The literacy success narrative influences incentives and compliance by putting this idea in our heads that literacy leads to success. “Literacy as success master narrative in one personal story has many of these same negative results, including a bauve and partial understanding of literacy and ones relationship of it’’ (Deborah Brandt). Deborah Brandt, literacy scholar states “literacy looms as one of the great engines of profit and competitive advantage” Drawing a connection between literacy and making money.  Such abundant focus on master narratives, blinds novices of literacy (students) to other incentives, like self fulfillment. Master narrative “according to Jean Francois Lyotard, is an overarching story people tell themselves about their experience in relation to culture, literature or a history of society” (Deborah Brandt). James Paul Gee a literacy scholar points out that “apprentice someone in a master apprentice relationship in a social practice (discourse) where you scaffold their growing ability to say, do, value, believe, and so forth, within that discourse you demonstrate your mastery and supporting theirs when it barely exists” I elaborate on this idea of having someone guide another in an area of expertise, and the impact that can have on a beginner.

 

While Gee claims, “Social groups will not usually give their social goods whether these are status or solidarity or both- to those who are not natives or fluent users,”  Teachers do not get into the business of teaching literacy for money or access to “social goods”(Gee). They work to benefit others. The teacher’s incentives are to help the student grow and prosper. Students (novices) need to comply to their Teachers (sponsors), to receive the education, experience, and a passing grade in their current course. Sponsors of literacy according to the literacy scholar Deborah Brandt are “agents local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy”. Being a member of an educated community, is a social imperative for some. This is an example of an incentive to be literate. Incentives “something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity” (www.dictionary.com). When your able to communicate with someone on an educated level, your able to get more out of that interaction. People want to feel a sense of belonging, if someone can’t connect with another by words, it can lead to a lack of understanding each other. If you can’t understand someone, it leaves a lot more room for assumptions and judgments.  

 

Compliance is very much related to incentives. For example, if you are an apprentice the incentive to comply with your mentor (sponsor) is how you are going to get into the discourse and eventually reep the benefits of social goods. The entire apprenticeship is about complying with the instructor in order to advance. Deborah Brandt says “sponsors nevertheless set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty” Just as anyone in an apprenticeship, you need to comply with others who are higher on totem pole than yourself, or you won’t make it. The idea of sponsorship requires one to lead and another to follow, in most cases. These sponsors are of high importance to their predecessors. So much that as Deborah Brandt explains  “sponsors seemed a fitting term for the figures who turned up most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning; older relatives, teachers,priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, influential authors.”

 

Novice skill level (beginners) are not the only ones who get the privilege of reaping the benefits of the specialized training they receive from their sponsor. The sponsor themselves “lend resources or credibility to the sponsor but also stand to gain benefits from their success, whether by direct repayment, or indirectly by credit of association” (Brandt) For example if a orchestra teacher at a school, takes a young aspiring violin player, and this new member of the arts, who is trying to learn to play, ends up being a world class violinist one day, the sponsor benefits by credit of association, years after, when the sponsored has mastered the discourse. If a Private Piano teacher does daily lessons with their client, they’re benefiting from this with direct payment. Literacy narratives tell an author’s experiences with literacy, culture, or history of a society. According to Daria Letcher in the Rising Cairn Literacy Narrative “Education”,  “My family put a lot of pressure on education because of my family history” (n.p.) This literacy narrative opens up the impression that that could be the biggest force behind her incentives to perform well in the classroom. Possibly to live up to her family’s expectations. Most teenagers that are raised with the intention to succeed in education, would say their relationship with their parents is greatly influenced by their academic performance. Nobody wants to disappoint their parents.

 

The conclusions I have drawn here are that Literacy is driven by Compliance and Incentives. People comply in order to receive incentives later on. The constant development in Literacy is in the hands of sponsors. “Obligations towards one’s sponsor runs deep, affecting what, why, and how people read” (brandt).  That is a reference to the effectiveness and the foremost power sponsors bear. With that kind of esteem presence comes responsibility to direct that influence in the right direction. A negative effect that associating literacy with success can have is as Alexander writes “ one consequence is a view of literacy as utilitarian and practical, a means to an end rather than something that can serve other purposes, such as pleasure, satisfaction, self awareness, self expression, or learning for learning’s sake”  The big problem with success stories is the idea that drives it, the more capable someone is when it comes to literacy, the more the success he or she will be. Having a preconceived notion that you will receive profit or prosperity based off of the level of literate skill you posses, is a major false sense of security. If we as students are always thinking or expecting we’ll receive an award, it is a bad mindset for learning. Real life doesn’t hand out awards for completing every task. Real life doesn’t give you a positive outcome every time you overcome a problem. As Alexander writes” When we view literacy as serving specific means, we limit it’s influence and affect.” I think this statement goes hand in hand with expecting too much. The cognizance and realization that literacy doesn’t always lead straight to achievement, is imperative to novices with having a realistic mindset to literacy.

 

Works Cited

Rising Cairn Daria Letcher   “education”

James Paul Gee   (1989) pp. 5-25 The journal of Education Vol. 171 No. 1 Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics

Kara Poe Alexander (2011) pp. 609-633 CCC 62:4 Success, Victims and prodigies:

Deborah Brandt Literacy Scholar