The previous chapter considered the elements of a strategy designed to improve literacy skills in North America. The case was made that higher required levels of literacy ability have implications for pre-school children as a formative skill for initial cognitive development. In schools literacy is a foundation skill upon which the acquisition of other knowledge and skills depends. The IALS has demonstrated amply that literacy is an essential work skill and beyond that it is a life skill that enables participation socially, culturally and politically. Finally, literacy is a key skill that enables seniors to live with dignity and confidence while social and economic changes alter familiar landscapes surrounding them.
The challenge issued to policy makers is to ensure that all citizens have access to literacy- and learning-rich environments in their homes, their communities and at work. This implies a commitment to literacy and learning in every aspect of daily life—'lifewide' as well as 'life-long'. Meeting this challenge requires abandoning the conventional paradigm that equates learning with schooling and replacing it with one that seeks a convergence of schools, homes, workplaces and communities into mutually reinforcing environments that encourage learning in many settings, for all ages, both formally and informally, and throughout life.
Fortunately, many domains of public policy are literacy sensitive. Sometimes indirectly rather than by design, policy can influence literacy acquisition, maintenance and use. Examples are policies that impact on library use, or even tax policies that can promote or inhibit public purchases of reading material. While literacy can be affected, directly or indirectly, by decisions taken on other policy fronts, it also is a factor important to the development of good policy in other domains. For example, literacy has been shown to be an important factor in the economic success of individuals and, in the aggregate, of whole economies. It follows, then, that literacy has implications for human resources, labor market, employment, and education and training policies.
On the social side of the ledger, literacy also has sweeping policy implications. Literacy is, for example, a factor in crime prevention and the administration of justice. There also is evidence showing that literacy has health policy implications. A limited ability to read, for example, will circumscribe access to nutritional and other health-related information.
The crucial point is that literacy affects policy and also is affected by it across a range of domains. In addition to issues concerning justice or health, literacy is an element in the framing of policies related to youth and seniors. Language, culture or citizenship policies also have literacy dimensions, as do social welfare policies, rural development policies, and policies related to various disadvantaged groups. It is, in fact, quite difficult to imagine an area of public policy that lacks a literacy dimension.