skyofblue, you seem to be saying that literacy inevitably involves a violent transition. I don't buy that. The act of colonization is violent, without exception, even when there is no military conquest, and literacy may go hand in hand with colonization, sometimes.

But, if literacy has always been a violent transition, ought we not ask whether it is worth the pain?

My question about Indigenous people learning to ride horses was serious. They saw a need, and they learned. Why can that not be the way cultures encounter one another?