During his fourth year of teaching in the U.K., primary school educator John Luk noticed something concerning about his classroom resources. While looking at a set of phonics flashcards produced by Read Write Inc., he realized that the Asian characters were illustrated with slits for their eyes.

Instead of staying silent, Luk took action. He wrote a letter of complaint, noting that the flashcards in question — a revamp of a previous set of cards that depicted fewer POC characters —  are currently being used in schools worldwide. According to Luk, children aged 4 to 7 in the U.K. must learn phonics, and only a few organizations create phonics schemes to be distributed to schools across the U.K., with Read Write Inc. Phonics being one of them. Their popular phonics cards, which are published by Oxford University Press, are used in more than 5,000 schools in the U.K., as well as in nine states in the U.S. and hundreds of schools around the world.