Describes a South African project to develop an on-the-job training program combining education with productive, income-generating work in inner-city Johannesburg. Discusses partnerships, recruitment, and evaluation. (SK)

The authors describe Workbase, a British trade union organization that trains manual workers in communication skills, and explain the Workbase approach. This approach features flexibility and allowances for individual needs. (CH)

The author discusses the evolution of curriculum thinking from a narrow and behaviorist stance through to the present, where it is argued that considerations need to be based on shared understandings among all participants in a learning exchange. (Author/CH)

This report describes certain assumptions and tentative conclusions made by an Advisory Group of the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit (ALBSU) about work with the mentally handicapped from a nonspecialist perspective. With the basic education organizer in mind, the report addresses six major issues. A definition of the term mentally handicapped…

International Literacy Year, 1990, is intended to alert readers to the persistence of illiteracy. The challenge of illiteracy can only be met by concerted action on the part of all those concerned, acting together to conquer ignorance, eliminate poverty, promote peace, and assert the solidarity and interdependence of nations and peoples. As early…

Africa was unable to fulfill the objectives of making compulsory primary education available for all by 1980. As a result, the Harare (Zimbabwe) Declaration, signed by ministers of the United Nations members states of Africa in 1982, aimed to make primary schooling universal and to promote literacy among young people and adults on a massive scale.…

There are 900 million illiterate people in the world. Because of reflective insights and creative research during the last two decades, the literacy process is no longer conceived as a training process that concentrates exclusively on implanting specific mechanical skills. It is now recognized as an educational process, as an unfolding of human…

The gap in literacy rates between women and men continually broadens. In 1985, 63 percent of the world's approximately 1,000 million illiterate people were female, compared to 60 percent in 1970 and 58 percent in 1960. A process of social change, including community involvement and mobilization in favor of women's literacy, is needed to sustain…

When considering illiteracy in industrialized countries, one should consider the following: (1) schools historically were not set up to transmit literacy skills, as evidenced by the fact that the geography and chronology of literacy are much less linked to the establishment of formal schooling than to the history of social development; (2) schools…

The eradication of illiteracy in Russia has a lengthy history but a systematic literacy campaign began only after the revolution of 1917. The literacy problem was considered to be solved two decades later. Success was due to the following factors: (1) illiterate people were eager to learn; (2) the eradication of illiteracy and preparation for…

Latin America continues to have about 44 million illiterate people. Since the 1950s, education went from being a requisite of national identity to being recognized as an instrument of power, an important factor of development, the dispenser of human resources, and the guarantor of the continuity of the entire local scene. Important post-World War…

The overall illiteracy rate has been in sharp decline in Latin America, falling from 27.3 percent in 1970 to 17.3 percent in 1985. However, the total number of illiterate people has remained practically stable over the same period. Overall literacy rates tend to increase with the rurality of the population, the proportion of women, the absence of…

Midway through this century, Braille was placed within the reach of blind persons throughout the world when Unesco began the major task of adapting Braille to accommodate all languages and dialects. Invented in France between 1825 and 1829, Braille's role as the key to the cultural emancipation of the blind had previously been limited to countries…

The national language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, although there are hundreds of languages and dialects spoken by different ethnic groups. In 1977, more than 26 million Indonesians were illiterate in their national language. Present efforts to eradicate illiteracy include construction of 10,000-15,000 primary schools annually since 1973 and…

Nomadism is a worldwide phenomenon and its practitioners fall into three categories: (1) hunter/food gatherers, such as the Hadzabe in the United Republic of Tanzania; (2) itinerant workers, including the gypsies in North America; and (3) pastoralists, such as the Masai and Shuaw Arabs in Africa, the Sami in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, and the…