Improving Reading and Writing Skills of Disadvantaged College Freshmen

(1) At present more than one-third of the students in the public schools of America's fifteen largest cities are products of and continue to live in poor cultural environments. It is reliably reported that by 1970 more than 50 percent of the pupils in the public schools of the fifteen largest cities will come from culturally disadvantaged backgrounds. (2) Although many of these culturally disadvantaged students are graduated from high school and manage to enter college, they are dropped for poor scholarship largely because they do not develop sufficient skills in reading and writing to master academic subjects required for graduation. This unfortunate situation results in a great loss of potentially skilled manpower from active participation in the American economy. In addition, it adds unnecessarily a large body of frustrated citizens to the urban centers.