Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator who taught poor people to read and got exiled for it. Which is not surprising perse with the similar amount of events like that across the globe but this also tells you everything you need to know about the relationship between literacy and power (the ruling class has never liked people who can read and think).
Freire’s method was simple, do not treat students as empty buckets waiting to be filled with knowledge (he called this the “banking model” of education, and it is still what most schools do). Treat them as co-creators of knowledge. Teach them to read the world before you teach them to read the word.
He ran literacy campaigns in Brazil in the 1960s. He taught hundreds of thousands of peasants to read in weeks. Not by drilling ABCs, but by using words that mattered to their actual lives: water, land, boss, hunger, vote. Once you can read those words, you start asking why your water is dirty, why the boss owns the land, why you are hungry. The Brazilian military government saw where this was heading and exiled him in 1964 (smart move for them, tragic for everyone else).
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) is the most assigned book in American education schools and also the most ignored. Everyone quotes the first chapter.( I do too, kind of sort off …) Nobody actually does what it says. Because implementing Freire means giving up control, and teachers (and governments) do not like giving up control.(remember that meme “ don’t steal the government hates competition, got reminded of that one)
Starter book: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968).