Despite the urgency felt about the need for eradicating illiteracy, both in developing and industrialised nations, little effort has been made towards understanding the nature and constraints of access faced by the minorities throughout the world; or of the speafic challenges that they face in acquiring literacy and developing literary abilities over time. The paper discusses some of the global issues of minority access to literacy and their manifestations within the United States, focusing on four categories of interest: (1) the relationship between literacy, minority access and human rights, (2) minorities and'standard forms of literacy expression, (3) minority access as a national dilemma in the United States, and (4) changing views of literacy access and develop ment. The implications for research, practice and policy are also spelled out.
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