The situation we have found ourselves in after 1989 has all the signs of a literacy crisis. As academic teachers, we find the academic literacy skills of many our students below our expectations. Yet, we must not exclude such students, but admit them and find new ways to educate them, taking example from American institutions of higher education which faced a similar literacy crisis in the 1970s. We must provide literacy instruction for those students who lack the traditionally expected literacy skills. My point is that tertiary-level students in Poland should be offered such assistance as long as our goal is university education not only for the elite. For our democracy to thrive, its foundations need to be broadened, which means increasing the number of citizens with critical thinking/literacy skills. By organizing conferences like this one, we can build bridgeheads from which to launch not just writing instruction but literacy instruction in our tertiary education. The key point is understanding what is involved in the transition from being a teacher of the standard academic language to being a teacher of literacy
