Brandt's Arguments Of Literacy

1. In this essay, Brandt explained the relationship between literacy for individuals and economics of literacy, which was called “sponsors of literacy” in this article. At the same time, Brandt explained the sponsors as different forms in the text “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach or model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy, and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt 2). Those people who sponsored gained the benefits from literacy, and they also got benefits from the relationship. Meanwhile, a literacy sponsor also has some characteristics such as compliance, loyalty, powerful, and more knowledgeable. “Sponsors are delivery systems for the economies of literacy, how these forces present
Brandt argued that sponsors always have something to gain because they wanted to get success. As Brandt said: “sponsors lend their resources or credibility to the sponsored but also stand to gain benefits from their success, whether by direct repayment or, indirectly, by credit of association” (Brandt 4). Generally, this kind of benefits is not money, but they wanted to get social credibility or opportunity. Sponsors gained from sponsorship because it is a reciprocal relationship, which means that if one side get successful, the other side also can get benefits. Sponsors had the power to distort the power fluctuation, so they used the prerogative to sponsor literacy because they wanted to get benefits or get development for themselves, which was called misappropriation. "Misappropriation" is always possible at the scene of literacy transmission, a reason for the tight ideological control that usually surrounds reading and writing instruction” (Brandt 16). For example, Protestant schools offered free reading classes for children, but their parents asked more and more demand from church. They wanted to provided free instruction because it was their evangelical duty, but in fact they did not want to do