Sponsors of Literacy

Sponsors of Literacy is an idea originally proposed by Deborah Brandt in her 1998 article also called “Sponsors of Literacy.”^[1] In Brandt’s view, sponsors of literacy are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way.”^[2]

Sponsors of literacy are anyone who is involved with literacy, whether reading or writing. Some are directly connected to literacy processes, such as teachers instructing young children to read. Others have less obvious connections, such as government policies that affect how individuals can achieve their literacy potential. These sponsors can promote literacy or stifle it in some way. Some sponsors might not even realize how they affect literacy or even that they affect it at all. Others recognize their involvement in literacy and actively work to promote it.

Brandt's article has been cited in more than 250 other scholarly articles. Her sponsors of literacy idea has been used to discuss reading and writing instruction but has spread beyond the academic fields of composition and/or rhetoric. The idea of sponsors of literacy is now part of larger discussions regarding classroom management, social practices, popular culture, comics, bookstores, economics, community engagement, workplace cultures, technologies, and the information age.

Background

See also: Literacy, Literacy in American Lives, Deborah Brandt

At the time Brandt’s article was published, she was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a project head at the National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA).

In forming her theory of sponsors of literacy, Brandt conducted interviews with ordinary Americans, meeting with a “diverse group of people born roughly between 1900 and 1980”^[3] and exploring their memories of learning to write and read. Brandt found that most people recalled the “people, institutions, materials, and motivations”^[4] involved in the process of gaining literacy.

Brandt begins her article with the concept of sponsors, whom she defines as “powerful figures who bankroll events or smooth the way for initiates.”^[5] These sponsors are typically “richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched” in their areas of expertise than those they sponsor.^[6] Despite this difference, sponsors “enter a reciprocal relationship with those they underwrite.”^[7] Sponsors contribute credibility and/or resources but potentially receive benefits in return, “whether by direct repayment or, indirectly, by credit of association”^[8] with the sponsored.

While usually thought of as an economic or business term, Brandt took the idea of sponsors and applied it to those who promote literacy learning. Brandt posits that “it is useful to think about who or what underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use”^[9] because those sponsors “set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty.”^[10]

Literacy, Brandt claims, is highly prized, “a key resource in gaining profit and edge,”^[11] which helps to explain “the lengths people will go to secure literacy for themselves or their children. But it also explains why the powerful work so persistently to conscript and ration the powers of literacy. The competition to harness literacy, to manage, measure, teach, and exploit it, has intensified throughout the century.”^[12]

In her article, Brandt mentions that some “people throughout history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others’ causes.”^[13] However, most frequently, “literacy takes its shape from the interests of its sponsors.”^[14] Brandt posits that “literacy learning throughout history has always required permission, sanction, assistance, coercion, or, at minimum, contact with existing trade routes.”^[15]

Brandt used much of her research for “Sponsors of Literacy” in writing her 2001 book Literacy in American Lives.^[16] In the book, Brandt expounds on the varying roles that literacy sponsors play in individual lives by giving a wider look at how economic, political, and sociocultural factors affected American literacy in the 1900s.

Throughout her works, Brandt mentions several common sponsors of literacy, including older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, and influential authors.^[17] Many of these people and institutions have either promoted or provided access to literacy throughout history as well as in modern-day society and serve as a starting point in listing more examples of sponsors of literacy present through both American history and modern-day American societies.

Examples of Sponsors of Literacy

Families

Historical

Throughout American history, family members were often the very first sponsors of literacy children encountered, before any sort of formal schooling. In 1651 in the town of New Haven, the schoolmaster was to “perfect male children in the English, after they can reade in their Testament or Bible.”^[18] This precise wording implies that “children were not to come to the town school for initial reading instruction; that was to have taken place elsewhere,”^[19] such as the home.

Modern

The most accepted current theory of literacy development in young children is that of emergent literacy, which posits that a child “acquires some knowledge about language, reading, and writing before coming to school.”^[20] Literacy skills are acquired “through meaningful and functional experiences that require the use of literacy in natural settings.”^[21] Overall, “a rich literacy environment at home gives children a good chance to learn to read and write easily and to enjoy reading and writing as well.”^[22]

Research shows that “children who are read to regularly by parents, siblings, or other individuals in the home and who have family members who read themselves become early readers and show a natural interest in books.”^[23] At least one study has shown that “kids who read frequently are more likely to have parents who are avid readers.”^[24] To increase childhood literacy, parents are also advised to “read to children and tell them stories.”^[25]

Writing skills are also developed in the home. In order to gain writing literacy skills, children “need to see their families involved with writing activities” such as writing thank-you notes and letters, school forms, or grocery lists.”^[26]

While parents or other adult family members are most commonly thought of as sponsors of literacy in the home, siblings also play a role. Older siblings who attend school are likely to “take hold of school learning and present it in an understandable form to their younger siblings during play at home.”^[27] Younger children are more likely to find learning reading and writing skills “an enjoyable and easily understandable task”^[28] when the older sibling presents the learning in a play rather than classroom setting.

Older siblings sponsoring younger children in reading or writing also indirectly improve their own literacy skills. An older child reading to a younger one “practices her use of ‘book language’”^[29] and continues increasing her own reading skills as she reads out loud. A “reciprocity of learning”^[30] exists between the two children, with the older one “demonstrating and providing a model”^[31] for the younger.

Families continue to sponsor literacy into adulthood. A 2007 article focused on how immediate and extended family members affected literacy practices of students in two universities in Central Appalachia.^[32] The study showed that students were not always consistently supported by their families. Some family members encouraged the students’ literacies while at the same time working “to inhibit the students’ emerging literacy beliefs and practices.”^[33] Students encountered apparent contradictions from their families, with one family member acting as “both a sponsor and inhibitor—or perhaps more accurately, a sponsor of a competing meaning of literacy—in a student’s life.”^[34] Frequently, academic literacy was seen as taking students away from their families, so loved ones reacted to the perceived threat by impeding students’ goals of gaining college degrees.^[35] By being so involved in literacy pursuits, family members act as sponsors of literacy, whether they promote or obstruct specific literacies.

Schools

Historical

Throughout history, schools have commonly been thought of as sponsors of literacy because they specifically teach reading and writing.

Early Colonial Schools

Although other subjects would be added to schools’ curricula in the future, early American schools focused on sponsoring literacy. Town records of New Haven colony tell of a free school that taught first reading, then writing and arithmetic because of how much arithmetic relied on writing out mathematical examples. School children were supposed to have basic reading skills before beginning school, but schoolmasters frequently found that they had to provide remedial instruction to these early readers.^[36]

After many schools tried and failed to insist on only admitting students who could already read, a different approach to education came about. Schools focused on sponsoring literacy at all levels of student knowledge. Students who could read were taught more difficult materials, while students who could not were given elementary reading instruction. The bulk of literacy centered on reading, but, while many early schools focused on reading skills alone, increased literacy ability was soon desirable.^[37]

By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, many towns in New England established “writing schools.” These schools sponsored literacy by specifically teaching children to write instead of only to read. In the city of Boston, the Writing School in Queen Street opened in 1684, with the North Writing School following in 1700. A third school devoted to writing instruction, the South Writing School, opened in 1720 to address the growing number of students pursuing a technical education in which writing skills were paramount.^[38]

Children at the Bethesda School for Orphans in Georgia demonstrated their writing skills through a series of letters written to their benefactor. These letters, dated March 24, 1741, displayed knowledge of conventional letter writing, all containing “the formulaic beginnings and endings appropriate to letter writing.”^[39] In addition, the letters exhibited the students’ knowledge of focusing “on one or more clearly delineated topics”^[40] throughout a composition. The letters also reveal that their authors understood many of the era’s written language conventions, including capitalization and punctuation. These letters show that the school “has to be judged a success in terms of its academic ambitions”^[41] of sponsoring literacy as writing skills.

Schools varied in their methods of sponsoring literacy, with some teachers preferring an authoritarian approach while others used a gentler style of instruction. Christopher Dock, a German emigrant, wrote what is possibly the first text on specific teaching methods printed in America, School-Management. In his work, Dock describes his approaches to education in a small mid-eighteenth-century rural Pennsylvania town. Above all, Dock “advocated gentleness and encouragement in the teacher-student relationship.”^[42] Dock felt genuine affection for his students and used gentle methods in encouraging their reading and writing skills. He offered tangible rewards to students who improved their literacy, even sending notes home “instructing parents to give the child a penny or cook him two eggs”^[43] for their academic achievements. He also “used literacy activities to fill up the time of waiting at the start of the school day,” allowing students to read aloud to one another. In addition, Dock included a spelling book in his classroom that children used in learning to read. The spelling book would go on to be used in most mainstream school-sponsored literacy in America.^[44]

Modern

Schools are also one of the largest traditional sponsors of literacy in modern times.

In the early 1900s, many people believed that “literacy began with formal instruction in first grade.”^[45] During those years, “educators believed literacy was attained only through elementary school completion.”^[46] Over time, educators changed their approach toward teaching reading and writing but still focused on schools as central sponsors of literacy.

Beyond simply instructing children to read and write, schools feature teacher education programs that sponsor future teachers in becoming literacy sponsors themselves. Textbooks in education classrooms emphasize to future teachers the complexity of teaching literacy skills. One textbook for prospective early childhood teachers maintains that “literacy acquisition involves a commitment of time and mental energy plus opportunity. At the pre-school level, this commitment is a teacher’s commitment to presenting a program that both promotes language arts skills and furnishes a shared body of understandings appropriate to preschoolers.”^[47]

Writing skills are also learned through formal education. One of the first steps in written literacy involves learning how to write the letters of the alphabet, typically in kindergarten or first grade. Teaching textbooks offer specific advice on how to teach this skill, such as printing children’s words as they dictate, teaching children to trace over pre-formed letters, and praising children for their own printing attempts.^[48]

Beyond teaching young children how to read and write, schools continue to serve as sponsors of literacy to students in higher grades. Citing statistics from “a 2014 report from Common Sense Media, a media and technology education and advocacy organization,” a U.S. News & World Report article^[49] showed that fewer teenagers read for fun than in the past. To boost those numbers, teachers are encouraged to “give teens a variety of options to choose from,” “make time for free reading during school,” and “make studying them [required works] more enjoyable by connecting the content to teens’ lives.”^[50]

Churches

Historical

Churches have a long history as sponsors of literacy, specifically as devoted to promoting reading and writing skills.

Basic reading instruction was available to the common people through Protestant Sunday Schools even before free public schooling was widely available in London.^[51] Those who could not afford formal education could at least gain rudimentary literacy skills by attending these church-sponsored classes.

The London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, known as the S.P.G., was organized in 1701 by the Anglican Church and sponsored literacy through religious instruction in the early American colonies. Financed by the Church of England, the S.P.G. served as “a key player on the literacy instructional field in colonial America.”^[52] The society paid for more than eighty schoolmasters to teach in the American provinces, ranging from New York down to Georgia. While the schoolmasters were to teach reading and writing skills, that literacy was learned in strict alignment with the values of the Anglican Church. Children were to be instructed specifically in the Bible and the Church of England catechism, combining literacy with correct Christian behavior.

Modern

See also: Christian schools, Catholic school, Lutheran school, Seventh-day Adventist education, Nazarene International Education Association, Faith school, Parochial school

Many schools that sponsor literacy are associated with or directly funded by various religious institutions. Administering schools allows churches to provide typical education to their students, accompanied by individual church beliefs and/or doctrines that cannot be taught in public schools.

Beyond subsidizing schools, churches act as sponsors of literacy in other ways. Many churches offer activities or programs that promote literacy. In addition, churches are often thought of as warm and nurturing environments. This perception makes learning literacy skills less threatening through church programs rather than in academic settings.

A 2008 study^[53] focused on one young immigrant’s encounters with literacy in a Pentecostal church compared with a local high school. Research showed that the church “created a nurturing and supportive environment for engagement in language and literacy practices.”^[54] The school, on the other hand, “failed to provide effective teaching and learning”^[55] for the student. The church allowed and encouraged the young man’s native language of Spanish, while the school required him to speak and write in unfamiliar English. Partly because the young man felt more comfortable in his church environment, his literacy skills improved more there than at his high school, which he eventually left before graduating.^[56]

Other studies have looked at the differences between churches and schools, detailing how literacy practices fluctuate between the two. Researchers compared an African-American Baptist Sunday school with a traditional preschool.^[57] A child who was seen as a “super-star” at church was thought of as socially unacceptable at the preschool. The literacy practices in the Sunday school used recitation, storytelling and retelling, and reading words aloud. Because those cultural practices were not part of the preschool classroom, the child’s behavior was viewed as improper when performed there.^[58]

Government

Historical

Early Colonial New England

When America was first settled, local governments involved themselves with literacy. Each colony differed slightly on the exact phrasing, but “by the 1670s, all the New England colonies then in existence, except Rhode Island, had passed legislation . . . mandating that children be taught to read.”^[59]

The Bay Colony of Massachusetts, where Harvard College was founded, led the way in legislating reading instruction. In 1642, in a law that directly connected government with literacy, the colony’s selectmen were empowered to monitor children’s ability to read. Fines were leveled on parents who failed to instruct their children in reading skills. If children were found to be illiterate, a series of fines were administered to their guardians with possible removal from the home serving as a final punishment. Children were also to be trained to a specific skill or vocation, rather than only reading skills.^[60]

A variation of the Massachusetts law, passed in Boston, reiterated the literacy rulings. This 1672 law stated that those responsible for children were not allowed to permit “‘so much Barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavour to teach, by themselves or others, their Children and Apprentices’ enough learning” in reading skills.^[61]

Government in Connecticut went even further in enforcing literacy standards. Again, parents and guardians were required to teach children to read, but Connecticut went so far as to require “weekly catechizing of children” in questions about Christian doctrine. Like Massachusetts law, Connecticut included the requirement of teaching children a trade instead of simply how to read.^[62]

In July 1656, New Haven colony passed a similar law as those in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Code of 1656, as it was known, required anyone responsible for children to “ensure that all children and apprentices should ‘attain at least so much, as to be able duly to read the scriptures, and other good and profitable printed Books in the English tongue.’”^[63] This ruling was enforced by officials of the court and town, testing children at random to check their reading and comprehension skills. A 1660 addition to the Code of 1656 added the requirement that all boys—not girls—were to be taught “‘to write a ledgible hand, so soone as they are capable of it.’”^[64] New Haven colony law was unique in New England for “making no reference whatsoever to mastering a trade, focusing only on teaching children to read.”^[65]

New Plymouth colony law incorporated much of the other colonies’ legislations. In 1672, Plymouth passed laws that included the highest coverage of literacy regulations. Laws in Plymouth required “bringing children up in some trade or skill, catechizing them, and inculcating a knowledge of the laws.”^[66]

New Hampshire, much later than the other New England colonies, established a reading and apprenticeship law in 1712. This legislation empowered a justice of the peace to test all children of at least ten years old to see if they could read. Children who were illiterate were removed from their homes and apprenticed to master who would teach them reading and writing skills.^[67]

While the majority of the New England colonies were populated by orthodox Christians, Rhode Island was not. A home to Puritan exiles, Rhode Island was founded on the principles of religious liberty. Jews and Quakers were among the earliest settlers,^[68] so laws requiring reading and knowledge of Christian catechisms were likely thought of as inappropriate.

Early Twentieth Century Agricultural Clubs

During the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, the United States government became involved with sponsoring literacy through agricultural clubs.^[69] Many early clubs lacked a direct connection to the federal government. However, in 1907, “the first federally sponsored corn club was organized in Mississippi.”^[70] That club was “organized as part of the larger extension work of the USDA”^[71] in efforts to change agricultural practices in the United States.

A large part of early agricultural clubs, predecessors of modern 4-H clubs, involved record keeping to track the success of new agricultural methods and gather data about farming practices that would help in publishing extension bulletins. The Office of Farm Management, part of the USDA, gave out “blank forms, diaries, and instruction to farmers and then gathered and analyzed the furnished records” in order to aid farmers in comprehend farming operations costs and crop profitability.^[72] Much of this record keeping was performed by young club members.

Some school systems even allowed records and other club work to work toward academic requirements. This crossover included “the grading of club members’ crop reports and written compositions and accepting these in lieu of the written examination component for elementary agriculture or home economics or of the other required subjects in the regular school course.”^[73] Connecting reading and writing skills from social organizations to other aspects of life provided the government a way to sponsor literacy in these early agricultural clubs.

These government-sponsored agricultural clubs also promoted literacy in other ways. Meetings were advertised through school notices, and local newspapers were helpful “as a way to communicate timely advice on projects and to publish the results and achievement stories of club members.”^[74] Clubs also became more formally organized, which meant including “literacy formats such as constitutions, bylaws, and enrollment cards.”^[75]

Printed materials describing club projects included “typewritten, multigraphed, mimeographed, and printed follow-up instructions (in the form of bulletins and circulars, including outlines, report blanks, and special sheets of instruction).”^[76] These materials and other bulletins were mailed to club members to help in completing various projects. All of the material used in these communications came from the government-sponsored agricultural research and education programs, such as agricultural experiment stations and the USDA, continuing the government’s involvement in literacy.

Modern

No Child Left Behind

Legislation directly dealing with reading and writing skills establishes government as a sponsor of literacy in modern times. The American No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 provided federal funding to schools with poor readers in an attempt to “help close the gap in literacy development.”^[77]

Government-Paid Education

See also: G.I. Bill, Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008

The United States government has a history of providing funding for military service members to further their education.

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (P.L. 78-346, 58 Stat. 284m) was commonly known as the G.I. Bill and offered a variety of benefits to veterans of World War II. These benefits included tuition funding and living expenses, paid in cash, so that veterans could receive vocational, high school, or university education.

Similar to the G.I. Bill is the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008. Formally known as Title V of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, Pub.L. 110–252, H.R. 2642, this Act of Congress became law on June 30, 2008. This new law also assists in paying for military veterans’ college expenses. Under this act, any veteran who has served at least three full years of active duty since September 11, 2001, is eligible for one hundred percent funding for an undergraduate degree at a public college or university. The act also allows the veteran to transfer educational benefits to children or a spouse under certain circumstances.

4-H Clubs

4-H (Head, Heart, Hands, and Health) is 4-H is overseen by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In the United States, 4-H is the “largest positive youth development and youth mentoring organization.”^[78]

4-H is the youth development program of NIFA, within the USDA. NIFA is responsible for supplying 4-H with federal funding and helping the program “identify and address current issues and problems.”^[79]

Federal legislation has a long history of involvement with 4-H. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 first established the “federal-state-local partnership between USDA, the Cooperative Extension Service, the land-grant university system and local governments.”^[80] At the same time, the Smith-Lever Act also “nationalized 4-H youth development programs,” leading to 4-H clubs being formed around the country.^[81]

Backed by the federal government, the National 4-H Curriculum encourages increased literacy by providing young people with various resources. Club members have access to youth activity guides that are “filled with engaging experiences that cultivate the skills that youth need for everyday living as they gain knowledge about subjects that interest them.”^[82]

Economics

Historical

Economics has played a large role in literacy through history. For working class people, there has often been a choice between education and income, with income winning out. After all, depending on economic climates and social situations, “literacy was not always so central to jobs and earnings in the nineteenth century.”^[83] If only a basic understanding of reading or writing was necessary, further education was “not desirable; it would not benefit the workingman”^[84] and would only drain his income.

Factors such as the cost of running a household have also affected literacy through American history. Research into family economics shows “how the interplay between early industrial wage structures and family demographics may have forced children from working-class families out of schools and into factories.”^[85] In limiting the learning potential of these children, economics serves as a sponsor of literacy, though not a benevolent one.

Modern

While in the past economics occasionally served to potentially block literacy, in modern times it is both supportive of and intertwined with literacy skills.

Brandt devotes a chapter of her book, Literacy in American Lives, to exploring how economics affects literacy in modern times. Because the American economy has shifted to an information base, Brandt believes that “reading and writing serve as input, output, and conduit for producing profit and winning economic advantage.”^[86] However, economic changes can occur so quickly that individual people’s literacy struggles to keep up. Diverse sponsors of literacy surface and disappear based on economic shifts. The prospects of people supported by those sponsors rise and drop accordingly, “both in terms of opportunity for literacy learning and the worth of particular literacy skills.”^[87]

Brandt gives an example of economics sponsoring literacy in one individual’s life in her 1998 article, “Sponsors of Literacy.” She tells of a woman who applied economic lessons learned while working at a law firm to her own home. After beginning bookkeeping work at the firm, the woman “began to model her household management on principles of budgeting that she was picking up from one of the attorneys.”^[88] Literacy skills learned on the job became relevant in more personal areas of life.

Future Development

Brandt theorized that “sponsors play even more influential roles at the scenes of literacy learning and use”^[89] than her initial research could cover. Sponsors of literacy are potentially unlimited, depending on which aspects of literacy they support. As the definition of literacy continues to develop, further classifications of sponsors of literacy will also expand.

Alternative Views

In her article “Literacy Stewardship: Dakelh Women Composing Culture,”^[90] Alanna Frost provides an alternative view to Brandt’s idea of sponsors of literacy. Frost points out that sponsorship cannot completely “account for the dynamic and myriad literacy practices of marginalized community members.”^[91] She suggests the term literacy steward in such cases, stating that the term “can be applied to any individual who demonstrates persistent dedication to the practice or promotion of a literacy considered traditionally important to his or her community.”^[92]

In promoting her term, Frost reasons that “the use of the term stewardship rather than sponsorship reflects a more specific and detailed description of the work done in many marginalized communities.”^[93] Frost mentions that “sponsorship requires attention to the agendas for literacy of those agents who offer the material necessary for its promulgation.”^[94] Literacy stewards, on the other hand, engage with traditional literacies that are “notably alternative to those that are institutionally and economically dominant.”^[95] Throughout her article, Frost gives examples of people whose “literacy stewardship marks successes that counter powerful institutional and economic literacy sponsors—sponsors with social agendas for literacy differing complexly from their own.”^[96]

Insisting that sponsorship does not “offer a comprehensive analytic tool to describe the dynamism of First Nations women’s cultural work,”^[97] Frost offers “a more specific explanation of sponsorship’s limitations in describing Native North American literacy practices.”^[98] Telling of her research involving the Dakelh band of central British Columbia, Frost discusses how literacy stewards “practice and protect traditional literacies that are threatened; practice and protect traditional literacies using limited resources; and practice and protect traditional literacies amid the pull and push of dominant literacies.”^[99]

Frost’s work focuses on how sponsors of literacy occasionally conflict with traditions of specific communities and how literacy stewards negotiate “between traditional and dominant literacies.”^[100] Rather than working from a desire to overthrow any particular sponsors of literacy, literacy stewards are simply “committed to sustainable use of those literacies that best serve their community’s needs.”^[101]

References