Teaching people how to read doesn’t seem that difficult. Teaching children how to read should be easier with their minds that absorb so much. But how do you think it would be to teach illiterate children how to read a language that they don’t even know? That is what’s happening in many african languages. Children are brought up speaking their tribal language, and then when they become school age, rather than teaching them in their own language, they are sent to school where they are taught their different subjects (in Chad) in French.

What literacy projects are trying to do in recent years for the Dadjo children and other children of other languages in Chad is teach them how to read in their own language. Then they can move those skills much more easily into the trade language (French). Having already learned how to read, they will be able to not only learn French more quickly, but they will understand their subjects more easily as well.