Brandt Dialectical Notebook

Brandt explains how literacy came to be a highly valued commodity/skill. It widens what one has access to.	“The pre-steam press economy enabled some of the most basic aspects of the apprentices’ literacy, especially their access to material production and the public meaning or worth of their skills” (333).
I like how Brandt argues for the economic value of literacy. I think this is definitely true, but certainly something a lot of people (or at least me) don’t think of it as. It’s simply taken for granted.	“Literacy looms as one of the great engines of profit and competitive advantage in the 20th century” (333).
Brandt defines what she considers sponsors. This is a pretty inclusive list, so no one can say “I didn’t have a sponsor.” It’s also important to remember that Brandt claims sponsors are not altruistic—they have their own interests in mind.	“Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, 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” (334).
It’s unsettling anytime something has so much power.	“…sponsors nevertheless set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty” (334).
Brandt outlines what her purpose is for this article. These sentences make me anticipate how she will show the “persistent stratification of opportunity”” that literacy (a focus on literacy) enables.	“In this essay I set out a case for why the concept of sponsorship is so richly suggestive for exploring economies of literacy and their effects. Then, through use of extended case examples, I demonstrate the practical application of this approach for interpreting current conditions of literacy teaching and learning, including persistent stratification of opportunity and escalating standards for literacy achievement” (334).
Again, this list makes it so that almost everyone has a sponsor. Which make sense if literacy is so valued.	“older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, influential  authors” (335)
I think this is a good simile and will be helpful to students who read this. You gain literacy through other people’s self-interest. I guess this is an example of a win-win situation.	“Like little Leaguers who wear the logo of a local insurance agency on their uniforms, not out of a concern for enhancing the agency’s image but as a means for getting to play ball…” (335).
Class/ race bias/ stratification	“A statistical correlation between high literacy achievement and high socioeconomic, majority-race status routinely shows up in results of national tests of reading and writing performance” (337).
This is such a significant point of Brandt’s piece. I hope my students can pick up on this and are willing to discuss this.	“Throughout their lives, affluent people from high-caste racial groups have multiple and redundant contacts with powerful literacy sponsors as a routine part of their economic and political privileges. Poor people and those from low-caste racial groups have less consistent, less politically secured access to literacy sponsors—especially to the ones that can grease their way to academic and economic success” (337).
I want to hear about my students’ experiences with technology. Have they thought about what it’d be like to not have computers/internet access? I don’t think they grew up without access to this type of technology.	“Raymond received his first personal computer as a Christmas present from his parents when he was twelve years old, and a modem the year after that” (337).
Example of a good sponsor- but it was necessary to make up for a gap in literacy skills.	“The computers were being used to help the children be brought up to grade level in their reading and writing skills” (338).
I’m interested to know how my students will react to this (especially in relation to the hooks/Malcolm X readings coming up). It’s hard when you first learn about your privilege, because no one wants to think that his/her own troubles are less worthy. But I think this is a necessary point—something I’m glad their running into their freshman year.	“In Raymond Branch’s account of his early literacy learning we are able to see behind the scenes of his majority-race membership, male gender, and high-end socioeconomic family profile” (338).
The demands of literacy are increasing. Will this make students take the reading and writing they do more seriously?	“More and more people are now being expected to accomplish more and more things with reading and writing” (340).
“Struggle for dominance”= it’s all about power. So power is the commodity, but literacy is the means through which to acquire more power.	“This struggle for dominance shaped the kinds of literacy skills required of Lowery, the kinds of genre he learned and used, and the kinds of literate identity he developed” (342).
Brandt explains why it can be overwhelming and feel “destabilized.”	“…forms of literacy and their sponsors can now rise and recede many times within a single life span” (344).
Mixture of forms of literacies. Increase contact.	“We need models of literacy that more astutely account for these kinds of multiple contacts, both in and out of school and across a lifetime” (345).
	“So, here, two women—one Native American and both working class—filch contemporary literacy resources (public relations techniques and accounting practices) from more-educated, higher-status men” (347).
People “making-do” with the emphasis on literacy. They’re adapting to the high importance of literacy.	“Many of the cultural formations we associate with writing development—community practices, disciplinary traditions, technological potentials—can be appreciated as make-do response to the economics of literacy, past and present” (348).
This is a great final line by Brandt. Literacy here sounds predatory.	“…as we assist and study individual in pursuit of literacy, we also recognize how literacy is in pursuit of them” (338).