In this day and age of a pervasive mass media and seemingly a new social media outlet that is invented every month, the proliferation of information is all around us. Despite all of the advances in technology in the delivery of information, it may surprise you to learn that one in every five people on this planet are illiterate, two thirds of that number being women. Reflecting on this alarming statistic and Deborah Brandt’s essay on “Sponsors of Literacy”, I thought about what influences us to strive to learn how to read and write. Deborah Brandt refers to literacy sponsors as, “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 …show more content…
Starting with elementary school and at a very young age my teachers used their influence to push us as students to learn to read and to excel in this endeavor. It started with reading out loud in front of my peers. I remember a distinct pressure placed upon me by both the exercise and myself to make sure I was not going to struggle reading in front of my classmates and risk embarrassing myself. As we all can relate to how mean children can be, I was not going to put myself in a position to be ridiculed. I couldn’t wait to get home and share with my parents the new vocabulary I was learning and beginning to develop. My parents made sure to allow me to showcase my abilities as I read along with them stories they would read to me every night before I would go to sleep. After a very short period of time in the classroom I was able to formulate sentences on my own. The school system teachings had brought me a long way in a short period of time. Brandt also discusses the role of certain intangible assets that are often associated with the learning environment found inside the classroom as she writes, “The concept of sponsors helps to explain, then, a range of human relationships and ideological pressures that turn up at the scenes of literacy learning – from benign sharing between adults and youths, to euphemized coercions in schools and workplaces, to the most notorious impositions …show more content…
I had an opportunity to work at a bank as both of my parents have jobs inside the financial industry. I was visiting their office on a regular basis and as a result of these visits, I was able to land an internship at TransCapital Bank in Moscow. I was assisting in the Treasury, Marketing and Accounting departments. This was an extremely intense experience as I was being taught many different facets and inner workings of how a bank operates on a day to day basis. I was responsible for assisting the management of liquidity and currency positions by making deals on interbank and foreign exchange markets. I was also responsible for processing daily accounting transactions along with arranging marketing materials for these transactions. Each day I started out by reading trade newspapers, stock reports and market trends. This would prepare me to be able to assist in writing marketing materials to disperse to our clients. Similar to Dwayne Lowery who was reading newspapers during his down time while he was working for the municipal utility department. “At the time I guess I got a little more interested in the state of things within the state. I started to get a little political at that time and got a little more information about local people. So I would buy [a metropolitan paper] and I would read that paper in the morning.” (Brandt 52) The materials