Hamburg (Germany), July 15 - Ninety million people in the United States - 48 per cent of the adult population - need to increase their literacy skills to keep up with the demands of the modem world, said Ronald Pugsley, in an interview yesterday. Mr Pugsley heads the 14 member official US observer delegation to UNESCO's Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA).

"The issue of literacy is world-wide," said Mr Pugsley. But, he pointed out, in the United States and in the developed world, it is not illiteracy but low-level literacy, the limited ability to apply reading and numeracy skills, that is the problem.

In the United States, illiteracy affects some 7 per cent of the adult population; 20 to 21 per cent - some 40 million people - have trouble reading a bus schedule. But, in addition, "We believe that we have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 to 65 million adults who are at risk, inasmuch as their literacy skills are developed at a low level, and it's going to call for additional interventions to raise those skills for them to be fully productive, not only in the workplace but in the community and in the family," said Mr Pugsley.

As national director of the US Department of Education's Adult Education Literacy Program, Mr, Pugsley oversees a project that last year worked with nearly 4 million adult learners, to provide instruction in English as a second language and preparation for a secondary diploma. The nation-wide network of basic skills teaching with over 24,000 learning sites and a work force of more than 180,000 primarily part-time teachers is maintained with local, state and federal funds.

"Society is becoming more complex, and literacy is not a static concept, it's a moving target. The literacy demands on us are increasing all the time," Mr Pugsley noted. "We have an economic situation where people with a higher level of literacy are being displaced. Do they have the skills that give them mobility? They may be very skilled in a certain area, but are these skills portable? Generally not. Retraining has to take place."

"Literacy is becoming a very pervasive issue in everything we do," continued Pugsley. "There's the very clear economic linkage. There's also the inter-generational linkage, with the literacy level of the family absolutely critical to the long-term success of the young adult. In the US we are doing a great deal in work-place and family literacy," Dealing with the difference in the literacy level of minorities and the rest of the population is also a critical issue, he said.

At CONFINTEA, Mr Pugsley said he hoped to see "UNESCO expanding its understanding and work around literacy so that we're talking about both illiteracy and low-level literacy. I think UNESCO also needs to work with people with low-level literacy. That brings us all into partnership, because every nation is affected."

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