Know your ABC's or People Will Starve

Fifty years ago, bad grammar would get you a slap on the wrists from Sister Mary Catherine’s ruler. Today, bad grammar means poor people will die.

The website www.FreeRice.com teaches American kids and feeds African kids at the same time. Some starving kid is waiting to eat, and his appetite counts on you knowing your podiatrist from your pediatrician. Free Rice gives you a vocabulary word such as "complaisance," followed by four choices such as ’lottery,’ ’icing,’ ’dusk,’ and ’agreeableness.’ If you clicked ’agreeableness,’ congratulations! Twenty grains of rice will be donated to fight world hunger. And if you got it wrong? Well poor little Singh in Calcutta.

What? Is there some guy holding food on a string over the outstretched hands of poor Indian and African children saying, "No food until some American kid clicks on a website and gets a grammar question right"?