Response to "Sponsors of Literacy"

            In her article “Sponsors of Literacy”, Deborah Brandt argues that literacy is inherited; not learned by people on their own. She claims that sponsors are necessary for learning and shaping ones literacy and the way the literacy is developed is based on the sponsor’s own literacy.

            This article relates to the article Greene’s “Argument as Conversation” in that the sponsor idea is similar to the idea that arguments are ever present and ongoing. Brandt saying that literacy of a sponsor is spread to the sponsored very well illustrates this point.

            Overall I thought this article was interesting but it also seemed like an obvious concept worded in a way so that it sounds special. To me it is obvious that Brandt’s sponsors shape the sponsored’s literacy. It just like being raised by your parents, you are bound to end up kind of like them. The sponsor idea seems the same to me.

Before You Read

            The reasons usually given for being a good reader/writer are that you need to be able to read to get a job. People take your writing and reading skills into consideration when it comes to jobs. Whether or not you are fit for the job not being able to read/write is a major turn off for employers. Most people think that people with bad writing/reading skills are uneducated and in general unintelligent although this is not always true. The people who put these reasons in place are usually higher educated people who read and write well and are biased in the situation.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

2.)

            I have had literacy sponsors who have withheld or at least tried to withhold certain kind of literacies from us as students. Certain, usually inappropriate books were banned from our school. The administration would not assign, lets say, 50 Shades of Grey for reading. We always had a reading list in school, from “To Kill a Mockingbird”, to “The Great Gatsby”. Me, not really being that big of a reader, was introduced by some books not mentioned in schools by my brother and parents, although it wasn’t often I would read one of those books.