A more literate society cannot be created in the United States or elsewhere without a more comprehensive conceptual framework. This framework attempts explicitly to link children's acquisition of literacy with that of adults and assumes there is no single normative theory to literacy development. In a life-span and life-space approach, literacy may be understood as a cluster of skills and practices that begins with early oral language skills in all children and proceeds to be acquired and retained in varying degrees across the lifetime of the individual. Individuals who never come into contact with written materials will not learn to read, but many who live in contact with the literate world may learn only a few of the practices thought of as literacy. Some policy implications of a life-span and life-space approach are as follows: (1) connect child and adult literacy theory with action; (2) build on local/cultural strengths; and (3) do not assume that literacy is a vaccine. (Contains 28 references.) (YLB)