{"id":8317,"date":"2017-03-04T09:05:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-04T09:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/my-11-year-old-son-taught-me-to-read\/"},"modified":"2017-03-04T09:05:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T09:05:44","slug":"my-11-year-old-son-taught-me-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/my-11-year-old-son-taught-me-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My 11-year-old son taught me to read’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DamiaoImage copyright Renata Moura
Image caption Damiao has taught his mother Sandra to read <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is only been a year since Sandra Maria de Andrade woke up to the wondrous world of reading.<\/p>\n

One afternoon after work, the garbage picker from north-eastern Brazil was lying exhausted in a hammock when her youngest son, Damiao Sandriano, invited her to take a look at a book.<\/p>\n

"Mum, would you like to read with me?" he asked. "It's a story, and it has pictures."<\/p>\n

At the time, the 42-year old was unable to write her own name.<\/p>\n

The closest to any formal education she had ever had was a class for young adults in which she was taught the letters of the alphabet.<\/p>\n

But she gave up, frustrated at not being able to get past the letter "e". She recalls the experience as "an agony".<\/p>\n

It was not until her son stepped in that she would try again.<\/p>\n

After a few informal lessons by Damiao at their home on a dirt road in Jardim Progresso, a poor community on the outskirts of the city of Natal, Sandra was able to trace an "e".<\/p>\n

Damiao helped his mother how to remember the letters better. The "R", he explained is "like a 'B' but open".<\/p>\n

Image copyright Agil Fotografia\/BBC Brasil
Image caption Damiao has helped his mother remember the letters of the alphabet and how to write them <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The letter "h" they simply nicknamed "the chair".<\/p>\n

Being able to write her own name was a watershed moment. Sandra was able to exchange her old ID which only bore her thumbprint for one with her signature. <\/p>\n

"I said: 'I will get myself a new ID to prove that now I know how to write my name'," Sandra told the BBC.<\/p>\n

"I went there and they asked me to sign on the paper. I thought: 'There, now I can do it, I don't need to feel ashamed anymore'."<\/p>\n

Sandra is one of the 760 millions adults worldwide who, according to Unesco figures, cannot read or write.<\/p>\n

In Brazil, there are 12.9 million, making up around 8.3% of the population over 15 years of age.<\/p>\n

Sandra was forced to work from an early age after her mother abandoned her when she was three.<\/p>\n

After she was taken in by her grandmother she was sent to live with a couple who did not allow her to go to school<\/p>\n

She worked on the couple's farm, crushing and grinding cassava for flour and cleaning their house.<\/p>\n

One day she was working in a banana field when a group of children walked past carrying notebooks.<\/p>\n

"I wanted to go where they were going," she recalls. "But they said: 'Go back to work!'. And I cried."<\/p>\n