Tulsa now is developing a pace-setting community education program which, when fully operational, will be emulated by many other cities, nationwide. The Math(ematical) Lite(racy) Project aims to assist thousands of adult Tulsans who are too math-fearing and too math-illiterate to qualify for math-dependent jobs or for higher education opportunities. Even as education in mathematics continues to become increasingly crucial to the well being of individuals, families, communities, industries, and to the nation. the Mathe-Lite program will gradually lessen the enormous and woeful local educational gap that spurns such Tulsans.

Tulsa being an "average" American metropolis, well over 100 thousand Tulsans are math-needy ... under-educated to meet the mathematical demands of their present or desired roles. More than 50 thousand are even math-suppressed or impoverished ... unable to progress or to escape poverty because of their under-education in mathematics.

At present, Tulsa has no city-wide program of alternative education for rescuing its math-suppressed adults. The Project does not aspire to cause all Tulsans to become math-fearless and math-literate. Rather, its humane and democratic ideal is for all Tulsans to have realistic opportunities to become math-OK ... if they have the need, want the benefits, and are willing to invest the time. In the long range, raising the mathematical literacy of the math-suppressed will elevate the "normal" educational level of Tulsa's youth and adults ... to the socioeconomic benefit of the entire metropolis. The greatest impact will be in the "disadvantaged" communities.

Every American city has its own population of adults who are educationally disadvantaged in mathematics. [About 25% of American adults are school dropouts.] Roughly one-third of the nation's working-age, out-of-school adults are math-needy ... because they have not been able to make personal common sense: (1) of the mathematics they meet in their daily lives, or (2) of the math that their children meet in American lower-schools (below high school level).

In the Project, that combination is called basic literacy in mathematics, meaning that all such mathematics is known as personal common sense. The math-suppressed are the most severe cases ... both math-fearful and woefully math-illiterate (about grade-4 level).

The Tulsa model: No other American city has a viable program for mathematically salvaging math-suppressed adults. Because of that vacuum, the Mathe-Lite Project will be seen on the national stage as "the Tulsa initiative" and will be emulated across the nation. Because a degree of nationwide networking is in order the Project is creating its own National Advisory Council ... as a means for keeping the nation informed ... and also for obtaining nationwide counsel about the evolution of the Project.

The MatheLite program is not being designed for nationwide implementation. But the potentials for Tulsa to serve as an ongoing demonstration surely enhance the prospects for major funding. So, some of the Project's unique features are listed, below.

Serving the math-needy: The American system of education in mathematics largely fails to educate students in the commonsensibility of basic-literacy mathematics. Instead, it produces huge numbers of math-needy adults ... and they will not willingly participate in more math classes. However, the system makes no alternative provisions for those adults to acquire the basic-literacy mathematics that they need. In targeting the math-needy population of an entire metropolitan area, the Project is opening a new frontier of community service in the American system of mathematics education.

DVD community education: Math-suppressed adults do not willingly attend math classes. But in their homes, they leisurely watch enjoyable movies ... and view TV shows that give them information that they want. The MatheLite Project will flood the Tulsa area with free, entertaining movies custom-designed to attract and help math-suppressed adults. At first, the videos will attract mostly parents ... who are concerned about their children's mathematical health. But as the MatheLite Video Library grows ... and becomes popularly recognized as an avenue for accessing vocational and educational benefits ... it will attract rapidly increasing numbers.[See the Overview or the Brief Sketch.]

Math as common sense: Math-suppressed adults cannot effectively use mathematical information unless it is commonsensible to them. The key to mathematically salvaging math-suppressed adults is to guide them to comprehend basic literacy mathematics as common sense.

Students' difficulties with curricular mathematics are caused largely by the American core-curriculum in mathematics being largely non-common-sensible to the students, themselves. As a result, many millions of American adults suffer from "math anxiety" ... which says that the curriculum, itself, is largely unhealthy. Clinical research readily reveals that when math-distressed persons are led to learn/re-learn school mathematics as personal common sense, their anxiety is greatly relieved or even cured. That says that the non-common-sensibility of the curriculum truly is the major culprit.

If there elsewhere exists any American mathematics instructional program that enables youth or adults to fully grasp basic-literacy mathematics as personal common sense, it is not highly visible. The Project's instructional program might very well be the nation's first working demonstration of instruction in basic-literacy mathematics as common sense to the learners. As such, it will go far toward clarifying what it means to learn mathematics as personal common sense ... and toward revealing the crucial importance of commonsensibility ... to the educational health of individuals, families, communities, organizations, and the nation.

Community math-coaching: The Project aims at empowering math-suppressed adults to math-coach children (and others) ... so that those, too, will digest basic-literacy mathematics as personal common sense. The adults not only learn the math, they also learn how to help their children, friends, neighbors, and communities to do likewise.

Of special interest to many [locally and nationwide] will be the MatheLite Project's connections with the schools. American teachers are not well educated in how to make basic-literacy mathematics commonsensible to their students. The Project's movie-mode of educating even math-suppressed adults in how to make basic-literacy mathematics common-sensible to all ... surely will allow teachers, schools, teacher-educators, and curriculum developers to make curricular math instruction healthier for students.

Also, it has long been known that the most important factor in children's scholastic success in mathematics is the mathematical literacy of their parents, families, and communities. Schools are finding it quite difficult to notably raise their instructional productivity in mathematics ... partly because of the limiting literacy-levels of their respective communities. But American schools do not have the missions or resources to educate their adult communities in basic-literacy mathematics.

When parents and other adults are empowered to help make lower-school mathematics common-sensible to all, the community can provide sorely needed outside support for the schools. It is reasonable to expect that such beneficial impact on the schools would be most pronounced and visible within "disadvantaged" communities.

Mathematical health: The MatheLite Project focuses especially on the Tulsa-area's math-suppressed adults ... its extremely math-needy adults ... with regard for their personal educational health. The mental-health concern is for adults' rational abilities to cope with immediate and imminent demands ... rather than with how they might score on scholastic "tests".

The Project uses clinical methods to determine how best to improve the mathematical health of math-suppressed adults ... and for developing products that will do so. But any clinically developed products that improve the mathematical health of math-suppressed adults will also allow all other math-needy adults to achieve similar benefits. The same products also will enable parents and teachers to provide healthier kinds of mathematical growth in their students.

Scientific basis: The science of personal mathematical health is about how well the growth of personal mathematical intelligence keeps pace with the changing immediate and imminent needs for it. The science is especially concerned with the causes, treatments, cures, and prevention of "math distress" ... that afflicts most Americans before they leave formal curricular education. Curricular programs presently cannot directly use that science as a means for improving instructional productivity.That is because the science heavily relies on clinical perspectives and procedures.

This Project will be among the nation's first ventures in using scientific clinical research for purposes of developing a mathematics instructional program. It also will be among the first to develop a mathematics instructional program within the context of personal educational health. The program's success with large numbers of math-suppressed adults could catalyze nationwide progress in developing and applying scientific clinical methods ... and in invoking educational health perspectives ... toward improving the healthiness of instructional practices.

Psycho-mathematics: The Project's role is to make basic-literacy mathematics fully commonsensible to all who suffer from math-distress. For over eighty years leading mathematics educators have tried to make school mathematics common sensible. Their overall progress has been minimal ... because they did not have the scientific tools for doing so. Without those, they have had to rely on opinions and conjectures of "authorities", committees, panels, and populations.

The scientific psychology of personal mathematical comprehension did not begin to emerge in the USA until the mid 1970s ... as a sequel to European beginnings by Jean Piaget and Marie Montessori. it is basically a "cognition" science about how humans most naturally develop personal mathematical intelligence ... through their exercise of "common sense." That science could not be applied to curricular practices without first being employed and tailored within the context of clinical instruction, research, and development. Without that prerequisite step, leading mathematics educators could not perceive exactly what it means for mathematics to be learned as "common sense" ... much less perceiving the crucial role of commonsensibility in curricular mathematics.