Welcome to the Solution to English Illiteracy.
The Desperately Needed Idea Whose Time Has Come.

About the Author

Bob C. Cleckler grew up in Texas where he was an avid reader from early childhood. After studying elementary and secondary education and art at Hardin-Simmons University for two years, he switched to an engineering curriculum. Upon graduation from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering, he joined Hercules Incorporated, where he worked for twenty-nine years. During this period he conducted many short research programs to solve various types of manufacturing problems and wrote dozens of extensive technical reports on his findings. He also taught numerous adult classes as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Utah National Guard Special Forces, and elsewhere.

In his position of Assistant Secretary of the Plant Process Control Board, in the Safety Department of Hercules Incorporated, Cleckler was responsible for analyzing numerous procedures for susceptibility to unintended explosive initiation at a $400 million, solid propellant rocket motor plant. His failure to consider all possibilities could have resulted in an explosion, killing dozens of people and causing millions of dollars in damage. These scientific and statistical studies of manufacturing problems were an ideal preparation for what has been a consuming interest in our literacy crisis. He became passionately concerned about literacy in 1985 after reading about the physical, financial, and emotional pain and suffering of illiterates described in Jonathan Kozol's book Illiterate America—a passion that has extended to the present time.

In order to learn the publishing business, Cleckler worked for four years as a desktop publisher for a trade paperback publisher. He typeset 144 books of all types during that time and attended the American Booksellers Association book fairs for each of the four years, where he discussed an earlier version of this book with several publishers and booksellers. That book, entitled Instant Literacy for Everyone and published in 1993, is now out of print but is still listed by Amazon.com.

Cleckler read every book on the subject of his research at the University of Utah's Marriott Library and at the Salt Lake City main library. Although he does not have a degree in education, he has spent far more time in private study than would be required to receive a Ph.D. in education. His private study consisted of analyzing and correlating the life's work of several educational and linguistic scholars. His private study enabled him to examine aspects of education and linguistics that Ph.D. programs in education do not study. This is largely because of the peer pressure on linguists and educators to search for traditional or conventional means of improving literacy that will not upset the status quo. Because his scientific training and experience are very different from those of linguists and educators, he is able to explore all solutions and then carefully, scientifically evaluate them. Compassion for the suffering of unemployed and "underemployed" illiterates, as well as concern for taxpayer costs and the adverse effect of U.S. illiteracy on international trade made him feel compelled to form Literacy Research Associates, Inc., a nonprofit educational corporation, and to write this book.