Literacy is a very fluid concept. If a definition for literacy is being able to read, then being able to read is a skill of many diverse talents. In the medieval world, literacy was founded on the art of grammar – not a learning of the rules of language, but on the art of speaking properly and of interpreting the poets (no wonder our continued notion that literacy and reading literature are inexplicably interlinked). Today, what constitutes literacy is something quite different, and in the midst of changing radically. Consider the following quip from the BBC Today website:

Once Biggles and Just William captured the imagination of teenage boys – now computer games and texting seem to occupy their time.

As Ian Rankin notes on the programme, texting and following the prompts of computer games “is a form of literacy among teenage boys.” Anyone familiar or not with the language of texting knows that that reading a txt msg is an act of interpretation. Texting foregrounds the fact that reading itself is an act of interpretation, a fact sometimes lost on those of us who are “literate” in the intricacies of standardised phonetics. Interpretation is therefore a core element of literacy, and the level of interpretation closely related to the level of literacy.

Considering how thorny the issue of textual interpretation is in any field of knowledge, a low level of literacy premises a dangerous thing. While for many young boys leaving the UK education system with a reading age of eleven, the dangerous thing looming is poverty, a classified internal MI5 report on radicalisation in the UK finds another dangerous low level of literacy at work in the UK:

Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices.

It is notable that the MI5 use of the terms radicalisation and violent extremism refer to (Islamic) terrorism. But these terms could equally apply to boys leaving school with a reading age of eleven and finding there way into gangland lives. In both cases, it is the inability to interpret with a level of sophistication the texts by which they are able to interpret the world that creates the dangerous circumstance for themselves and their communities.