Before World War II, more than one million people took part in literacy education programs in Thailand. Because of the chaos caused by the war, however, and the subsequent disruptions of the country's life, fewer adults were taking part in literacy efforts. During the late 1960s and the 1970s, an increased emphasis was placed on literacy education for adults. A case study of the efforts of this program in Educational Region 8 in northern Thailand showed the activities and achievements of the program. (Region 8 was chosen for study because of its relatively high percentage of adult illiterates.) The Region 8 program concentrated on increasing literacy education in rural areas by establishing provincial lifelong education centers using mobile units, walking teachers, radio correspondence, and village level interest groups and reading centers. It also attempted to expand functional literacy offerings for non-native speakers, to stress the functional nature of literacy education, and especially to stress short-term vocational courses intertwined with literacy efforts. To this end, a practical curriculum was developed focusing on nutrition, family planning, village cooperation, and economic self-sufficiency. Functional literacy texts were created and revised periodically. Although several evaluation studies of the functional literacy program in Region 8 showed conflicting results, there did seem to be some improvement in participants' reading and mathematics skills, especially among those people whose villages had reading centers. (KC)