Reading Beyond the Alphabet

A serious shortcoming of the national literacy movement is the lack of progress in literacy beyond emergent skills. This book focuses on "lifelong literacy", that is retention and improvement of basic reading, writing and numerical skills throughout the lifespan. While the National Literacy movement has successfully generated scores of "literate" people with neo - or semi-literacy skills, it has not been able to adequately address the persistent problems of low skill levels and a steady erosion in literacy skills. There is therefore, an urgent need to implement creative and innovative ways that have shown promise in pilot projects and offer learning for other practitioners, planners and policy makers.The contributions to this book are united in accepting that literacy is much more than just the 'three Rs'. Also, the relationship between literacy and personal and social empowerment has been emphasized. The innovations discussed in this book are united by the links that literacy forges between skill development and people's everyday lives. The innovations are discussed under the following categories: empowerment; promotion of reading culture; reading matter for early literacies and; publishing for rural areas; libraries and literacy; and, media and literacy.