Deborah Brandt: Sponsors of Literacy

Cushman, Ellen, Kintgen Eugene R., and Kroll Barry M.. Literacy-A Critical Sourcebook. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

In the world of literacy during the mid-nineteenth century, there came to life, the inventions of what is called steam press which reorganized the economy of print industry. This new form of mass printing brought an end to certain potentials in literacy as well as different kinds of literacy sponsorship. Throughout the fluctuation of time and generations, literacy has been traced as both rising and falling with each new wave of new technologies and ideas. There is an attempt to connect literacy as an individual development with literacy as an economic development. This approach is known as sponsors of literacy, with the idea that “sponsors” are tangible reminders “that literacy learning throughout history has always required permission, sanction, assistance, coercion, or at a minimum, contact with existing trade routes” (556). The concept of sponsors is used to clarify human relationships and ideological pressures that arise from the world of literacy. Literacy sponsors affect learning by organizing such systems that create opportunity and access, and they raise the bar of literacy, in struggles for competitive advantage which makes things more complimentary for the average individual.
Brandt uses two cases as examples of “literacy diversion.” Both of the narratives used are the stories of woman who both work “in subordinate positions as secretaries, in print-rich settings where better-educated male supervisors were teaching them to read and write in certain ways to perform their clerical duties” (568). Both of the women took what they were exposed to at work, and diversified it to help them with personal aspects of their life. Carol white took the idea of Anecdotes from her boss, and began creating her own colorful anecdotes to do door-to-door missionary work as a Jehovah’s Witness. Sarah Steele explained how she began to model her very own household finances after the attorneys of whom she worked with. The picture being painted is a pattern of how such opportunities for literacy acquisition open up a kind of clash between old and new sponsorships, and between “the lingering presence of literacy’s conservative history and its pressure for change” (570).
It seems after reading and understanding all the theories of literacy learning among all classes, that this idea of a “sponsor” plays an even larger role throughout the entire realm of literacy and language. The essay breaks this concept down, and explains the histories behind, and even gives specific examples, however, there seems to be a great deal that has not yet been mentioned. Such as the professional writer who is struggling to publish. How does a writer connect his/her private world with that of the public realm and create material that is both culturally and socially acceptable? There are hundreds of oppositions that must be adequately balanced in the world of literacy.