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Subject: [NIFL-FAMILY:914] letter to educators
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This is an excerpt from the cover letter I am going to be sending this to
grammer schools around the world . Maybe some of you can give me your
opinion on it .
>>>>>>>>>
TO: School principal or special education director.
From : Joe Gaczol
president , ZOL inc.
Dear sir or madam ,
In addition to hundreds of thousands of ordinary schools such
as yours, there are many
government programs, nonprofit organizations and very profitable
corporations that are devoted
teaching literacy to children . Every one of them uses teaching methods
that will accomplish
the same goal : Familiarize the students with thousands of near random
spellings well enough to
allow them to read . No matter what teaching method is used , its all
completely dependent on
the student's ability to memorize a massive amount of disorganized nonsense.
As you know very well, this is not cheap. All the estimates I
have found say that 1/3 of
all elementary school education is spent on reading and writing . This is
only what is needed for
average students . The cost of getting problem students and those with
dyslexia up to a minimum
reading proficiency level can be several times higher . Many parents are
forced to spend
hundreds of dollars on phonics software or thousands for private tutoring in
an effort to help
their children catch up with their classmates.
All this time and effort and it is still not even close to being
100% effective. NOBODY is
able to spell or correctly pronounce all the words in our language . Many
spelling bee champions
may be able to spell all the words they will ever use, but the average person
will depend on spell
check software and dictionaries for their entire lives .
Is this because we are all stupid ? After all, a 25 cent CD ROM
can store every word in
every language on earth !
I say no. Massive, detailed, precise memory just is not a
characteristic of the human mind .
Our brains don't work that way . We easily remember things that make sense
or have a pattern .
We think . A fairly typical football fan can rattle off trivia and
statistics all day . But see how
many random digits he can memorize and recall the next day. 15 ? 20 ? The
truth is that to
remember just 10 digits most people will need to associate them with other
things in order to
create an artificial pattern . Obviously, there is no easy and efficient way
to cram 50,000 letter
combinations into the human brain .
The bottom line is that this problem will persist until we replace
traditional English spelling
with a real system . Until this happens the English speaking countries will
waste about 100
billion dollars a year supporting something that belongs in a museum rather
than in everyday use.
The end of
illiteracy
Beginning in 2000, I began distributing a new spelling system
for the English language
called Nooalf ( a condensation of 'new alphabet' ). The purpose is to fix
the root cause of
illiteracy in English speaking countries .
The new project for this year is to develop an educational program
that will work for
children , immigrants , dyslexics and any adults who just happen to be
illiterate. The enclosed
Nooalf Pictures is the 1st in a group of products intended to teach this new
spelling system
without any assistance from anybody.
What I need to do is test this with children in kindergarten to 4th
grade , and older students
who are having trouble learning to read and write using ordinary teaching
methods . The lessons
learned in these tests will be used to refine the product and develop a
complete program .
The benefits to your students & school will be early access to cutting
edge educational
products and a hand in shaping the future of the English language . <<<<<<<<
<
Tell me what you think , and dont be timid or polite .
JO
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