If you educate a man you educate one person; If you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. Proverb "Educate a boy and you educate one person. Educate a girl and you educate a nation." A. Ibn Badis, an Algerian Muslim Reformist "If you educate a man you educate one person; If you educate a woman you educate and liberate a nation." Al-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz (Malcolm X) "If you educate a man, you educate one person. If you educate a woman, you teach an entire generation." Delegate, UN

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... ent Forum on Indigenous Issues Abstract Although literacy programs in North African countries vary in method, management approach, and in content emphasis, their discourse is strikingly similar: It focuses too often on learners' deficits and considers the condition of these "illiterate" subjects, i.e. persons lacking the 3Rs, as a "disease" against which a war of eradication must be waged. For Government Agencies, NGOs, and other institutional actors in literacy projects, such lexicon of combat, in which the lack of print culture becomes a physiological scourge, becomes a convenient framework to develop measurable outcomes for the literacy e¤orts. However, as will be demonstrated in this paper, there is a serious risk that their reductive discourse will result in their losing a real opportunity to significantly enhance learning outcomes if the