Describes and critically analyzes adult literacy training efforts in Zambia from 1945 to 1986. Offers the integrated small-scale approach as a more beneficial and cost effective means of training. Suggests that a grass roots method which attacks illiteracy both across and within the community will lead to the most effective program. (KO)

Interviews 16 volunteer adult literacy tutors, finding that many of them do not implement strategies and practices currently recognized as most effective, but tend to implement strategies to which they themselves were exposed as learners, possibly leading to feelings of frustration and defeat for their clients. (SR)

Child labor is exceptionally extensive in Pakistan. An interview survey in the Lahore area documented the magnitude, causes, and effects of child labor. Steps for fighting this problem are recommended. (BC)

Compares and comments on two recent national surveys of adult literacy standards in the United States and Canada, which move away from reporting the number of literates/illiterates and use levels of literacy proficiency. Notes that different concepts for literacy levels, different types of sampling, and different ways of measuring literacy and…

Focuses on the deep understanding conveyed in two books (Mike Rose's "Lives on the Boundary" and J. Elspeth Stuckey's "The Violence of Literacy") of exactly what is at stake in the literary crisis and how literacy is used to ratify the status quo. Considers their different, but complementary, suggestions about what writing…

Discusses the multicultural education thrust to reduce illiteracy, as well as the linkage between language and identity. It is argued that encouraging literacy requires sensitivity to both roles of the tension between core knowledge and skills and the promotion of group values and culture. (60 references) (GLR)

Describes, in a case study, how a functionally illiterate adult coped with the disabling effects of not being able to read and how, once he was involved in an educational therapy program, his attitude toward reading, his self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, coping strategies, and actual progress in reading were influenced by the treatment.…

Documents a literacy problem in an electronics factory in which workers failed to read or follow written instructions. Suggests that to be truly literate, employees need access to a wider range of information about companies and their work and that work should be organized to allow, even require, workers to take responsibility for reading and…

Focuses on a recent study conducted on the incidence of illiteracy in specific disadvantaged communities in Sri Lanka. Indicates that in the present era of technological advancement, lack of literacy will continue to affect the life-chances of people in these communities. Policy issues are also discussed. Contains 20 references and 11 tables. (AMA)

School boards must take the responsibility for school change, beginning with an attack on illiteracy. Reasonable standards for success in teaching reading, writing, and math must be established. (MLF)

Outlines the deep and complex challenge faced by Mexico in its quest for closer economic integration with so-called advanced economies. Discusses extensive poverty and illiteracy, and the systematic exclusion of many people from access to the very kinds of learning required by Mexico's economic project. Argues that extraordinary efforts and…

The experiences of men and women who participated in a Salvadoran adult literacy program belie the instrumentalist discourse of adult education, for they identified psychosocial benefits as the most meaningful aspects of the program. Attending literacy classes did not change their material situation as underemployed "campesinos/as," but…

This paper is a critique of the interaction between language planning and literacy in Kenya. It demonstrates that, contrary to the reasons given at independence for not favouring indigenous languages as languages of instruction or as languages for communication in public discourse, the very things that the language policy was meant to safeguard…

A project in British Columbia, Canada, explored a deeper understanding of what it would be like to become literate and probed how that experience related to the life of the educator. The phenomenological study began with a literature search. It focused on and explored the stories of three adult learners, using the journals of two and extrapolating…

Providing a general view of all of the currents of thought, research, and experiments in the field of literacy worldwide, this annotated bibliography presents abstracts of over 120 books, documents, and articles on the subject of literacy, post-literacy, and adult education. The main message and principal conclusions of each work are included in…