of traditional English spelling. Nor would the printing of new books suddenly cause all the existing books to self-destruct.

The truth is this: all the existing books in English are ALREADY inaccessible — to illiterates! After NuEnglish is implemented, everyone except the most severely mentally handicapped will read. People who now read English will keep their books written in English and read either English or NuEnglish. Libraries will keep their books in English. All others will read only NuEnglish, unless they choose also to learn English, similar to English literature scholars who must learn Middle English to read Chaucer and other writers of his era. Lawyers, English scholars, historians, and all those whose vocation or hobby requires extensive research through written material of the past — if it is not of sufficient interest to make reprinting in NuEnglish economically feasible — would learn English spelling as a college (or possibly high school) elective course.

All the books that are so important that they have a readership large enough to make reprinting economically feasible for the publishers will be reissued in NuEnglish. Competition among printers for their share of the market suddenly swollen with millions of previous non-readers will ensure such an event. In the same way that we recently saw “Now in HDTV!” preceding certain television programs, we will soon see advertisements by bookstores declaring, “Now in NuEnglish!”

Many libraries have few books that are fifty years old or more. Many libraries sell outdated and least used books to make room for new ones. Often the books they sell are only one or two years old. The average age of books in a bookstore is much less than that of books in a library. Few books in a bookstore are so eagerly sought that they will be reprinted for more than a year or two. Our website on Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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The Ultimate Account (?) of America’s Education Dilemma

For the purpose of search engine optimization, this important blog will only appear on one of our five blogs. To see this vital blog click here.

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Has TV News Programs Made You Shockproof?

Many of us see so many “crises” on TV in today’s world that we almost become shockproof, but I never get over being shocked when I look at the analysis of statistics from the most comprehensive and statistically accurate study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government and the 2006 verifying report. English functional illiteracy (defined as being unable to read and write well enough to hold and above-poverty-level-wage job) is far worse than most people — even including our leading educators and politicians — realize; it is worse than our worst nightmares. The proven solution to ending illiteracy, however, is easier than you would ever dare to dream. The details of the solution are found in the breakthrough book, Let’s End Our Literacy Crisis, Revised Edition, describing a revolutionary way of learning to read, by Bob Cleckler, Founding Chairman of Literacy Research Associates, Inc., a non-profit educational corporation. Cleckler has been researching and writing about ending illiteracy since 1985.

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Many People Avoid Badly-Needed Changes. . . . Do You?

Caution: this is important to you and to all of us, but it is not “light-reading.” Are you up to the challenge?

Many people resist change, even a change to something that is better. This is because people often prefer to continue the inconvenience of the known instead changing to achieve the proven benefits of the unknown. People often continue to resist change until it becomes a crisis that they cannot continue to ignore. I hesitate to use the following example because it is so trivial compared to the shockingly large problem of English functional illiteracy, but it is a perfect example of avoiding change until a crisis occurs that cannot be ignored.

In a Western U.S. city, which shall remain nameless, there is a straight stretch of road almost a half-mile long which has only one intersection — near the middle. The speed limit on the road is 50 mph, but cars often go 65 mph. People who live near the intersection often want to enter the road at the intersection. The only way to avoid entering the road at this intersection, on one side of the road, is to go almost a mile out of the way along a slow twisty-turny, uphill road through the neighborhood and stop at a stop sign and then later a traffic light. People on the other side of the road have an even longer path to avoid entering at this intersection. People who want to enter the road at this intersection complained to city officials for years about the need for a stop light there because of the danger and because of many near-misses they encountered. Because of the high cost, city officials resisted the change for many years — which those in the neighborhood considered a crisis. A traffic light was not installed, however, until after someone was killed in a car wreck at the intersection.

Political and educational officials have been avoiding any truly EFFECTIVE changes in the method of teaching reading in the U.S. for more than ninety years. Almost a hundred million functionally illiterate people in the U.S. are affected by our “car-wreck” of a system for teaching reading. There are several reasons. Political and educational officials make small changes hoping it will solve the problem and then hope no one will really notice that the change has not made a statistically significant improvement. Parents may see reports about the problems in the schools but are firmly convinced that the school(s) their child(ren) attend(s) (or to which they move their offspring) is a very good school. They believe this because they want to — they do not know what else they can do. In short, everyone involved, politicians, educational officials, teachers, and parents, do not know how to solve the problem and do not want to take a chance on anything they consider too “radical.” Some critical problems, such as the problem of English functional illiteracy, however, cannot be solved by merely “tweaking” the existing system — as has been done many times in the last ninety years (at an increasing pace since the 1983 “Nation At Risk” educational report. This report concluded that if a foreign nation had imposed upon us our present, ineffective educational system, we would consider it an act of war.)

The good news is that the discovery of Literacy-Research Associates, Inc. and NuEnglish, Inc., (two non-profit educational corporations) and the perfection of the method they discovered for solving the problem of English functional illiteracy has been proven to solve the problem. Dr. Frank Laubach, perhaps the world’s greatest authority on teaching illiterates around the world to read, taught in more than 300 alphabetic languages. In 95% of these languages, he could teach adults to read fluently in from one to twenty days! In some simpler languages, such as one or more dialects of the Philippine language, he could teach adults to read in one hour! In 98% of these languages, he could teach his students to read fluently in less than three months. In fact, Dr. Laubach invented spelling systems for 220 languages. In Dr. Laubach’s books, Teaching the World to Read and Forty Years With the Silent Billion, he never mentioned even one student that he was unable to teach to read. All of this was possible because all of these written languages were logical and consistent.

Present English spelling — on the other hand — is illogical, inconsistent, and chaotic. Most of us who can read learned to read as a child and have long ago forgotten the difficulty we had. Our eyes skip easily over a multitude of traps for beginning readers.  Although there are many reasons why any one student may not learn to read, there is only one problem that affects every student — the illogical, inconsistent spelling. Our ridiculous spelling is the fundamental, root cause of functional illiteracy. To see proof of that statement, click here. As far as grammar and syntax are concerned, English is neither the easiest nor the most difficult, but English spelling is by far the most illogical, inconsistent, and chaotic spelling in the world. English grammar and syntax are easier, for example, than many European languages. Learning to read any of these European languages with a more complicated grammar and syntax can be mastered in less than three months. It takes most U.S. students at least two years to learn to read English, and almost half of U.S. students NEVER become fluent readers.

A careful analysis of the most statistically accurate and comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy, the Adult Literacy in America report, conclusively proves that a shocking 48.7% of U.S. adults cannot read well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job. This report is available for free study and download, click here. Not only did newspaper reporters downplay the seriousness of the facts in this report, the authors of the report did not take the facts they reported to their logical conclusion as would be possible with some simple ratio-multiplication. The inability to read well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job is the most accurate possible determination of English functional illiteracy. See proof of that statement here. The accuracy of this report was confirmed by a 2006 report, which is also free on the internet (click here.) To see proof that 48.7% of U.S. adults are functionally illiterate and that 31.2% of these functional illiterates are in poverty and that they are more than twice as likely to be in poverty as for all other reasons combined, click here.

Dr. Laubach stated on page 48 of his book, Forty Years With the Silent Billion, “If we spelled English phonetically, American children could be taught to read in a week.” Educationists familiar only with traditional English may be tempted to discount Dr. Laubach’s expertise and claim that is too optimistic, as a way of maintaining the status quo. Learning to read in only three months or less would make American schools equal to schools in other languages. Many other school subjects could be begun two years earlier than they are now.

The school systems in many nations have such high standards that only the best students remain in school. Dr. Rudolph Flesch, on pages 76 and 77 of his book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, explains another important difference:

Generally speaking, students in our schools are about two years behind students of the same age in other countries. This is not a wild accusation of the American educational system; it is an established, generally know fact. . . .

What accounts for these two years? Usually the assumption seems to be that in other countries children and adolescents are forced to study harder. Now that I have looked into this matter of reading, I think the explanation is much simpler and more reasonable: Americans take two years longer to learn to read — and reading, of course, is the basis for achievement in all other subjects.

Although conscientious teachers of the first three grades in school may be frustrated by their inability to teach their students to read, many of the teachers of the first three grades — even including many of these conscientious teachers — do not relish the idea of having to learn to teach new subjects. John Corcoran, who wrote the book, The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read, was a college graduate who taught in a California high school for several years but could hardly read at all. He stated that even though no school teacher ever heard him read aloud correctly, they never seemed to notice. He stated that school teachers are in denial about the problem of non-readers in the schools.

Some of the better students can probably learn to read English spelled phonetically in a week, as Dr. Laubach stated, but it would be a serious mistake to discount Dr. Laubach’s lifetime devotion to teaching students around the world. Even if Dr. Laubach is too optimistic in his assessment, if every student except the most seriously mentally disabled can learn to read in less than three months (instead of the present record of only slightly more than half learning to read in two years or more), everyone who has any compassion for the pain and suffering of illiterates and the cost their illiteracy imposes on every adult, reader and non-reader alike, (more than $5,000 each year for the cost of government programs that illiterates use, the cost of truancy, juvenile delinquency, and crime directly related to illiteracy, and the increased cost of consumer goods due to illiteracy) should be eager to help promote the only proven solution to illiteracy.

To see an overview of our humanitarian project, click here. What we are proposing is very simple: let’s spell our words the way they sound, the way most of the entire world does! As stated at the start of this blog, however, this is not light reading. Due to the natural human avoidance of change, many people have to see a large number of facts before they are willing to make a change. Some skeptical readers will not be convinced by this blog or any or our extensive websites. One thing is certain however: anyone who carefully, honestly reads all of the text of our book, Let’s End Our Literacy Crisis, which is 164 pages and will take about six hours at a normal reading rate, will be convinced that we must stop fighting the symptoms of the problem (the difficulty of English spelling) and solve the problem, by making the spelling simple, dependable, and logical, as Dr. Frank Laubach found effective in more than 300 languages. This is similar to taking aspirin, decongestant, and cough medicine for the symptoms of pneumonia instead of antibiotics to cure it. Visit the Amazon.com website about Let’s End Our Literacy Crisis to see a description of the book, a short history of the development of our humanitarian project, an editorial review by Dr. Robert S. Laubach, past president of Laubach Literacy International, and ten customer reviews of the book, some of them by Amazon Top 500 reviewers, by clicking here.

 

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Past History Demands Present Action

Absolutely nothing done in the last ninety years has made a statistically significant improvement in the shockingly high percentage of U.S. students who leave school unable to read English well enough to be functionally literate. The second revision of Let’s End Our Literacy Crisis, to be published in January 2012 by American University & Colleges Press, presents the solution to this problem. The method proposed in the book for solving our literacy crisis has been recommended by numerous educational and linguistic experts for more than 250 years, and thirty-three nations both smaller and larger than the U.S. and both advanced and developing nations have made the type of change the book proposes — but it has never been tried in English. Furthermore, all major objections to what it proposes have been conclusively debunked by several very competent scholars, such as Thomas R. Lounsbury, LL.D, L.H.D., emeritus professor of English, Yale University, in his book, Spelling and Spelling Reform, published in 1909! As a means of avoiding change, however, skeptics keep repeating the same disproven arguments. As our culture has become more complex, the problem of functional illiteracy has now reached crisis proportions, and it is long past time to make the revolutionary changes this book proposes. To see an introduction to the humanitarian project proposed in this exciting, breakthrough book, click on this website: http://LearnToReadNow.org.

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