Numeracy by any other name

The most fundamental issue is what do we mean by numeracy?
The word arrived on the scene not so long ago. It was a blend of number and literacy, much the same as motor and hotel became motel.

Before we consider its denotations (what it means), it may be wise to consider its connotations (the associations - positive or negative - that it carries.

I suggest that the connotations around numeracy are negative in that it evokes images of people who struggle to do basic arithmetic. Hence in the minds of many, numeracy it just that – arithmetic or what Lewis Carroll joking referred to as sedition, distraction, uglification and derision.

These negative connotations have not gone unnoticed and hence terms abound to escape the clutches of these negative traces. Matheracy, quantitative literacy, mathematical literacy are among the collection that have been coined.

O’Donoghue (2002) suggests that the word first appeared in the Crowther report of 1958. Numeracy was seen as a counterpart of literacy and the two have had conjoint-twin qualities ever since. For example, in the Skills Strategy discourse in New Zealand, numeracy is invariable attached to the hitching post of literacy. In this document, for example, of 44 mentions of numeracy, it is linked to literacy on every single occasion. In the earlier part of the first decade of the millennium the discourse was around Literacy Numeracy and Language referred to constantly as LNL. This has more recently become LLN (Literacy Language and Numeracy) Part of the reason for this has been a deep lying uncertainty (especially in New Zealand) of what numeracy really means.