Adult Literacy Training Project
Georgia Army National Guard
Fort Stewart, Georgia
Seventy-eight soldiers at Fort Stewart, Georgia, attended a two week intensive phonics program using We All Can Read as the sole instructional curriculum. The following video, produced by the Georgia Army National Guard, is divided into three parts.

Part One - The Georgia Army National Guard Education
Services Officer talks about the program. (2 minutes and 7 seconds)

"I think that the Guard owes it to their soldiers to afford them the opportunity to enhance their basic skills. And one of their basic skills is to read. If a soldier can't read, he's a safety hazard. If a soldier can't read, he's an operation's hazard. He can't follow an op order in the infantry. Digging a foxhole and staying there fifteen days isn't all it takes to be a good infantryman."

Part Two - James Williams, author of the program, is interviewed.
(3 minutes and 59 seconds)

"Reading is probably the first intellectual task a young child is asked to master, and if a child is not successful in school in the first few years in mastering the reading process, all sorts of emotional problems develop, problems that will follow a person through his entire life. And I have found even in this class working with adults, that those wounds that start in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten or first grade, people carry those wounds with them their entire lives."

Part Three - Soldiers who are students in the class
discuss the value of the program to them. (4 minutes and 2 seconds)

Second soldier: "...everybody in the class had a positive attitude. And people are going around to each other and they are making it public that this class is helping me. And it's not just I'm doing something for the Guard, I'm doing something for myself."

Third soldier: "The first half day everybody was a little reluctant to say, hey, I don't want to be a part of this; I'm no dummy. Man, I don't need this; I'm grown. You know, it was pride saying that I don't want anyone to know that I have a problem with reading. After getting into it, the first couple of hours, it doesn't take two or three days getting into the program. The first couple of hours after getting into it, everyone relaxes. And it makes sense. What we didn't get in school begins to make sense to us now.