Dialectical Notebook: Brandt

Before You Read:

In my community, reading is very important. My school hosts book fairs, celebrates national reading week, and has writing contests, all in order to encourage kids to become interested in reading and writing. People usually define someone as a good reader and writer if they speak with a large vocabulary, read without stumbling over words and if they are just known for being naturally smart.

Summary:

In her article"Sponsors for Literacy", Deborah Brandt describes how many printing press workers were put out of work when steam press printing started to develop. She then goes on to talk of how people are taught by their sponsors how to read. Brandt also explains to the audience that much of how a person learns depends on their economic, cultural, political, social background. She also gives examples of people she has interviewed through 1900-1980's. Brandt goes on to mention how the process in which the people learned from their sponsor changed, and that literacy sponsors are vital to economic and political gain.

Synthesis:

While reading "Sponsors of Literacy", I compared the article to Allen. This is because Allen talks a lot about why people decide to write and why it is important and this article talks about why people decide to read and why it is important to read. Another author that came to mind after reading this article was Berger. Berger and Brandt both discuss how the way we view things and how we learn has changed throughout time. Brandt discusses the changes in the way we learn from sponsors and Berger talks about how history has changed how we think and teach the way we see writing.

Response	Quotation
When I first read this quote, I thought about the first time when I read through a complete story with my mom on the kitchen table. Thinking back, I now realize why she wanted me to read. She wanted me to become an educated and informed citizen and to one day be able to have a job of my own. This quote seemed to sum up this whole article for me.	“Literacy sponsors are not always (or even, perhaps, usually) altruistic—they have self-interested reasons for sponsoring literacy, and very often only some kinds of literacy will support their goals” (Brandt 331).
This quote seemed to explain why we are supposed to read and why sponsors want us to read. If we could not read, there would be no way to communicate or function and the world would inevitably collapse. Literacy and language are the foundation of the world.	“Literacy looms as one of the great engines of profit and competitive advantage in the 20th century: a lubricant for consumer desire; a means for integrating corporate markets; a foundation for the deployment of weapons and other technology; a raw material in the mass production of information” (Brandt 333).
Brandt gave a perfect example of how many times, literacy is gained through the exploitation of something as innocent as a little league baseball team. I found this quote funny because this exact instance happened to me when I played baseball. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood what the whole purpose of a company’s name on a little league jersey. It also wasn’t until I was older that I realized I played on a team sponsored by a funeral home.	“Like Little Leaguers who wear the logo of a local insurance agency on their uniforms, not out of a concern for enhancing the agency’s image but as a means for getting to play ball, people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others’ causes” (Brandt 335).
This shows how everyone is unique in which they learned and apply literacy. Often times, the way in which you are taught or the atmosphere in which you learn in reflects on how you will perceive it for the rest of your life. For this reason, Brandt give many examples in her article of how literacy and the environment in which the sponsors teach it, change the way the student applies it.	“Everybody’s literacy practices are operating in differential economies, which supply different access routes, different degrees of sponsoring power, and different scales of monetary worth to the practices in use” (Brandt 339)
Brandt sums up her article by saying how important it is for us to learn how to become literate and how literacy needs to be taught in order for us to be able to communicate and appreciate the world.	“In bringing attention to the economies of literacy learning I am not advocating that we prepare students more efficiently for the job markets they must enter. What I have tried to suggest is that as we assist and study individuals in pursuit of literacy, we also recognize how literacy is in the pursuit of them” (Brandt 348).

Meta Moment:

I feel that Brandt touches on the first, second and fifth goal for the chapter. I feel that Brandt really helped me reflect on how important literacy is and made me think back to how I learned it.

Thoughts:

I feel that Brandt touched on a very important topic to all of us. However, I feel that the article was very lengthy and there were many unnecessary examples.