Ideas on Sponsors

As I grew up I was left to my own devices to choose who would be my sponsors of literacy.  With my parents, reading was never something they forced my siblings and me to do, so the love of reading was left for us to either cultivate on our own or not.  The decisions I made when choosing sponsors were solely made by me and therefore were a depiction of who I was.  This is one thing that I find fascinating with literacy; by examining what someone reads we can understand who they are and what they are all about.  There were a couple of ideas that stuck with me after reading both Brandt’s article on sponsors and the sample post by Mark.

When Brandt discussed sponsors she mentioned how a lot of the literacy that is made available to people is a product of negotiations by big powerful sponsors such as local, state, and federal governments for example (Brandt, 173).  She goes on to compare such negotiations as competitions; where the seizing and relinquishing of control, and what the definition of literacy will be is argued.  Also in these arenas it is decided which materials are to be made available to children to develop their literacies (i.e. in public schools).  The stance I take on this is I find it frightening to think that politicians could treat this as a game.  Large sponsors such as the government can do great harm to our literacy and we know of a good example by what the Nazi’s did through their book burning orders.  Thankfully we live in a country where books of all types remain available to us and so one is not hindered in their pursuit to develop their literacy.  Lastly is very important to remain aware of such negotiations of the powerful sponsors mentioned previously in order to maintain the freedom we are fortunate to have.

Another idea that I wanted to discuss comes from the sample post written by Mark.  In it he describes the idea that literacy is influenced by sponsors by a huge majority.  Specifically he stated that his literacy is 70% from sponsors and 30% from himself.  In such a case it is very important to have positive sponsors in order to develop good literacy skills.  If one was to be influenced by sponsors who were not positive then it is likely they would have poor literacy skills.  I however would not estimate numbers similar to those given by Mark.  External sponsorship in my case would rate much lower when compared to Mark’s.  Throughout my life I have read material which I find interesting and so “Jovan’s” percentage would be much higher compared to “Mark’s.”

So what does this post offer to the conversation on literacy?  It discusses how important sponsors can be in influencing literacy skills for the better or worse.  It talks about how literacy can be something a person develops on his or her own, and makes a point that literacy is a depiction of who you are.  Finally it is just another example of the complexity of literacy, which is something I once thought was simple.