Trouble in America The Problem When the average six-year-old child enters first grade, he or she already knows the meanings of about 26,000 words. They may not use all those words themselves, but they understand what the words mean when they hear them. The goal of most first grade reading programs is for students to read between 200 and 600 common words by the end of the school year. Sadly, many students can’t even read 100 words by the time they finish first grade. In the United States, at least 40 to 45 percent of school aged children are below level in reading. In fact, many of them never learn to read well at all. A landmark study by the federal government found that over half the adults can’t read material written at the sixth grade level. They can't read street signs or the directions on a medicine bottle or fill out a job application. Almost 40 percent of American high school students drop out of school before graduating. Many other English-speaking countries report equally dismal results. Who's to blame? Although teachers are often blamed, it's not their fault. It's the fault of a defective reading instruction method. Early in the twentieth century, a small group of influential educators changed the way reading was taught. Prior to that change, nearly everyone who attended school learned to read in a very short time. In our large cities, over 90 percent of the adult population was fully literate. As schools began phasing in the new method, they abandoned the method that had been used successfully to teach reading ever since reading was first invented. As a result, we now have an epidemic of illiteracy. Millions of children and adults are paying a terrible price because of what those early educators did. It causes huge problems throughout our entire society. Parents, schools and colleges spend billions of dollars annually in an effort to bring students up to basic reading levels. In the Coachella Valley of Southern California, The Desert Sun newspaper reported that 97 percent of freshman students in the local community college (College of the Desert) require remedial help in reading or math. Some prisons report that 80 percent of inmates are functionally illiterate. They are victims of a teaching method gone terribly wrong. For a solution to the problem, click on the Section entitled The Solution, then click on Successes!   More... To learn more about Academic Associates, call us at 800.550.9194 (California) or 800.861.9196 (Missouri), or click on the link below.  Academic1@verizon.net

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