Illiteracy Prison and a Key to Freedom: Letterland Exposed

By Gertrude Garrow

LYN WENDON IS NOT THE ORIGINATOR OF LETTERLAND.

LYN WENDON IS A PLAGIARIST.

This book and the accompanying documentary provide conclusive evidence to show how Lyn Wendon and Richard Carlisle of Hamlyn have continued to market Letterland as their creation despite numerous legal

• Language: English
• Publisher: AtoZeasy Learning
• Release date: Jul 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781801632720

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Illiteracy Prison and a Key to Freedom

Letterland Exposed

Gertrude Garrow

Illiteracy Prison and a Key to Freedom

Copyright © 2022 Gertrude Linnane-Garrow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, whether now known or hereafter invented, including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior permission of AtoZeasy Learning (UK) Ltd. reg. no 04959793 or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by a Copyright Licensing Agency.

website: www.atozeasy.com

e-mail: [e-mail]

ISBNs:

978-1-80163-273-7 (paperback)

978-1-80163-274-4 (hardback)

978-1-80163-272-0 (eBook)

DEDICATION

To all those who have suffered unnecessarily as a result of illiteracy.

Contents

Acknowledgements

The Illiteracy Epidemic

Origin of My Reading System

Publishing and Television

Discovery of Theft

Monitored Trials

Success and Rejection

Passing Off

Lyn Wendon’s Teaching

Tears and Trauma

Further Rejections

The Law of Copyright

Responses to Mark Wendon’s Defence and Counterclaim

Released From Illiteracy Prison

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

My most sincere thanks to my amazing husband Simon, Kevin O’Doherty, Jonathan Coad, my sister Jane Doran, and my sons Mark, Warren and Stuart Kerrigan for their support and encouragement.

Gert’s Montessori school, Dublin, Ireland. End of year class photograph for 1976.

CHAPTER 1

The Illiteracy Epidemic

For over forty years, I have witnessed the intense suffering and shame felt by children and adults who have failed to learn to read. I have also seen the agony of parents as they watch their children fail over and over again to learn to read and my passion has been to eradicate their misery and suffering. For this reason, I created a reading system that can teach anyone to read in thirty hours or less. Sadly, despite my best efforts, considering the millions who are labelled illiterate, I have only been able to teach a relatively small number of learners.

Despite all the advances in technology and education, illiteracy is at epidemic proportions. This is unnecessary as it could have been solved by my reading system. But my system has been rejected. I will show you why this has happened and hopefully by making this public, I may be able to, finally, make my system available to all.

Illiteracy is a monster which causes intense suffering, profound negative emotions, and makes even the most intelligent child or adult feel inadequate and have low self-esteem. It breeds anxiety, shame, frustration, anger, misery, depression and despair. It relegates the individual to menial low-paid jobs or unemployment. It devours creativity and destroys hope.

Tragically, there are 775 million people in the world who are illiterate, with another 152 million children set to follow in their footsteps. In English-speaking countries alone, millions of people are functionally illiterate. That means they can’t read well enough to do simple tasks, like reading news reports, official documents, reading a label on a medicine bottle or following a recipe.

The Barbara Bush Foundation estimated illiteracy figures in the US to be more than 36 million, costing $230 billion each year in healthcare. Illiteracy, a virtual imprisoning of an individual in itself, in many cases leads to a real prison.

85% of young offenders are illiterate. 70% reoffend, but, if they are taught to read, the number drops to s17% percent. In the UK, it is estimated that the number of eleven-year-olds who have a reading difficulty is one in four. One of my sixteen-year-old students, Ian, said: Not being able to read is worse than prison because you never get out!

The Root Cause of Illiteracy

The main causes of illiteracy are often attributed to teachers, schools or learning disabilities, such as dyslexia. But from my experience, I can say, unequivocally, that none of these are the culprits. The real cause of illiteracy is incompetent, inefficient reading systems. There are two main reading programs used in our schools:

Systematic Phonics and Analytic Phonics.

Systematic Phonics teaches the 44 sounds of the English language, that consist of the 26 alphabet letters and the 18 sounds they make when combined. These sounds are then blended together to form words. Systematic Phonics is helpful for decoding words and also for spelling, but it is mainly useful as