Brandt: "Sponsors of Discourse"

In Deborah Brandt's essay "Sponsors of Literacy", there is a great deal of analyzing literacy and how it compares to socio-economic status and other economic factors. I especially was drawn to her two examples of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez, who grew up in the same city and went to the same college, but ended up with two very different views and ideas of literacy. Branch's "sponsor" included his parents and their abilities to provide the best of the best for him, unlike Lopez's parents, who provided adequate, but not nearly as prosperous tools for her to expand her knowledge. Here, Brandt explains that differences occur not only due to how "one social group's literacy practices may differ from another's, but how every body's literacy practices are operating in different economies, which supply different access routes, different degrees of sponsoring power, and different scales of monetary worth to the practices in use" (Brandt 561). I thought this was particularly important not just for the lives of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez, but for thousands of others who are growing up in different areas of a city or state, and how one's education and literacy will differ from someone else who had greater opportunities at their school and from their parents.

Delpit: "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse"

In Lisa Delpit's essay, "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse", there is an argument that Gee's idea of discourses send racial messages to African-Americans and their ability to engage in certain discourses. First off, I found it ironic that Delpit referred to two of the writers we read about in class (Hooks and Rose).   But more seriously, I have to say I agree with her findings. I think the most important part that she realized was that the learning of the discourses doesn't have to heavily rely on the student, and that the teachers play a huge role in removing the sense of racism and inability that some students may encounter when trying to become part of a discourse.

Deplit does this by first saying "teachers must acknowledge and validate students' home language without using it to limit students' potential" (553). She is accurate by saying that students may learn best by using their home language, and that shouldn't be denied in the classroom because that isn't what is used in other discourses. I like her idea of "adding" (533) to a students home discourse.

Her second rule of thumb for teachers is that "[teachers] must understand that students who appear to be unable to learn are in many instaces choosing to "not-learn"...choosing to maintain their sense of identity in the face of what they perceive as a painful choice between allegiagne to "them" or "us" " (533). I almost think this goes with the first part Delpit explained, as the best way to get students able to learn is to let them use their own home discourse mixed with the discourse the teacher is trying to teach. Its important for students to gain a sense of security from a teacher. Security in the discourse comes from a teacher who isn't going to judge a student because he uses his home discourse over the one the teacher wants the student to learn.

Delpits final idea is that teachers should "acknoweldge the unfair "discourse-stacking" that our society engages in" (554). I like that she wants teachers to realize when they are "stacking" and when they are "mixing" discourses, because there is a difference. Discourses are better learned when they are mixed in to a student's home discourse.

Gee: Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics

I found James Paul Gee's essay titled "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics" and "What is Literacy?" very interesting in how he gives another meaning to the word discourse. Discourse isn't just something we say, it's what we represent ourselves as. After reading the entire essay, I think that the most substantial thing that stood out to me the greatest was that Gee discussed how language isn't "just how you say it, but what you are and do when you say it" (Gee 525).
How many times have we all noticed someone saying the complete opposite of what they are doing? We title people like those hypocrites, and while Gee wasn't getting at that, I thought it was a comparable word. Like Gee goes on to explain, we can see how this "language" affects interviews, work, home, school, friends, and other social affairs (Gee 525-26). I had never thought of "language" this way; I had always thought of it in terms of the dictionary defintion. Its interesting that language is more than just grammar and sentences. It's actions and representations of a person, and this idea lead into Gee's idea of "Discourses" (Gee 526).

"The Banking Concept of Education"-Paolo Freire

Paolo Freire talks about a complicated subject of the forms of education in his essay, "The Banking Concept of Education". This was a particularly difficult read for me, as I struggled with most of the sentence structure and vocabulary, so I will apologize if I have a total misconception of some of his ideas!


Although I struggled, one area that stood out to me was Freire's idea of narration:
      "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher."...."Education thus becomes an act of depositing." (Freire 74)


I found it particularly interesting that Freire was accurate that sometimes students are "deposited" with information. When I think of a deposit, I just think of money sitting in the bank. This idea of students just being given information is quite common for some. I know I have had information just dumped on me in several classes. Freire is emphasizing the importance of teachers to not just give information but to make it important so that it has meaning and isn't just "sitting" in their banks. While some things require memorization, most should not, and students shouldn't have to memorize monotonous information, as Freire implies. Its important for the information to hold meaning, and for students to not become just dumpsters full of teachers' knowledge. 


Another realization I have, is that Freire talks about teachers being better than students, and with this act of "filling the container", teachers are therefore placed higher or better than students. The best kind of education is when a student asks questions that further what a teacher has already talked about. If a teacher is just giving all that he or she knows, that doesn't necessarily make them any better than the student who now knows the same information. The best education is the kind where students enlighten teachers to know more and for students to learn more on their own. This would prevent the deposit of teachers and would reduce the banking of knowledge of students.

"Engaged Pedagogy" Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks' essay "Engaged Pedagogy" struck me as an extremely important way for teachers to view education, but also for students, and their expectations for education. I really enjoyed reading this essay, One idea that Hooks talked about  in the essay stated "They (students)  do want knowledge that is meaningful. They rightfully expect that my colleagues and I will not offer them information without addressing the connection between what they are learning and their overall life experiences." (Hooks 71)

This idea spoke out to me. I don't know how many times that I have sat in a classroom, thinking, "Why is this important to me, and when am I ever going to use this?" Hooks speaks of the importance of students seeing a real-life connection to the subjects they are learning. Without these experiences, the information is meaningless to most. I think it's beneficial to both students and teachers to realize and see how important it is to make the information meaningful. When students can see why what they are learning is important to not only themselves, but to their own professors who are teaching them, they see the relevance of the things they are learning.

Not only does hearing how an idea became real-life to someone else render as important, it also shows that there is more to learning than just reading and writing papers to get a grade and a degree. I learn everyday, but the most meaningful lectures are the ones that I can apply to my own life. When I leave a lecture hall, I like walking out thinking, "Wow, so and so really explained why (blank) happened to me." Otherwise, like a meaningless lecture, I think we sometimes do things without caring why we do them. When teachers give real life experiences that relate the ideas they are teaching and show the importance of what we are learning, we get answers for the question "WHY" and that makes everything more interesting and meaningful. Otherwise, if it doesn't apply to real life in anyway, what is the significance? Who cares?

"The Achievment of Desire"

Richard Rodrigues battled the life of being a Spanish-speaking American in a lower-income family, whose parent's never truly got a great education. His adolescence is masked by books and the desire to learn, and his family ties are thus "broken".

I think it is interesting to see that Rodrigues realized how much of his life he "missed" because of his devotness to learning. I think whats most compelling is that its not just that he was determined to learn, he was determined to be better than his parents. In some ways, he was right in wanting to succeed in life, and do more than just basic educaton and factory jobs. I think he was misguided not by the passion of learning, but from the intensity and insanity that he developed from it. In a way, I think Rodrigues alienated himself from the rest of his life in order to achieve a goal that he hadn't quite figured out until the very end of his "education". It is almost sad to know that the whole time he was learning and alienating himself, he would come back years from then, realizing everything he had done was only to bring him back to his family. Its not sad that family was the "end-all" for him, but that he had dissociated himself from them for so many years. 

I think that this essay describes how education can change us all, and in a way, we lose a little of ourselves inorder to obtain something from someone else. Its just up to us to determine how much we want to give up, perhaps?

Inventing the University

David Bartholomae speaks of students discovering their audience and how to communicate with that audience in his essay, "Inventing the University". He also makes a point that students learn to develop their writing from basic to great, and he does this by stating "...sentences fall apart not because the writer lacks the necessary syntax to glue the pieces together but because he lacks the full statement within which these key words are already operating" (Bartholomae 523).


I think that this sentence says a lot about all of us as writers. I think the biggest struggle sometimes is not what to say as much as it is how to say what we are trying to write. Bartholomae continues this idea about the author of the "Clay Model" essay by stating "While writing, and in the thrust of his need to complete the sentence, he has the key words but not the utterance" (523). Again, Bartholomae reiterates the fact that we sometimes have all the right words and ideas, but we can't always put them on paper in a way that appeals to our readers, let alone in a way that makes sense or describes what we are trying to say. I think its important to realize that we can repeat ourselves over and over when one complete sentence can deliver an idea. I think its just a matter of whether or not we have learned to write in such a complex way.


Another idea is that sometimes our vocabulary is so basic that it doesn't deliver the message we are trying to get across. Bartholomae excersizes this idea when we explains how a student needs to learn the discourse of the setting, by "learning [our] language" (511). It's like he wants us to be able to write like English professors, which is who we all initially believe is the sole audience of our writing.  In reality, we're writing to each other, but we forget that we still need to write in a way that delivers our message, and that usually includes writing in a way that sounds like we're writing to a higher power than ourselves (aka a teacher). 


Going from a "good" writer to a "great" writer is just figuring out how to deliver a message in our writing. As my aunt Lauren told me (who was a former high school English teacher), "you wouldn't use the words "cool" to describe a meteor shower, you'd use "scintillating" to be explicit in your description." Just using a more complex word already gives the reader a greater understand of how amazing the meteor shower actually was. I think its important to understand that what seperates us from "good" to "great" is how we deliver the message.