Everett Ofori
The late Dr. Rudolf Flesch, an Austrian lawyer who earned a doctorate degree at Columbia University, and became a consultant to the United States government on how to write clear, snappy English, lamented all through his life why so many people could not read. He wrote, "The teaching of reading -- all over the United States, in all the schools, in all the textbooks -- is totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense." To Dr. Flesch, the problem was clear. The look and guess method that many teachers had latched on to was creating a treadmill of children who were ending up as barely literate adults. The author of Johnny Still Can't Read - But You Can Teach Him at Home, writes: "I have seen enough excellent teachers of phonics systems in action to be in awe of them. They teach class after class in which no child reads below grade level, and the classes average two or three years above grade level. They have never seen a "dyslexic" child, nor produced a "learning disabled" or non-reader....The one thing the sight-word advocates have never been able to prove is that children don7t learn to read with intensive phonics. They can't prove it, because the evidence is overwhelmign that children can and do learn to read when properly taught with a good phonics system." Use Read Assure: Guaranteed Formula for Reading Success with Phonics and you will readily concur with this conclusion.