In spite of its status as the capital of an industrialised country and its role as an international centre, Brussels has, for several years, been facing persistent difficulties with respect to the social and occupational integration of considerable segment of its population. Economic restructuring the use of workers from outside the city, and the low level of education of more than one third of its population have led to considerable long-term unemployment, particularly among in the young.

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International Literacy Year, 1990, marked for many not a renewal of the mandate in the ‘’fight against illiteracy’’, but rather the end of an affair. At least the end of an uncomplicated affair. It was during this time that the simplified phenomenon, known as ‘functional illiteracy’’, was formulated, and during which all kinds of offensive, healing or preventive measures were taken.

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Over the past decades, community movements in Europe and North American have pioneered literacy activities. Their current role varies from one country to another. Public authority bodies have increasingly assumed responsibility for basic education programmes for adults; as a result, community movements are now taking up different, complementary and sometimes exclusive missions.

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The main purpose of this chapter is to describe some factors contributing to an explanationof recent growth in adult education and training in the European region. A second aim is to spell out the ramifacations of problems and policy questions arising from this expansion. Here, the focus will be on the dilemmas of development faced at present by those taking part in decisions about the future of adult education in the region. Formulated as challenges confronting European adult education, these dilemmas are summarized toward the end of the chapter. The central theme running through these...

In December 1986 a workshop on the prevention of functional illiteracy and the integration of youth into the work force was held at the UNESCO institute for Education by European specialists in this field. The chief objective of the worshop was to develop international cooperation in the area of research on both professional practices and players involved.

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In the past twenty years questions of adult literacy have come to the forefront in many industrialised countries. Firstly, in many of these countries it has been found that a significant proportion of children are leaving school without adequate levels of reading and writing. Secondly, rapid social and technological change means that literacy demands are changing. During this period, researchers have also expressed renewed interest in literacy. There have been major developments in literacy research in many disciplines, to the extent that the shape of the field has changed dramatically....

UNESCO has decided to make education a fundamental human right. Nonetheless, there are still more than 900 million illiterate people worldwide, and a far greater number than this has yet to achieve an adequate level of basic education. To draw attention to this serious matter, 1990 was designated International Literacy Year. A major programme was established with the goal of achieving education for all by the year 2000. Many countries have launched large-scale programmes to eradicate illiteracy or laid out plans to do so. These programmes must include post-literacy and continuing education...

The present bibliography has been prepared by the Unesco Institute for Education (UIE) for the Sixth European Conference of Directors of Educational Research Institutions (Bled, Yugoslavia, 9-12 October, 1990), and focuses on research in adult literacy and basic education. This bibliography is a general documentary introduction to literacy in industrialized countries. It is not a precise instrument for specialized research.

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Since the British initiatives of the early seventies in recognizing the problem and its magnitude, functional literacy among the adult population has now become a major policy concern for many industrial countries. Literacy, as clearly underlined in the conclusions of the World Conference on Education for All is a world issue concerning each and every country, in the North as well as in the South.

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In this monograph a picture will be given of the development of Adult Basic Education in the Netherlands. ABE is a relatively new provision in Dutch adult education. It is grounded in the experiences gained from four projects that developed aspects of education in the seventies and the early eighties for adults with little schooling. The ABE provision which is, so to speak, the crystallisation of these project experiences is intended as an instrument to improve the social participation of adults with little schooling. One could say that this is the yardstick by which to measure its...