Family and Literacy

“Family is one of the main literacy sponsors of a person because circumstances in the family affect the person’s literacy”. The family plays a significant role in promoting literacy to its members. Other than being sponsors of literacy in many ways, the family contributes much on one’s basic educations including first language and basics in social interaction, analytical skills in distinguishing things, as well as other forms of education. Early experiences in every person assist a lot in determining one’s brain structure in which case the brain is the key determinant of the way people learn, think, respond to challenges, and behave when interacting with other people. It is also argued that the skills one acquires before reaching the age of six sticks to people for a lifetime.

Economic or financial status of a family affects the literacy level or literacy capacity of the family members. A wealthy family is likely to ensure high level of literacy security to its members whereas a poor family may be influenced by circumstances to stop offering sponsorship to its members’ literacy through education. Brandt (175) says, “People who labor equally to acquire literacy do so under systems of un-equal subsidy and unequal reward.” A family may not act as a literacy sponsor adequately given that the head of the family has low literacy or is illiterate. Low literate individuals are likely to be unemployed making it hard to educate their young children, a process that may create a chain of illiteracy within the family for many generations. An instance of a chain of continuity in illiteracy is that of parents of a given family having been never graduated in high school, making it difficult to sponsor their children through high school. Other than being unable to sponsor its children in education, illiterate parents may hardly find the importance of education in children especially in a situation whereby the illiterate parents have succeeded in life through other efforts that hardly require the application of literacy. “There are a number of things that one can make about discourse”, says Gee (84). He says that such discourse form the basis for any family’s power and social status. Children disvalues their families based on its status and may not see the importance of being sponsored by such families and end up being illiterate of have a low literacy level. In such a family environment, children are likely to face many problems in education due to the various barriers and disadvantages in acquiring education through the family as the sponsor.

Parents with more education seem to be more prepared to sponsor their children through any level of education thereby exposing them to many opportunities in life. Other than being sponsors, family conditions may have a significant impact of a child’s ability and readiness to learn within a learning institution. Learning ability and readiness to learn may be affected by various factors such as one brain capacity, one’s content with the services offered within the learning institution, as well as the social relationships with other students and teachers. The key factor affecting a child’s performance in school is the family background including social aspects of the family and its economic conditions. The kind of literacy sponsorship influences greatly on a child’s education and performance. While children sponsored by their families seem to be satisfied with their sponsorship and being proud of their families, children having other kind of sponsorships may feel unsecure in that the sponsorship can be terminated any time given that the condition of the sponsorship are destructed. Literacy sponsorship may be affected by the family economic status even if the family is not the main sponsor of the child acquiring education. Gee (85) says, “Much of what we come by in life after our initial enculturation involves a mixture of acquisition and learning.”

In many cases, literacy sponsorship of those children from poor or low caste-races may be faced with issue. In a situation whereby the parents may not be in an economic position of sponsoring the education being offered to their children, sponsors may come in but in many case on condition that the child is great performer has some required attributes. Even if this sponsor comes around, it may come out that he or she is not a stronghold to the sponsorship and may terminate it at any given time. On the other hand, children within the origin of families with strong economic backgrounds get sponsorships that are too strong as compared to those children from the poor family backgrounds. The powerful literacy sponsors that the rich families’ students may receive are associated with the families’ economic or political privileges that seem consistent. In the case of poor students from poor family background as well as those from low-caste racial groups, there is less or no consistence in accessing literacy sponsorships. The economic and political conditions that could lead them to access powerful sponsorships are doomed by the poor family relationships with the powerful sponsors who in turn are from rich and successful family backgrounds. “I am sure that sponsors play even more influential roles at the scenes of literacy learning and use than this essay has explored” Brandt (183).

In many cases, the two groups of students show differences in performance attributed to their families and family backgrounds. These backgrounds are mainly education of their parents as well as their family income levels, which differ significantly. In many cases, family income is termed to be a function of the parents’ education in that the higher the level of education of the families, the higher the family’s level of income. Norms and values of the parents could also affect the children’s performance in a great deal. These norms are however hardly different within families of the same ethnicity or race but in families that differ in racial aspects. Performance in this case could be seen to differ due to difference in the level of exposure of the learners. Learners learning a certain aspect of technology could have real life exposure and experience of the technology as influence by their parents. Those having a greater exposure are likely to perform better and have a special interest in whatever they are learning. Children also do better when offered gift as Webb (6) say, that “sponsors can include commercial entities, such as companies who award prizes in a jingle-writing contest and restaurants who offer gift certificates to children who read a designated number of books, as well as institutions, such as the African-American church.”

At the same time, their parents gives them a better chance of interacting with great people and organizations from which they can get access to sponsorships and better jobs that can sustain any demands in higher levels of literacy or advanced skills’ acquisition. “While this shift in working conditions may be evidence of the deskilling of workers induced by the Industrial Revolution, it also offers a site for reflecting upon the dynamic sources of literacy and literacy learning” (Brandt 165). Form these various circumstances, it come out that a person’s family is one of the key literacy sponsors of on his or her literacy. The sponsorship may hardly be direct but the family’s conditions in terms of its background, racial factors, political influence, and economic conditions may play a key role in exposing the children of that particular family to literacy sponsorships. These various conditions would also determine the child’s performance at school due the satisfaction obtained from the family background, the family provisions such as possibility of acting as the sponsor, as well as the exposure provided by the family in education. Families therefore contribute much to their members’ literacy sponsorships and performance. “sponsors of literacy are more prolific, diffused, and heterogeneous” (Webb, 6)

Works Cited

Brandt, D. (1998). Sponsors of Literacy. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 49, Is. 2 , 165-185.

Gee, J. P. (1998). What is Literacy. Taylor and Francis Group.

Webb, S. (n.d.). A Family Affair: Competing Sponsors of Literacy in Appalachian Students’ Lives. Literacy in American Lives , 5-24.