This paper argues for an integrated approach to adult education which would require an examination of basic human needs and national development planning each in its own terms. The paper's argument is centered on liberation and participation as ends, not means: Education, development, and planning must be seen and acted on as an integrated whole.…

The next wave of educational reform proposals is targeting the persistent dropout rate and the declining level of adult literacy. Evidence of an intergenerational link between these two issues suggests the need for new models of education, holistic analysis of educational disadvantage, and family and community interventions. (SK)

Discusses the issues of a curriculum of literacy in Canada. Describes the influence of educational trends in the United States and Great Britain. Suggests that the literacy problem is not such a crisis as the media makes it appear. Urges a union of educational and scholarly concerns, building on lessons of history and theory. (DK)

Illiterate immigrant adults (n=14) in France were assessed on ability to master three metalinguistic tasks: judgment of phonological length of words, initial consonant deletion, and lexical segmentation of sentences. Performance of illiterates and partial illiterates dramatically improved after training which involved corrective feedback and…

Discussion of synthesized speech and voice recognition focuses on a forum that addressed the potential for speech technologies in libraries. Topics discussed by three contributors include possible library applications in technical processing, book receipt, circulation control, and database access; use by disabled and illiterate users; and problems…

When children of literate elite need help, their parents can furnish what school has missed. When children of print poor need help, they have nowhere to turn. To break the illiteracy cycle, schools must help parents understand how to help their children at home. Sidebars describe the Megaskills program and show how teachers can foster family…

Argues that the "failure" of traditional writing instruction is actually its success, protecting the elite and maintaining inequality, which requires mass failure and illiteracy to preserve the unequal hierarchies now in place. Argues that bogus testing should be eliminated, basic writing mainstreamed into an expanded and untracked form of…

Researchers find that two factors hinder children's literacy development: parents and other adults who limit children's experiences and their use of language; and the Federal government's goal that children must come to school "ready to learn." Schools might interpret this push for readiness as a license to teach all children the same…

A consideration of the Arab world illustrates the fact that there can be riches and "growth" with slow or stagnating human development and with significant levels of poverty, and that growth might "perhaps" be an engine of human development if there is "good governance." Good governance refers to the existence of…

This article challenges some accepted binaries in literacy and technology research in order to explore the complex, multifaceted nature of literacy practices using a hypertextual multimedia study environment (MSE). Binary distinctions like literacy/illiteracy or online/offline are "wrinkled" or complicated by introducing findings from an…

National level data were analyzed to establish the nature of association and the magnitude of contribution of education exposure to variance on measures nutritional well-being across Africa. Height and weight dependent anthropometric measures were used to assess nutritional well-being. Literacy (illiteracy) rates were the measures of educational…

The Even Start Family Literacy Program was established in 1989 to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy for low-income families, by improving the literacy skills of parents and their young children. Even Start projects offer family literacy services, defined as four integrated instructional components: (1) Childhood Education (ECE); (2)…

In an effort to respond to Vermont teachers' and tutors' need for learning disabilities instruction, the Stern Center for Language and Learning developed a model program to teach adults with learning disabilities. The program included 12 hours of instruction presented over Vermont interactive television to over 100 adult basic education (ABE)…

On June 1, 1992, the Ministry of Education in Honduras started a pilot project using Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) to deliver adult basic education. This case study examines the IRI project, or the "Basic Education for All" project, which is predicated on the conviction that educational investment in basic education for young…

Whole language has the potential to boost literacy in Third World countries like Nigeria, where the language curriculum has not been given the political and economic support it deserves. The economic depression in the Third World may not allow for a robust development of whole language. One effect of the decay of education in the Third World is…