The "Great Literacy Crisis" Symposium was convened at San Diego State University to ascertain what scholarship reveals about literacy and whether that scholarship influences the public's perception of the issue. Topics discussed included the following: the effect of the literacy crisis on the professions; the reality or illusory nature of the literacy crisis; the informative value of literacy test scores; and the effect of public ideas about literacy on the making of public policy. The following questions were also addressed: how literacy is defined; how the medium of literacy is defined; how literacy is measured; the effects of the literacy crisis on public policy; the effects of the crisis on people's lives; the involvement of the media with these issues; whether the crisis is real; if it is real, how it is to be handled; if it is not real, how this fact can be made known; and the role of humanists in this area. (The conference materials provided to participants are included in the appendix.) (DF)