Dr. Deborah Brandt's Literacy In American Lives

In the twenty-first century, literacy is essential to survival even though one may not think of it as essential as food or shelter. However, Dr. Deborah Brandt, Frederick Douglass, or those who are illiterate in our country would argue that literacy is as important to life as the food we eat. Dr. Brandt speaks of literacy in her book “Literacy in American Lives” as a valuable resource that can be exploited like gold or money. She explains this concept through the idea of a sponsor of literacy. A sponsor is anyone who stands to gain from manipulating a group or individual’s literate ability, and in his narrative of his life, Frederick Douglass speaks of this sponsorship even though he does not call it by this name. In the time of American

Brandt argues that a sponsor of literacy is anyone or any organization that can “enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way,” so a modern day example of a sponsor would be the College Board, a company that makes SAT prep courses and the SAT test (Brandt). The College Board regulates to a degree the literacy of Americans by regulating what is upheld as good literacy to know (what is tested by their company), and this in turn regulates what teachers are urged to teach in their classrooms. The College Board also stands to make a profit from this testing because without it, it is difficult if not impossible to attend college and the students must pay each time they take the test. This is an important concept because these sponsors can influence the value of literacy in students’ lives. If a student is fairly smart but below average on the SAT’s terms of literacy, that student may not be accepted into a university that can help the student grow. This student may have to settle for a college or institute that cannot prepare them as well as another because the literacy sponsor has misjudged his/her intelligence based on a number for a test. Prior to the time of College Board and standardized test, sponsors have impacted individual’s long term success in life, and the narrative of Frederick Douglass demonstrates how a social institution can also act as a sponsor of