Connor
Klosterman
One article for this week was
written by Deborah Brandt, an English Professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. After receiving her
Ph.D., Brandt accepted a position with the University of Wisconsin and is where
she has been for the past 30 years.
During her time at the University, Brandt has written a multitude of
book chapters and articles focusing on literacy studies. From these writings she has received many
awards, including the most prestigious award in the education field, the
Grawemeyer Award. She received this
award because of her outstanding book, Literacy
in American Lives, published in 2001 (Deborah),
which is a text she wrote to show the connection between the rising standards
of literacy in America and how those standards affect the different
socioeconomic classes of the American people.
The piece is widely considered to be one that has made significant
contributions to field of literacy studies (Literacy).
The article we read is from Brandt’s
book, Literacy in American Lives, and
focuses on how socioeconomic status either hinders someone attempting to become
more literate or helps them in their efforts to try to succeed. Someone who is economically well off has a
better likelihood of having higher literate skills than someone who is not well
off and also has a greater chance at significantly improving their literate
abilities (Brandt, 2001, p. 169-170). Brandt
developed a case study to better demonstrate her point.
The study followed two individuals,
Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez, as they moved to a university town and tried to
develop different literacy skills outside of school. Branch learned programming of computer
software while Lopez learned how to speak Spanish. Because Branch’s family had a socio-economical
advantage, it was much easier for him to get materials to help him become more
literate in his second language. Lopez
on the other hand, had very few options to turn to. Brandt argues the difference in availability
of resources, poor for Lopez and great for Branch, made a large impact on the different levels of success the two parties experienced and their ability to enhance their literate skills
in their second language (Brandt, 2001, p. 172-185).
The question of whether Branch and
Lopez had such a different experience in becoming more literate because of
their socioeconomic status is something that is still up in the air. Branch was pursuing a second language in a
rising field that was changing every aspect of society. Lopez learned a second language that had
little no use in her setting. It is
possible that Branch had a much more successful experience in learning his
second language because there were more resources for him to get involved in
because there was an effort to try to enhance the field. Lopez might have struggled in her pursuance
of a second language not because she did not have access to what was out there
but because there simply was not anything out there to have access to. These ideas leave us with questions that we
try to answer as we move through the Information Era.
Works Cited
Brandt,Deborah. “The Means of Production: Literacy and
Stratification at the Twenty-first Century” Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2001. 169-86. Print.
“Deborah Brandt.” – John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. N.p., 2014. Web. 08 Sept.
2014
“Literacy in American Lives.” – Print View. N.p., 2014. Web. 08 Sept. 2014.
The
below articles reaffirm what Brandt demonstrated in her book by discussing how
low socioeconomic status hinders the ability of people to excel in a literate
manner.
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