The Sponsors Of Literacy Summary

In the reading, The Sponsors of Literacy by Deborah Brandt she talks about how literacy was received and withheld from people because of socio-economic classes. Brandt claims that there is a connection between literacy and economic development or as she refers to them as sponsors of literacy which can either help, sensor, or withhold all together the ability to be literate. Literacy provides an upward mobility or at least the means to move upward in social classes and without literacy there is no means to gain an edge. In her interviews of Raymond Branch (European American) and Dora Lopez (Mexican American) Brandt found that even though both were born in the same year and had moved to the same town when they were younger Branch was introduced
This interview, focuses on Dwayne Lowery who started off as a line worker in a factory and became a field representive in a major employee union. During his transition, he had to learn new ways of being literate especially since in his younger years as a high school student he didn’t read as much because of parental influence on what was available to read in the house. However, when Lowery got a grant to take time off work and travel to Washington D.C. to attend a union training activity. Once he came back he was offered a full-time job at the union and eventually noticed that the people who he was negotiating with often lacked the mannerisms and academic level. Lowery can accredit his new lease on the literacy world to the “educational networks the unions established during the first half of the twentieth century”. Now sponsors in literacy whether it’s a person, a thing, or an event all impact in two different but powerful ways. They either “help to organize and administer stratified systems if opportunity and access” or they “hinder literacy activity, often forcing the formation of new literacy requirements while decertifying older