Traditionally literacy and numeracy have been represented as distinct and unrelated skills, reproduced in the practices of subject English and subject mathematics. The (re)current basics debate has popularised a dominant mechanistic view of both literacy and numeracy as predetermined discrete sets of basic skills. This paper argues that this bifurcation is false and misleading and, in so doing, challenges the structure of the school curriculum. A re-examination of the ‘technologies’ needed for learning, focusing in particular on the pervasiveness of mathematical ideas and representations in verbal texts, calls for a reconstruction of literacy, necessarily involving a plurality of competencies which encompass numeracy.
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