1. What, in your mind, is the United States Illiteracy problem?

From the standpoint of getting help for millions of English-speaking people in the United States-and around the world-who either cannot read English at all or else read very poorly, the problem of illiteracy is convincing the masses that there is a true literacy crisis. The illiterates themselves are powerless to initiate a solution to their problem.

There are several reasons the problem of illiteracy is so little known. First of all, out of embarrassment, poor readers are exceptionally good at hiding their condition. Although almost every American can read a few words, if they only learned 1200 to 1500 simple words by sight and did not learn to "decode" words they haven't learned in this way, they cannot read well enough to get by in our complex society as well as they should. They are functionally illiterate. They have, over the years, developed numerous ways of coping with their problem. Like almost any problem, hiding the problem makes it worse rather than improving the situation. The ways the illiterates use to cope with their illiteracy complicates their life and adds to the already serious problems they have. In short, illiteracy is an easy problem to ignore-for those who are not suffering from the problem. Although there are many people trying to solve our illiteracy crisis, they are a very small proportion of the population. Most of the general public, our leaders, and the media do not realize the extent and seriousness of the problem. They also do not realize that illiteracy costs all of us-both those who can and those who cannot read.

Secondly, for both those who can, and cannot read, there is the matter of pride. We like to think that the U.S. is the greatest nation on earth, and in many ways it is. But those who believe that America is more literate than other nations either do not know the facts or they are suppressing that knowledge. It is in the short-term interest of our political and educational leaders (that is, during their term of office) to believe that we are more literate than the facts support. In that way they do not have to struggle with a problem they do not know how to solve or risk proposing a solution that does not work. Our national census bureau reports claim that America is 98 or 99 percent literate. Jonathan Kozol's book, Illiterate America , explains several of the reasons why the census bureau estimates of our literacy rate are wrong. Articles in the Washington Post and Foundation News in late 1982/early 1983 claimed that "The United States ranks forty-ninth among 158 member nations of the U.N. in its literacy levels." To my knowledge, there have been no reports proving that our literacy rate has risen substantially since 1983. There are numerous reports indicating that it has not.

Thirdly, no one likes to think about the fact that having a high percentage of our population who cannot read well accomplishes two goals that our national leaders often desire, almost always without an admission of the fact-even to themselves. First, it makes the services of our congress and legislatures more needed; they can enact large amounts of legislation "helping" the underprivileged. "Pork-barrel legislation" gets them reelected. They especially like legislation which helps their constituents without helping so much that the underprivileged no longer need their help. In effect, they want the benefit of being seen providing fish for the hungry, but do not want to teach them how to fish. Second it keeps the better jobs open for the leaders and their friends and relatives.

Fourthly, history is replete with numerous examples of serious problems that are very often not solved until there is a crisis. In fact, in many situations no solution is attempted until almost everyone is finally willing to admit that there IS a crisis. A very common example is a dangerous intersection which does not have a traffic light. People in the neighborhood may complain for years with nothing being done. When there is a serious accident in which people are killed, a traffic light may finally be installed. The inaction may be for several reasons. First of all, people like to think "happy thoughts," ignoring problems, hoping they will go away. Second, people almost always assume that solving the problem will cost more time or money than they are willing to "gamble" is really needed . Third, solving a problem properly takes concentrated effort at finding the best solution. Far too often, the first or second idea that occurs to those responsible for finding a solution is implemented, rather than finding the absolute best solution. The proposed solution is so often inadequate that everyone involved is "gun-shy" about getting involved.

From the standpoint of the illiterates themselves, the problem of illiteracy is the extent, seriousness, and costs of illiteracy and the very great difficulty-compared to almost any other alphabetic language-of learning to read English. The most extensive study of adult illiteracy ever commissioned by the U.S. government was a five-year, $14 million study involving lengthy interviews of 26,700 adults, statistically balanced for age, sex, ethnicity, and location-whether urban, suburban, or rural-in several states across the U.S. The study proved that more than 92 million people (more than 47% of U.S. adults) cannot read and write well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job. This study also proved that more than 40% of employees in U.S. businesses are functionally illiterate. A study of the results of twenty years of "educational improvements" since the 1983 "Nation At Risk" report revealed no substantial change in our nation's educational status.

Frank Laubach went all around the world teaching adult illiterates to read. He taught in 300 languages and found that in 295 languages (95% of them) he could teach students to read in less than three months. It requires at least two to four years of the present reading instruction to teach the 53% of U.S. adults who do learn to read.

2.  What are the human suffering costs of illiteracy?

Not only are functionally illiterate workers paid less, as mentioned previously, they are usually the first to be laid off when there is a work slowdown. For example in 1975, in the most readily available statistics, when the unemployment rate was 9.2%, the unemployment rate of those with less than a high school education was 28.3% and of those with less than an eighth grade education was more than 35%. The number of manual labor jobs has decreased considerably in the last few years. Even a very hard working but illiterate janitor, for example, may be fired if he or she is left a note detailing special cleanup instructions after hours, and the instructions are not read and followed.

As could be expected, the unemployed and underemployed are likely to turn to crime to support themselves and their families. Among juvenile delinquents appearing before the court, 85% are functionally illiterate. From the 1970 census, at a time when 38% of adults were not high school graduates, 75% of prisoners over twenty-five years old were not high school graduates.

Not only are illiterates likely to commit crimes, they are very likely to be the victim of crime or fraud. A landlord who wants to evict low paying tenants and raise the rent can tell them their contract allows them to be evicted if their baby cries and disturbs other tenants. Unable to read the contract, they are unwilling to stand up for rights that they are not sure they have. They also cannot read their insurance contract, so they are easy prey for insurance fraud. They cannot read their utility bills and may have their utilities turned off due to a misunderstanding.

They cannot cast an informed vote. The only thing they know about the candidates is the radio and TV ads and news about candidates significant enough to make it onto radio and TV programs. They often do not learn about their rights. They cannot read Internal Revenue or welfare notices. They must learn about their rights and deadlines they face by word of mouth or from radio or television. They seldom know all of their options. They must depend upon people they have reason to distrust to keep them informed.

The right to an education is the most important right of those who are or who become illiterate. It is devastating to the morale of teenagers to believe they are merely taking up space in a classroom that would be better used by a more deserving student. Teachers or school officials can, sometimes without intending to do so, give a student that message. It is easier for them to drop out of school than to stand up for their right to an education. If the students' parents are illiterate, they cannot help the student with homework, cannot help them prepare for post-high school education, and will not risk the embarrassment of going to the classroom to meet with the teacher to help resolve any problems.

Simple things we take for take for granted are very difficult for illiterates. How can they go to a restaurant and get what they want if they can't read the menu? They must order something they are sure the restaurant has, such as another burger and cola, or depend upon someone they are with to order for them and risk getting something they hate. Grocery shopping poses a particular hazard. They must buy a product they have seen advertised on TV based upon the picture on the package or can, such as buying a can of Crisco which has a picture of fried chicken on the front. When they get home and open the can at the table before several hungry children, they discover that they have enough Crisco to last a year but nothing to cook in it or any money to go back to the store for something for their hungry family. They also cannot read cooking instructions. They must risk wasting food trying something new or be accused of being a lazy, unimaginative cook.

They cannot manage a checking account, so they must pay cash for everything. This involves traveling to pay bills, risking getting lost because they cannot read road signs or maps. This also means they cannot invest their money or take advantage of special payment options to reduce expenses.

They can't read health pamphlets to reduce their health risks. They cannot read their medicine bottle for side effects, allergic reactions, sedative effects, dosage, or expiration data, so if they do not remember what their doctor said about the medicine-or it was not explained carefully-they are at risk. They cannot read product warnings on items they purchase or danger signs at their workplace. Their life is one booby trap after another, one need for trusting people they have reason to distrust after another. It is like being lost in a foreign country and being unable to read the language.

3.  What are the monetary costs of illiteracy?

Briefly, the types of costs can be categorized as: (1) the cost of taxes for government programs that illiterates use, (2) the increased cost of consumer goods as a result of the cost of recruiting suitable employees when so many are unqualified, the cost of training employees in basic knowledge they should have learned in school, and the cost of preventing and correcting the mistakes and inabilities of illiterates in the workforce, and (3) the cost of taxes for truancy, juvenile delinquency, and crime directly related to illiteracy. The 1990 total of these types of costs, the latest readily available figures, is at least $3700 per year per taxpayer. In addition to these direct costs, there are the indirect costs from financial interests we have in any business or organization being hurt by illiteracy. Almost every business or organization-including that of our employer-is hurt to some extent by illiteracy. In addition to the three items above, if the business or organization is involved in any way in preparing or selling printed material of any kind, their prospective customers are almost cut in half by illiteracy. In addition, almost every business or organization must compete with businesses or deal with suppliers with more literate foreign workers.

4.  What is involved in effective literacy training?

Unfortunately, how effective a literacy training program is can be very subjective. Teachers, school administrators, and politicians, will point to successes and take pride in their accomplishments. Although national pride may prevent such comparisons, a truly objective evaluation of English literacy training would compare our success rate with that of other countries. As stated previously, Frank Laubach was able to teach nearly all of his students in 95% of the languages in which he taught-other than English-to read in less than three months. Nearly all of the 53% or so of U.S. adult who do learn to read require at least two years of instruction. An effective literacy training program should be expected to be at least as good as that of the 295 languages in which Frank Laubach taught students to read in less than three months. We cannot use the excuse that the English language is more difficult than other languages-it isn't. Linguist Axel Wijk and educator Sir James Pitman, among others, have pointed out the simplicity of English grammar and syntax. Axel Wijk stated, "English is . . . a comparatively easy language to learn for foreigners at least as far as the everyday written and spoken forms of it are concerned. This is mainly due to its grammatical structure, which is far simpler than those of most other important languages, particularly so in comparison with French, German, Russian, or Spanish." English is neither the easiest nor the hardest language as far as grammar and syntax is concerned. To compensate for English perhaps being slightly more difficult than the average of the 295 languages in which Laubach taught so successfully, it seems prudent to expect students to learn to read a perfect one-grapheme-per-one-phoneme, such as my book proposes, in less than four months. (A grapheme, as you may know, is a letter, combination of letters, or a symbol used to represent a phoneme, a syllable, or a word.)

What is more difficult about English is the spelling. When foreigners complain of the difficulty of learning to read, they are really complaining about the spelling. English is a conglomeration of the words-and in most cases, the spelling-of eight languages. Some of the words of every conqueror who occupied the British Isles were incorporated into what is now English. Correcting the serious linguistic error of Samuel Johnson, whose dictionary froze the spelling of words instead of the spelling of the sounds (or more specifically: the phonemes, the smallest sound which is used to distinguish between a syllable or a word) as linguistic logic demands, will make the literacy training of English equivalent to that of other nations.

5.  How is your work different than the work of say E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation?

The program of the Core Knowledge Foundation, the program of Dr. Diane McGuinness, as explained in her book, Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It, and one or two others, are all excellent programs for teaching students to read the present spelling system. Although all of these programs may teach a higher percentage of the students to read than presently used methods, and although they may be able to teach most of the students to read in about eighteen months or so, none of them can match the simplicity of learning that is a characteristic of almost all other alphabetic languages. One-or a combination-of these programs could and should be used in conjunction with the simplified spelling system that I have developed. All that is necessary is to transliterate these programs into my spelling system. Anyone familiar with my spelling system will be able to read English and type or write in my spelling system almost as fast as they could simply copy English. By 2007 a computer program now being prepared by Gary Sprunk of Arizona State University is expected to be ready. This program will transliterate between the new spelling system I am calling N'wenglish (=N'w English=New English) and English.

6.  What is your relationship with Dr. Robert Laubach?

I sent an early version of my book to Dr. Robert S. Laubach for his review. I requested that he send me a brief review that I could use as a testimonial. The email that he sent me has been incorporated into my book as the Foreword. At one point I also offered Dr. Laubach the opportunity to be my coauthor, but he declined.

7.  What role do parents play or should they play in rectifying this literacy crisis?

As you know, the amount of parental involvement is critical to whether or not a child learns to read. Numerous books, such as Dr. William Bennett's book, The Educated Child , point out the necessity of parental involvement. Reportedly, one of the biggest reasons that Japanese, Korean, and many Chinese students do so well in school is the great importance that their parents place upon education and the parents' involvement in the students' homework. Unfortunately, many parents will never heed this advice. They are so busy working to maintain a reasonable standard of living that they have little of the time or energy needed to be of any appreciable help to their children. Furthermore, many parents are functionally illiterate or they were such poor students that they have very little ability to help their children. That being the case, the importance of making the process of learning to read as easy as possible becomes apparent. It is important for the self-esteem of children that they learn to read quickly-before their failure to learn embarrasses them before their class and they begin to believe that they cannot learn, a belief that is very hard to overcome.

In the same way that parents can help their children the most, that is, by working to get N'wenglish adopted, everyone who understands the situation should exercise their own self interest and their own compassion for the suffering of illiterates to work for adopting N'wenglish.

8.  What are the causes of illiteracy?

There are many reasons that any one particular student may not learn to read. Listed in no particular order, they are:

•  the student or his parents or friends place little or no importance upon learning to read

•  the student is far more interested in various pleasurable activities (movies, television, or videos; music on the radio, CDs, MP3 players, or in concerts; video or computer games; sports or school activities of all kinds; and gang activities), most of which did not exist before the 1920s

•  the student goes to school hungry, frightened (over gang violence or students who bring weapons to school, for example), worried over problems at home or with schoolwork, or embarrassed (over failing to read aloud before the class properly, over old, ragged clothing, or some other problem)

•  the student has poor eyesight, poor hearing, or a learning problem

•  the student does not like the teacher or the teacher is ineffective

•  the teaching method or the textbooks are ineffective.

•  the student spends a considerable amount of time working at a job.

Any one student may have one or a combination of these hindrances to learning. But there is one problem that hinders every student: the inconsistent, illogical, undependable spelling. Professor Julius Nyikos did an extensive study of English spelling using six large desk dictionaries and found that there are 1768 ways of spelling forty phonemes in English. If he had used an unabridged dictionary there would, no doubt, have been even more. He found that there are 1120 ways of spelling the forty phonemes if only words classified as common are used. There is not one spelling "rule" that does not have exceptions. Some of the exceptions have exceptions. As a result, students must learn, one at a time, every word in their vocabulary, either by rote memorization or by familiarization by repeated use. As you know, if you do not use a word for several years, you forget how to spell it. Most people have from 20,000 to 70,000 words in their speaking vocabulary.

9.  " Instant Literacy for Everyone"- What is this all about?

Instant Literacy for Everyone is the title of the first version of my book. It was published in November 1993 by Northwest Publishing, Inc. It was my first, very amateurish effort. There was a great deal of unnecessary material and it was not very well organized. My present book, Let's End Our Literacy Crisis , is the result of twelve years of additional research and almost daily editing, revising, and improving. In addition, my primary editor at American University & Colleges Press, an imprint of American Book Publishing, Norlan De Groot, made two major edits, after which the final edit was done by Seamane Flanagan.

10.  You have a "Let's End Our Literacy Crisis Workbook" What might one encounter in this workbook?

The workbook contains a complete listing of two-letter consonant graphemes; a partial listing of three-or-more-letter consonant graphemes; a table showing the relative frequency of use of consonant blend graphemes at the start of syllables and at the end of syllables; a listing of heteronyms among the 5000 most common words; quotations showing the importance of context; a listing of homonyms among the 500 most common words; excerpts from the final chapter of Dr. Thomas Lounsbury's 1909 classic, English Spelling and Spelling Reform , which contains a devastating attack against all objections to spelling reform; a glossary of all the words found in Appendix 4, one of the world's most popular books transliterated into my spelling system, from my book, Let's End Our Literacy Crisis ; a partial listing of the words spelled the same in English and N'wenglish-there are 2191 words in the list; teaching guidelines, principles, and general tutor instructions; instructions for using "duet reading;" suggested word lists for learning to read; supplemental material to be used with chapter 9, "Effective Literacy Training," in Let's End Our Literacy Crisis; a students' guide and teachers' manual based upon Samuel Blumenfeld's book, Alphaphonics; and McGuffey's Primer transliterated into N'wenglish.

11.  Do you have a website or an 800 number to get more information? Or for people to order your books?

Yes. My website is www.literacy-research.com . My toll free number is 877-I READ 2 U (473-2328). For overseas caller who cannot use a toll free number, the number is 801-313-0610. My book can be ordered online at www.pdbookstore.com for $23.70 or purchased in selected bookstores or from www.amazon.com for $24.95. It is also available in selected libraries. My workbook can be ordered by sending a check for $12 to Literacy Research Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 57978, Murray, UT 84157. When the order volume increases, the workbook will become available by credit card over the internet.

12.  What question have I neglected to ask?

The first thing most people want to know is, "How will this benefit me ?"

•  You will benefit if you are concerned that a friend, relative, or associate is-or after leaving school will be-functionally illiterate. The financial, emotional, and physical problems and suffering of illiterates is much worse than most people realize. There are at least thirty-four types of serious problems that illiterates must constantly endure. With over 92 million functional illiterates in the U.S., many people you know are-unknown to you-functionally illiterate.

•  You will benefit if you object to the expense of at least $3700 each year as a result of taxes for programs that illiterates use and for their truancy, juvenile delinquency, and crime, and for the increased cost of consumer goods as a result of illiterates in the workplace.

•  You will benefit if you have financial interests in a business or organization-including those in which you invest time or money and your place of employment. Functional illiteracy affects every business or organization to some extent, some of them seriously. Illiteracy cuts the potential customers almost in half for any business or organization which is involved in any way in preparing or selling written material. Almost all businesses or organizations must now compete with foreign businesses or suppliers who have more literate workers than they do. The September 2005 U.S. trade deficit was worse than any previous month.

•  You will benefit if you feel compassion for the hundreds of millions of English-speaking people around the world who cannot read English. English is now spoken by more people than any other language or dialect. For members of language groups which do not have a written language or whose country is so poor that very little is printed in their native language, if they cannot read English, their choice of reading material and their educational opportunities are extremely limited.

•  You will benefit if you are a teacher who is troubled by the knowledge that only about half of your students will ever learn to read and write well enough to hold a good job.

•  You will benefit if you are a student or a teacher who finds the present reading instruction boring and/or confusing, as millions of others do.

•  Like millions of others, you will benefit by the added ease with which you will be able to communicate in writing with English-speaking people around the world. The added communication will go a long way in resolving many of the people conflicts among the nations as people come to understand each other more easily.

Another question people want to know the answer to is, "If this is such a serious problem, why hasn't it already been solved?"

Illiteracy has not ended because people do not know or do not believe the following:

•  The vast extent of illiteracy . Warnings have appeared over the last thirty years or so, but unfortunately people often ignore a problem until everyone knows that it is a crisis.

•  The vast cost of illiteracy , both in economic loss and in human misery.

•  The vast increase in the need for literacy. Manual labor jobs are rapidly being replaced with jobs requiring reading skills. World trade is rapidly becoming more competitive.

•  The great difficulty of learning to read English, especially as compared to other languages.

•  The great effect that the difficulty of learning to read English has upon illiteracy.

•  The near impossibility-due to human nature and economic realities-of solving the illiteracy problem by standard means. Standard means of improving literacy include improved teaching methods, better textbooks, better teacher training, and better student motivation techniques. The most common ways of trying to improve literacy involve setting higher standards, having a smaller class size, and-most common of all-spending more money, which is what almost every educator or education manager wants. Raising the standards works only at the expense of squeezing out the poorer students. There is no provable correlation between class size or the amount of money spent per pupil and the literacy results obtained. A recent newspaper article stated, "In New Jersey, New York, the District of Columbia, and other places where taxpayers pay among the most for their schools, the students are among the lowest achievers." Dr. William Bennett's book, Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, presents the facts to confirm this finding.

•  The ways to solve problems are not always carefully researched. People naturally expect their leaders to study all of the ways to solve a problem and then choose the best solution. History, however, proves that this is not always true. Far too often, decision makers assume the problem must be solved within limits that do not exist. This is exactly the reason our literacy crisis has not been solved. Our leaders have assumed that we cannot change our spelling. As far back as 1909, Thomas Lounsbury, LLD., L.H.D., emeritus professor of English, Yale University, gave a devastating rebuttal to all those who offered objections to spelling reform. Not only can we change our spelling, it is by far the best and most logical way to SOLVE the problem.

•  Perhaps the main reason: no one has been willing to upset the "status quo" by implementing the logical solution to CURE illiteracy rather than to continue to fight the SYMPTOMS of illiteracy. It is well known that people resist change, but it is a self-defeating policy to assume that the American people are so preoccupied with their jobs, their recreation, their families, and their possessions that they are unwilling to show any compassion for the problems and suffering of their fellow Americans who are functionally illiterate-especially when they learn how extremely easy it is to learn N'wenglish. Numerous people have been able to read long passages of N'wenglish with only a few stumbles over words even though they did not know the spelling system. This is because every one of the twenty-three single letters and fifteen digraphs (two-letters) used for the thirty-eight phonemes required for communication in English are the most-used spellings of those phonemes in English or the way people expect those letters to be pronounced. Anyone who is not severely mentally handicapped will be able to learn to read N'wenglish in less than ten minutes. After an hour or two in chapters 8 and 9 of Let's End Our Literacy Crisis, which describes the spelling system and how to teach it, respectively, almost anyone will be able to read N'wenglish with very few stumbles over words. In English as many as five letters are used to represent a single phoneme and there are as many as sixty ways of spelling a single phoneme (the sound of U in the word nut ). People will also be willing to accept change when they realize that adopting a new spelling system will not suddenly cause all or their books or all of the books in bookstores and libraries spelled in English to self-destruct. People will be willing to accept change when they realize they can help end our literacy crisis at almost no expense and less than an hour of their time.