Twelve literacy goals include new attitude toward illiteracy; clarification of the concept; articulated child-adult strategy; attention to women's needs; updating the field; attention to pedagogy; a literate environment; quality; better data; attention to preschool literacy; literacy in the context of basic education; and international cooperation…

Population education programs are discussed relative to their impact on the social, cultural, and economic aspects of rapid population growth in the Asia Pacific region. (MCO)

Literacy among adults is advocated over universal primary education for children in developing societies. It is argued that the needs of children may best be served by increasing the informal education of adults. (JMF)

Reviewing educational and economic development efforts in Third World countries, the author concludes that vocational education is not the solution. A combination of nonformal education and technology training, with related literacy training, would be more effective in improving the quality of life. (SK)

This issue contains six articles, reports, and essays on planning and organizing nonformal education in the Asian-South Pacific area. A chapter reprinted from "Planning Nonformal Education" discusses the need for planning, past efforts, and five steps in a strategy suggested for planning locally-oriented and target-specific nonformal…

The Tanzanian government has made a major commitment to its National Literacy Programme as a strategy for national development. Goals of the program are the eradication of illiteracy, self-reliance in solving economic and social problems, and lifelong education. To deal effectively with the problem of learner motivation, the program links literacy…

During the past 20 years, international and bilateral assistance and funding agencies have become increasingly involved in evaluation activities in adult and nonformal education, especially in developing countries. The adult education field pioneered many approaches now advocated by specialists in program and project evaluation. Beginning in the…

Program design in nonformal education must take into account the cultural context in which it exists. In developing countries, it can neither reject all values of Western civilization (an impossible task), nor can it embrace Western values without regard to native cultures. The challenge, especially in literacy education, is to become culturally…

Using a descriptive personal narrative that marks ethnographic research, this book looks at literacy education in the Amish culture and considers the implications that this perspective reveals for mainstream education. Divided into 12 chapters, the book chronicles the life of an Amish family, the Fishers, focusing specifically on the attitudes…

The author discusses four major issues that confront the development of required basic education: the huge number of people needing education; the extreme poverty of these people; the increasing number of those in need of education; and lack of success in past attempts at combating ignorance and illiteracy. Also, a basic education delivery system…

Despite renewed attention to global poverty alleviation and sustainable development, most agencies and organizations donating large amounts of funds for the social sector have been decreasing their aid to literacy and nonformal (basic) education. In most cases, donors trying to combine support for basic education with poverty alleviation focus on…

This issue contains an editorial, "Empowering Women through Education" (Elizabeth Cruzada), and eight articles. "Women and Education" (Swarna Jayaweera) presents the status of women and girls' education in Asia vis-a-vis the goals set in the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies. "Education Reforms and Development of Chinese…

This report consists of papers given at, relating to, and produced by an international seminar that emphasized sharing practical experience and analyzing conditions necessary to set up and sustain a literacy program. The first section provides an "Introduction" (James Porter) and "Background to the Seminar" (Alan Rogers).…

This journal issue contains a series of papers concerned with exploring the role that adult education can play in developing communities. The first paper, "Major Challenges and Prospect of Adult Education for the Year 2000" (T. M. Sakya), provides an overview of adult education in Asia and the Pacific, emphasizing the vastness of the…

States that 99 percent of India's education budget is spent on formal education, which is not relevant to the needs of most Indians whose many languages and socioeconomic conditions require the traditional nonformal methods. Sharply criticizes others' emphasis on "elitist" imposition of uneconomic, one-language, formal educational…