The word literacy could be one of the more diverse
words in the English language. A simple word like apple may have different feeling associated with it, but when it comes down to what an apple is, everyone would agree that it is a piece of fruit that grow off of a tree. Literacy on the other hand has many different working definitions that come from peoples different experiences with it. Every single person has a different view and perception of what it actually means that comes from their past experiences with literature. When you ask someone what literacy means, you may get a simple response that correlates with the Webster dictionarys definition, but if you ask them what it means to them, you would most likely get a different response from every person. Deborah Bradit wrote an article called The Sponsors of Literacy. In this text, she describes how everyones view of literacy is shaped by the past experiences they had with literacy. She then introduces the idea of sponsorship to explain the things that have shaped our view of literacy. A sponsor is anything that has influenced us in terms of literacy. This could be anything from a book that we loved to read when we were a kid, to a teacher or parent who introduced us to reading and writing. This idea is key in understanding and interpreting the different definitions of literacy to make one all encompassing definition that can account for all the diversity that comes with the term. The first example I would like to give is Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a criminal with very little education before he went to prison. If you were to ask him what literacy was before prison, he probably would have told you that he did not know and did not care. While in prison he had a very strong encounter with literature and quickly learned to read and write properly. He started to learn to read and write through a dictionary, which was one of his main sponsors. He was memorized with learning how to speak properly in letters and who to understand a sea of words that he had never heard before. He started to read and write more and more and soon he became very literate. Now before jail, people who accept the dictionarys definition would say that Malcolm X was not very literate. Malcolm, on the other hand, would say that before prison he was very literate. He may not have spoke properly but he understood the street slang better than most. Just because he was not literate in the literal sense, does not mean he did not understand language. When taking into consideration Malcolm Xs story, literacy could be defined more correctly as not only being able to read and write, but also being able to understand literature also. Many people could read an organic chemistry textbook and recognize the words in the book, but that does not mean they understand them also. To me, being literate also has a understand component to it. Also, Malcolm's experience with literacy was shaped because of his sponsor. If he had not come into contact with the dictionary, then he may have never had that deeper connection with literacy that helped him form a more in depth definition of literacy. The second example I would like to show is Sherman Alexie. When it comes to Sherman Alexie, I think that he would describe literacy differently than Malcolm X. Alexie a Native American who lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation for the beginning of his life. There is where he had his first encounter with literacy. His father was a very avid reader and would read anything he could get his hands onto. Because of this, Alexie became a very avid reader also. He started to pick up his father's books at an early age of 3 and would just look at the pages. He could understand the words but he soon began to understand paragraphs. He describes them as a fence that held words. He then started to look at comic books and put together what words meant according to what the pictures portrayed. Even though he was not literate in the formal sense, he started to become more literate as soon as he started to understand the concept of paragraphs. Now the whole reason that Alexie started his endeavors was because of his father. His biggest sponsor was his father. The love for his father leads him to love literature. He had very positive connotations associated with literature because his dad loved literature so much. I feel like this gives him a much deeper understanding of literature because he knows it as such a personal and intimate level. This may shape his view of literacy and cause him to define it with more emotion than someone else who did not have a sponsor that helped them gain a love for literature. As for me, I have a very different experience with literature. My whole family is more focused around science and math. The biggest influence was my grandfather who is an engineer. From a very young age I would go with him to his workshop and we would build things together. He taught me how to weld, wire electrical circuits, make wooden cabinets and so much more. The more time I spent with him the more I became interested in how things worked and how I could build things. Before I even realized it I started to see the world in a different way and I wanted to understand how things worked. He is no doubt one of my biggest sponsors because he changed the way I looked at the world and shaped me into who I am today. This may not seem like an experience with literature but this is the precursor to what happened in high school to really shape how I see see literature and how i was able to articulate my definition of literacy and literature. My experiences with literature in the sense of reading and writing has been mundane. I never had a defining moment like Malcolm X or Alixe where I fell in love with words and wanted to explore the whole world of reading and writing. However, there was a time where I started to see numbers as more than just symbols on a page. Throughout high school you are required to take different math classes. I didn't like them the best, but they were not my least favorite either. I was more indifferent about math until eleventh grade. This is when I started taking classes with my favorite teacher I have ever had, Mrs. Taylor. She taught higher level math courses like Calculus and Physics and in these classes, I started to see number as answers to questions in the world instead of just tedious symbols that would give you a headache if you stared at them for too long. She was the biggest influence on me to help me see that math is actually enjoyable if you look at it the right way. My view of numbers and math has grown exponentially over the past few years due to the spark that was lit inside of me by my highschool teacher, Mrs. Taylor. She is one of the bigger reasons that my major is Mechanical Engineering and not Biology, because before I had her for 2 years straight, I was planning to become a Biology major and go to medical school. Now I am trying in integrate my love for biology and math into one profession. Because we have already extended the term literacy to be more broadly defined as understand reading and writing, I think that it can also talk about reading and writing numbers. Numbers depict a certain language just like words, and even though everyone isn't always fluent in language of Calculus, it doesn't mean that it isn't literature also. I think that when using the term literacy for math, it is more referring to the understanding side of that definition than the reading and writing side. This means that math can be used in many different ways and the same ten digits can create innumerable combinations and possibilities. This being said, I would still argue that both literature consisting of words has high correlation to literature consisting of numbers. Literature has a wonderful ability to describe the world around us. I think that numbers have the same ability, you just have to interpret them differently. If someone were to say they say a car driving and it almost hit a deer, but it slammed on the brakes and the deer was spared. Using physics, I can explain to you why the car was able to stop due to friction between the wheels of the car and the road, and various other forces acting on the car. Both representations got the point across that the car stopped and did not hit the deer, one was more graceful and elegant, and the other more analytical and informational. Nevertheless they both got the point across and were able to get the information to the viewer that the deer was spared and the car stopped, they just used different methods to convey that information. Because I am very curious about how the world works, the math side of literature appeals to me more. I love to understand how and why things work. As you have seen my definition of literacy and literature is very different than those of Malcolm X and Alixe. That is due to the fact that I had very different sponsors than them. My two biggest sponsors were my grandfather and my high school math teacher. They shaped me into loving to understand how things work and how math can tell a story just like words on a page can. On the other hand, Malcolm X and Alixe had sponsors that encouraged them to read and write and so therefore their definitions of literacy and literature differ greatly from mine. This does not mean that one person is wrong or right, but all of out definitions can combine into one great definition that helps explain the more in depth yet braod term that encompases every defination of literacy. To conclude I would say that through reading about different peoples experiences with literacy and combining them with my own that a better definition of literacy would look more like this. Literacy is the not only having the ability to read and write but also being able to understand and what you are reading and writing. To fully understand this definition you have to also define literature because the two are directly correlated. Literature is anything that is is written that conveys information. This encompassed eveything from words that tell fantastic stories about dungeons and dragons to numbers that explain how heat moves through metal. Regardless literature is a very broad yet very deep and personal term that can be used to help literacy become a much more diverse and rich term. Literacy does not have to be just for English scholars who have a large vocabulary and read many books, it is for everyone who understands their own form of literature. This definition is a much better fit for what literacy is because literature is shaped by so many different things. Every sensor is different and therefore everyone's expression of literature is different. Hopefully exploring what literature and literacy really is has opened you eyes to a more diverse view of what literature is because it has surely opened my eyes to see so many different perspectives and the more you can see through others eyes, the better will be able to understand the term.