Short tangencial bit of history:

A Brazilian called Paulo Freire came up with a method which consists of coming up with a short list of words related to the pupils' day-to-day. These words have to cover all the phonemes in Portuguese and the pupils would discuss them.

He managed to teach adults to read very quickly. But, as talking about your reality was integral to the method, he got into trouble with the then military regime.

They threw him into a military jail.

One fine day an officer asked for his help because many of the recruits couldn't read.

But that was precisely why he had been thrown into jail!