Do You REALLY Want to Help End Poverty for the U.S. and English-speaking Nations?

We often see articles in newspapers or magazines about the shocking extent of poverty in America or some other English-speaking nation. But how often do the articles examine the cause of the poverty? I cannot remember ever seeing such an article. Many persons of influence -- celebrities, educators, and politicians -- bemoan the extent of poverty. Many of them want to help. Some of them actually do help, but the help is almost always something involving providing money or physical items to temporarily relieve the symptoms -- the pain and suffering brought on by poverty. It is almost never something which will enable those in poverty to permanently escape their poverty. It is like the saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Using this analogy, in order to teach a man to fish (i.e. escape poverty through his own actions), you have to understand what is causing him to be in poverty. Otherwise, any help you provide will merely fight the symptoms of the problem rather than solving the problem. It is like giving someone aspirin to relieve the pain of pneumonia rather than antibiotics to end the pneumonia.

The most statistically accurate and thorough study of English functional illiteracy ever commissioned by the U.S. government was a five-year, $14 million study involving lengthy interviews of 26,049 U.S. adults. The interviewees were statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, and location (urban, suburban, or rural in a dozen states and several prisons across the U.S.) to represent the entire U.S. population. This study, titled Adult Literacy in America, proves that 48.7% of U.S. adults (over 93 million of them) are functionally illiterate (i.e. they read and write so poorly that they cannot hold an above-poverty-level-wage job) and proves they are more than twice as likely to be in poverty because of functional illiteracy as for all other reasons combined.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports a much higher literacy rate, but if you see how the literacy rate that they report was obtained, you will undoubtedly agree with Jonathan Kozol (who describes the literacy rate determination process in his shocking book Illiterate America) that the reported figure vastly overestimates the literacy rate -- and the Adult Literacy in America report proves it. Although there is no evidence of deliberate falsification of the literacy rate, it is in the short term best interest of educators and politicians to believe the rosy reports of our literacy rate.

Believing that we are much more literate than we actually are, however, alleviates any necessity of the drastic action needed to solve the problem. Instead we just continue to treat the symptoms of pain and suffering to the illiterates and continue the high cost to every U.S. adult -- reader and non-reader alike. Functional illiteracy costs every adult -- reader and non-reader alike -- an average of $5186 each year for (1) government programs that illiterates use, (2) for truancy, juvenile delinquency, and crime directly related to illiteracy, and (3) the higher cost of consumer goods as a result of functional illiterates in the workplace. The higher cost of consumer goods results from (1) higher costs for recruiting and training employees, (2) the cost of preventing and correcting errors made by illiterate workers, and (3) the reduction in sales of reading materials, higher education courses, and more expensive and luxury items.

A study of the changes made in the method used to teach reading and the results achieved by these changes prove that there have not been any statistically significant improvements in the last eighty years or more. Most of the changes made have come as a result of the 1983 "Nation At Risk" report stating that if a foreign nation had imposed upon us our 1983 education system, we would have considered it an act of war.

Most American school children of normal intelligence require a minimum of two years to learn to read. Dr. Frank Laubach, who taught adults to read in over 313 alphabetic languages (and even invented spelling systems for scores of language groups who had no written language) found that in 98% of the languages in which he taught, he could teach them to read and write fluently in less than three months. In some of the simplest languages, such as one or more dialects of the Philippine language, he found that they could learn to read in one hour! 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." As far as grammar and syntax are concerned, English is neither the easiest nor the most difficult. One week may be somewhat optimistic, but the grammar and syntax of English is easier than many European languages, all of whose speakers learn to read in less than three months.

There are more than 1.3 billion English-speaking people around the world, more than speak any language dialect other Mandarin Chinese. The vast majority of Mandarin Chinese speakers live in China. English is used more than any other language to speak to someone who does not understand the speaker's native dialect. It is estimated that 600 million of the English-speaking people worldwide (including over 93 million in the U.S. alone) are functionally illiterate.

People who are honest in evaluating the serious physical, mental, emotional, medical, and financial problems of illiterates and the extent of English functional illiteracy of English-speaking people will have to admit that the many half-measures we have been using for the last eighty years are only fighting the symptoms of the problem, not solving the problem. If we had to endure the problems that functional illiterates must constantly live with, we would consider our problems a crisis.

Literacy Research Associates, Inc. and NuEnglish, Inc., two non-profit educational corporations, have researched and perfected a system that Dr. Laubach (now deceased) would undoubtedly advocate to solve our literacy problems -- the only proven solution known to be available. It has been proven in over 300 alphabetic languages, but never tried in English.