Family of Unprivilege and Struggle to Power

I am gonna take it back a few years and reminisce about growing up in the 90’s.

I hope I am not dating myself, but I remember the days when all I did was watch cartoons and drooled over the original red Power Ranger who I clamed as my boyfriend. Back in the day between cartoons and commercials I have always heard “knowledge is power.” Back then I never know what that really meant until I understood what knowledge was but, where does this power come from? Reflecting on Brandt’s spiel about sponsors of power, I come to understand that power can come from me reading, which is then a reflection on knowledge.

From the beginning I was shaped into becoming a child who should go to school and get the types of grades that would make parents proud. I hate to say it, but I wasn’t that kid. As an adult I am learning that thought out my whole life I was ultimately groomed by the world and the government to learn what they (the invisible people with power I have never met) shape my knowledge. I understand as I child I would have never known what would be good for myself, but sadly to say my mother’s choices to help shape my knowledge/future was trumped by the government’s image of what a literate and successful child/person looks like.  “This is what is so politically disenfranchising about present-day illiteracy: one’s world is almost totally organized by a system in which one can have no real say “(Brandt 652). The “say’s” we are told we have are organized in a fashion that appears to be freedom of choice by individuals.

As a kid I knew I didn’t have a say in my mama’s house because she made me read these, now ridiculous Pat the dog, Peter and Jan books. You may laugh but gosh it was like a whole collection of those things color coded blue, green and orange with subcategories organized by numbers and letters. Books were always in my room and were always given to me. I remember a time when I hated to read because it had always been forced with books I sometimes didn’t want to read. But in high school that spark happened again.

As for my family illiteracy I don’t know where it began. My grandmother had basic reading skills, just enough to get by. Her job didn’t require much reading at all but I question, where did my aunt and mom get their reading and learning bug from? It’s strange to say but I think it all goes back to that “knowledge is power” message. My folks were not surrounded by educated people other than school teachers and from what I heard their only way out was through school which always promoted reading and scholar excellence. My mom told me she was accepted to a university in Illinois but I grandmother would not let her go. I questioned why would a mother would not want her child to be smart, educated, a woman with status. The answer was simple. My grandmother didn’t understand what college was and its importance. My mother was never pushed as hard as I was academically by her mother because my grandmother didn’t know how to push other than sending her kids off to school and making sure they did their best.