ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, I quoted George W. Bush on the importance of literacy: ‘You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test’ (Times Educational Supplement, 24 August 2001). As I suggested in Chapter 3, there are signifi cant points of correspondence between George W. Bush’s model – that learning to read is important because one is thereby enabled to pass a literacy test – and the neck-verse literacy that saved the lives of (some) functionally literate felons. Neckverse literacy shares three key features with George W. Bush’s literacy: it assumes a simple binary opposition of literacy and illiteracy (pass/fail or hanged/not hanged); it can easily be tested; it is the property of the individual (Bush’s ‘he or her’). Modern literacy tests, of course, are more sophisticated, the assessments more fi nely calibrated, the outcomes more nuanced; but the underlying assumptions about literacy have more in common with the neck verse than might be imagined.
