Literacy Sponsors and Their Importance
Literacy sponsors, according to Professor Deborah Brandt, are "local, agent, and abstract individuals who promote, educate, control, withhold literacy, and ultimately profit from it in various ways." During my time at university, I worked with a number of literacy sponsors who helped me run a variety of activities.
Teachers and Donors as Literacy Sponsors
First, there are the teachers or donors to the organization who assist in the administration of extracurricular activities that benefit many students, especially debates, writing the school journal, and other activities. In my university, I may also consider parents and institutional staff to be literacy sponsors because they have an influence on the curriculum of various scholars (Brandt, 1998). Parents and school employees influence the lessons that students learn; they can also input passion towards the subject that students gain knowledge of and this can make learners have more interest in what they do. The development of emotion in a student can change the texts students read, their literacy skill, and also their writing in class work and exams. Literacy sponsors in my university are of importance because they influence what the coming generation will learn and read. Literacy sponsors affect the local areas as well as the levels of literacy of the people within the local area of my university.
Literacy Sponsors in the Knowledge Economy
Literacy sponsors are of significance to knowledge economy since they affect the use of literacy in the world of business as well as the individual world in the lives of the people they sponsor. Brandt, for instance, talks about a woman who was referred as Martha Day who lived in a farm located in Midwest (Brandt, 1998). Martha loved writing, and after becoming an adult a newspaper manager approached her and requested her to be an editor as well as write for the newspaper. The manager assisted Martha in improving her writing skills hence becoming her literacy sponsor. The manager was of importance to Martha because he gave her ideas to get to the more substantial newspaper business and promoted her to more significant position. Literacy sponsors can, therefore, help in the knowledge economy of people by helping them to advance in their investments and become financially stable in their business areas.
Reference
Brandt, D. (1998). Sponsors of literacy. College Composition and Communication, 49(2), 165-185.
