People often consider literacy a minor cause compared to the big aches and pains of the world. It's not a minor cause, it's the underlying cause of many of the big problems we struggle with.
Luckily, dealing with it is a minor Anstrengung compared to trying to fix the big problems that result later in, if education is neglected.
Most of the large, unsurmountable, infinitely expensive problems originate at a child.
A child limited by language, left behind in class, excluded from opportunity. A child that does not receive the education needed to design its own life and be prepared to maneuver its twists and turns.
Poverty, crime, violence, even a failed economy are the direct consequence of people not reaching their potential.
A child from a welfare family enters school knowing less than 30% of the words it's more privileged peers know. Instead of closing, this gap widens during elementary school!
Fourty percent of all fourth graders in the U.S. (60% in urban schools) are lacking basic literacy skills, and 75% of these students will drop out of school, unable to make up for time lost in early years of their educational career.
We want to show that it is easier to invest in the solution of problems when they just germinate. We are also planning a large fundraising campaign, involving kickstarter.com and indiegogo.com to make free tutoring available to elementary students in the U.S. and Canada.
What would life be like if you struggled to read and write?
Imagine living at 30% of your current vocabulary capacity.
Can you imagine how intimidated, humiliated, and frustrated you would feel?
How many areas of your life would be closed off, unavailable, because you don't have the "verbal code" to pass?
On the positive side, research and our 7-year experience managing LearnThatWord.org shows that systematic and targeted intervention DOES allow students to catch up quickly.
Please visit our homepage and click on the center video to get a brief overview of our program. We are currently working on a third, exclusively meaning based version of the program, and will add extensive reward features.
Your support would be much appreciated!