ABSTRACT
The account of Brazilian Literacy Movement (MOBRAL) in Brazil, by Lovisolo, is the first of several analyses of national literacy. Measures of cost, impact and success are thorough and detailed, as regards the literacy objectives of the large-scale national governmental programme spanning a ten year period in a context of national census statistics, economic growth and national development. Literacy teaching and adult education, it is shown, cannot be understood in a vacuum. Success even in literacy terms requires a coordinated, multi-pronged approach. Literacy programmes cannot produce jobs; becoming literate is no guarantee of improved conditions for the individual. The Brazilian economy of the seventies could not absorb the neo-literates. On the other hand one might ask whether, like it or not and in the light of recent liberalisation in Brazil, a trickle-down model of development may not be partly validated by this Brazilian experience.
