Month: March 2019

An example of the withholding of literacy by sponsors in the lives of students is in A Child’s Education, where author MaryKate Fitzgerald explores where literacy is indicative of success. In this, the narrator discusses a situation in which a teacher withholds literacy by segregating them from the other students, in class and out, and suggesting a tutor for them; Fitzgerald writes, “The thought of this irked me, making me think I was less intelligent than all the other kids who didn’t need to spend time with a tutor.” This gets right into what I find to be the most important aspect of the story: How this withholding of literacy impacted the student personally. In society today, success is often viewed as having a strong correlation with the acquisition of literacy; as Kara Poe Alexander explores in Successes, Victims, and Prodigies: “Master” and “Little” Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre, too often today we find people “buying into the trop that literacy leads to enlightenment and liberation.” (Alexander 610) In Fitzgerald’s case, the mere fact she could not associate with the other students lead to a feeling of being separate, and almost trapped in this state of being illiterate. This, by deduction, implies that the acquisition thereof would lead to a state of freedom in the mind of the narrator, with their illiterateness being a mere trap of the sponsor. Additionally, Deborah Brandt explores this in Sponsors of Literacy, in which she writes that “People’s literate skills have grown vulnerable to unprecedented turbulence in their economic value, as conditions, forms, and standards of literacy achievement seem to shift with almost every new generation of learners,” (Brandt 166) meaning that this situation is likely similar to many others, but also different as each individual defines their own perspective on how valuable that literacy is to them. 

But sometimes the damage done by sponsors can run deeper. In Reading Gone Wrong by Shaylee Amidan, she explores how the withholding of literacy from one by a sponsor can damage their views on their personal life and passions. She talks about how “so many people are shot down for being different by their own choice..” The choice being, how one goes about their journey to literacy, and how too often some sponsors will withhold, or attempt to define this long and winding road for someone. Deborah Brandt explores this in Sponsors of Literacy, in which she writes that “A focus on sponsorship can force a more explicit and substantive link between literacy learning and systems of opportunity and access.” (Brandt 169) In Amidan’s case, her restriction from literacy by the hand of the teacher caused her to feel like she was not connected to the global literacy, or that she couldn’t form that “link” between literacy learning and opportunity to grow and be a part of the rest of the class, so to speak. But again, this unestablishment of literacy can and did cause problems for Amidan, and as Kara Poe Alexander explores in Successes, Victims, and Prodigies: “Master” and “Little” Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre, “Costs include social, cultural, and permanent displacement which leads people to alienation, [and] despair.” (Alexander 610) In Amidan’s case, this despair goes hand-in-hand with the fact that she felt alienated from the rest of the class; that she was not on the same intellectual level as other students for her need for a tutor.

On this page, I am drawing connections to other scholarly articles and detecting themes of the paper.

In my search for relevant narratives, I decided to focus on narratives relating to the withholding of literacy by sponsors, and how that impacts the narrator/student/writer both on an emotional level, and how it affects their place in society.

Authors:

Shaylee Amidon*

Paige Matthews

Meghan Mazzocchi

Marykate Fitzgerald*

Sarah Manuels

Katherine Parker

Kayla Farrell

* = the ones I did Barclay paragraphs for

Passion For Writing

Concept: Success

Passage: “..they do so by generalizing about literacy and its power of pointing to future success.” (Alexander 617)

Narrative Passage: “I think they were somewhat in disbelief because they knew I was never big into school” 

Explanation: The author talked about how his family was in disbelief about his acquisition of literacy and how it was able to lead to his success. 

Expect the Unexpected

Concept: Success

Passage: “..they end with this positive, abstract conclusion about literacy’s power and tendency to lead to success” (Alexander 617)

Narrative Passage: “I realized it doesn’t matter what you are writing about, you should be creating a piece of work you can always be proud of.” 

Explanation: The narrative author very clearly was attempting to create an ending that was conclusive over the positive and ambiguous future effects of literacy.

Recess and Destress

Concept: Sponsorship, and somewhat child prodigy. 

Passage: “..they conceived of themselves and their literacy abilities as exceptional, highlighting moments when their literacy skills were put on display to amaze and astonish.” 

(Alexander 619)

Narrative Passage: “I see now it was because she was holding me to a higher standard because she knew I had the ability to succeed in my work..” 

Explanation: This was a literacy moment in which the narrator felt a certain sense of empowerment at their own abilities, that were released by the teacher as a sponsor. 

Turn Around? 

Concept: Victim

Passage: “The popularity of the victim narrative in student texts indicates that students associate school-based literacy practices with oppression, and even cruelty.” (Alexander 618)

Narrative Passage: “I always got negative feedback, red x’s, and bad grades in his class. It just seemed to slowly eat away at any confidence in writing that I had leftover.”

Explanation: The narrator is very clearly attempting to create a sense of victimization by this teacher’s class, and how this one teacher just completely annihilated any sense of passion or excitement surrounding writing and reading for the narrator.

• • The above examples from Brandt are extremely prevalent in the acquisition of literacy- specifically the suppression and enablement of the literacy narrators in their stories. We see some of these sponsors shown in Alexander’s piece when he notes the archetypes of narratives, and the ones I think would apply specifically to those descriptors would be Victims and Success stories. Victim’s narratives often follow paths of those who had a sponsor of literacy that negatively influenced their viewpoints on reading or writing, through the suppression of the narrator, or the “victim” of their own narrative. This idea of how one “casts the blame for negative literacy experiences” is often written as consequence of the suppression of one’s life/viewpoints/etc. On the other hand, the aforementioned enablement is often a descriptor for sponsors of the success stories, and how a person (peer, parent, teacher, cousin, etc) lead to their enablement in their journey for literacy, whether they expected it or not. My personal literacy narrative somewhat explored this, through multiple people. I discussed some of my peers in a program I was in, and how we all have been attributors to each other’s success. 

• • The valuation of literacy in different environments, times, conditions, etc has changed so much throughout time, yet the theme has remained the same. Literacy became extremely equated with success, with the idea that success cannot be acquired without literate knowledge becoming more and more prevalent as the educational system grows and grows. Many people have different experiences and relationships to reading and writing as a direct consequence of this, as with such diverse backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, social classes, we find that the acquisition of literacy is quite different for many people. This has a lot to do with the topics we discussed on the last paper, where everyone’s learning is often attributed to being a  direct result of their intersectionality, both in the way they perceive the content and in the way that the content is taught to them. 

• • In the literacy winner category by Alexander, we find that the narratives surround one’s rise to the acquisition of literacy. The sponsors, as Brandt would note, are the teachers or peers that introduce the opportunities in which the students claim in order to “win” literacy. This could be someone that tells them, “Hey, you should sign up for the ____ competition/event.” This introduces the idea of some sort of competition, not necessarily externally, in the mind of the author. However, in the Victim category introduced by Alexander, we find that the sponsor of literacy is not one encouraging anything of the literacy narrator, but rather the opposite, by in some way going against the literate learning of the narrator. This causes the narrator to, typically through their own personal motivations or goals, be altered by this sponsor, as they typically will describe how someone “took the fun out of reading and writing.” (Alexander 615)

Works Cited:

Gee, James. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction.” Journal of Education, vol. 171, no. 1, 1989, pp. 5-17.

Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” ProQuest Education Journals, vol. 58, no. 3, Aug. 1988, pp. 363-74.

Delpit, Lisa. “The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, Ellen Cushman, Eugene Kintgen, Barry Kroll, Mike Rose. Bedford/St., 1998, pp. 545-54.

Subordination:

While most of the authors agree with the definition, others struggle to understand the necessity and/or function of the word itself.

However, In Lisa Delpit’s The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse, she directly references and opposes the previous work of Gee, specifically on the acquisition and transition of these so-called Discourses, and on the presence (or lack thereof) of challenge for those attempting such tasks.

These sentences are complex, as they provide a before and after to each piece of the sentence. The first sentence amplifies the second part following the comma as a follow-up to the vague statement using “while,” in order to grab the reader in to explain the vague statement further. The second sentence is complex, as it indicates a contrast between something prior and the statement to follow by using “However.”

Coordination:

Much of her piece, as the name suggests, is dedicated solely to the presence of Discourse in the educational system, and to what extent should it be taught.

This documentation proves to be essential, as it will serve as the basis for much of the discussion between the aforementioned texts, as each writer provides different viewpoints on the practical application of that definition

This definition is almost exactly defining intersectional cultures and adhesion to stereotypes thereof, and goes in great depth to explain the many aspects and applications of it, such as the presence of dominant Discourse, that which reigns over the others through some form of oppression.

These sentences are complex and coordinated, as they are directly using two or more different clauses/pieces of the sentence and connecting them via conjunctions.