At any rate, although the theoretical base of our discussion may thus be admitted to be a little threadbare and under-examined there is useful theory to be found and there are helpful thoughts to be had, nonetheless, here and there.

First, let us rather briefly consider what we mean, or perhaps more what we intend, by ‘literacy’. What kind of thing is literacy? Is it a neutral thing, no more meaningful in itself than a blank computer screen is? Is it a non-partisan thing which will leave a participant essentially unchanged? The redoubtable Hannah More did not think so. ‘I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make them fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.’ (Hannon 1995 p. 14) This remarkable idea is brought bang up to date in Levine (1986 p. 146) when he asks whether literacy is ‘… a desirable attribute in unskilled employees because it is a convenient indicator for employers of 'trainability' on the one hand and a 'schooled' (that is compliant) workforce on the other.’

Street (1993) asks whether literacy is ‘ideological’ or ‘autonomous’ (by which he means a ‘neutral technology’)? He says, to the contrary, that ‘… literacy is saturated with ideology.’ (1993 p.9) and that it is ‘… a social process in which particular socially constructed technologies are used within particular institutional frameworks for specific social purposes.’ (1984 p. 97). In Maybin (1994 p. 139) he concludes that an ‘ideological model’ of literacy ‘… recognises a multiplicity of literacies; that the meaning and uses of literacy practices are always associated with relations of power and ideology, they are not simply neutral technologies.’

Literacy is also always for something - we do not (except perhaps in the most meaningless educational settings) ‘do’ literacy in a vacuum, or for its own sake. In real life we always do something with literacy, the something, rather than the literacy, being the point. If students do not, at least partly as a result of our efforts, use literacy increasingly autonomously, vigorously and for their own purposes then we have left them with their ‘…intelligence but little developed’ and with ‘… words without ideas, and ideas without words’ (Vincent 1989 p. 92). Literacy is a personally empowering tool or it is nothing at all.

Next let us be as clear as possible about our own positions. Let us hope that nobody in ABE today regards it as ‘… fieldwork among primitives’ who constitute ‘… an imaginary tribe, hopelessly deprived and impossibly different from the literate’ (Levine 1986 p. 97). Let us further hope that none of us would remark, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1991 that the inner city riots that year were due to ‘… a matrix of illiteracy, delinquency and other wrongdoing’ or, as a ‘leading British politician’ said, ‘there was not a high level of literacy so people were excitable and easily led astray.’ (both quoted in Barton 1994 p. 14).

The most powerful antidote to the emotional ravages of prolonged negative educational experiences is early and ongoing positive ones, in a word success. Technical competence and confident autonomy. Dealing with negative affect as effectively as is possible in the circumstances, insofar as it threatens the learning of literacy, may very well be a part of our strategy but the learning of literacy skills is what we are really about. Failure, and the expectation of failure, must be replaced by success and the expectation of success. Confidence, the big one, will inevitably follow. (Charnley & Jones 1981, Du Vivier 1992)

Notwithstanding the above sentiments, the technical transfer of skills is not quite all we ought to be about. Margaret Donaldson (1987 p.97) says that

Once the teaching of reading is begun, the manner in which it is taught may be of far- reaching significance … the process of becoming literate can have marked - but commonly unsuspected - effects on the growth of the mind. It can do this by encouraging highly important forms of intellectual self-awareness and self-control.

And returning briefly to the debate on the wider meaning, to an individual, of literacy, we begin to see that even the process of its acquisition is shot through with important ideological implications. Learning literacy can, and therefore should, also be an inspiring mix of expanding the mind while simultaneously bringing it under personal direction. Our responsibilities may be great, but so are our opportunities.