"Learning to read is like learning to drive a car. You take lessons and learn the mechanics and rules of the road. After a few weeks you have learned to drive, to stop, to change gear, how to park and how to signal.You also learned how to stop at red lights and understand traffic signs.When you are ready, take a road test and if you pass, you can drive first with phonics works the same way mechanics of reading and, when he is finished, he can read. Looking and saying works differently. The child is taught to read before he has learned the mechanics: the sounds of the letters guide starting the car and moving forward guide you will learn them as you go —Rudolf Flesch, “Why Johnny Still Can't Read,” 1981 Illiteracy in America is still growing at an alarming rate and that fact hasn't changed much since Rudolf Flesch wrote his best. -seller on teaching reading in 1955. Illiteracy continues to be a critical problem, requiring enormous resources from local, state, and federal taxes, while discussions about how to teach children to read continue to rage within the community in educational research, on Capitol Hill, in business, and in the classroom. The International Reading Association estimates that more than a thousand research papers on the topic of literacy are prepared each year, and this is most likely a low figure. For the past 50 years, American classrooms have been used by psychologists, sociologists, educators, and politicians as a giant laboratory for unproven and untested learning theories, resulting in a near-collapse of public education. It's time we started moving away from "what's new" and toward "what works." The sad statistics According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 42 million American adults cannot read; 50 million recognize so few printed words that they are limited to a 4th or 5th grade reading level; one in four adolescents drops out of high school and, among those who graduate, one in four has an education level equal to or lower than an eighth grade level. According to current estimates, the number of functionally illiterate adults is increasing by approximately 2.5%. a quarter of a million people every year. This number includes nearly 1 million young people who drop out of school before graduation, 400,000 legal immigrants, 100,000 refugees and 800,000 illegal immigrants.