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Literacy development is a process which is shaped by various forces such as sponsors, accessibility,

appropriation, and social status, however, while specific institutions and motives are deeply entrenched

into modern literacy education systems, such involvement went unnoticed by myself and continue to

remain unobvious to students who are distracted and in a state of challenge to enter the world of

literary understanding. It was not until recently that I began to really question societies motives for my

literacy acquisition, prior to questioning these motives I had assumed learning to be literate was just a

process of life, almost a necessity such as learning to walk or talk, however now I realize the economic

and political implications and advantages of a literate society, and the positive attributes of evolving

such a community.

For me, my true literacy development began with my entry into elementary school, prior to this my

knowledge of reading and writing was relatively developed as my brother, who is three years older than

me, was entering the second grade as an above average English and reading student. While I was no

stranger to the principle of the alphabet, flashcards, and oversized pen and paper, which I had seen my

brother use, I lacked the analytical skills of understanding any applicable use for literature, and viewed

the idle time my brother spent staring at pages to be a waste of daylight. Eventually though, mythoughts concerning the action of reading and writing transformed as the introduction of simple well

illustrated stories altered my perception towards the practice. This began with the memorization of a

simple story by studying the pictures and then connecting said pictures with words and phrases, the

most prominent book I recall using this method on is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. My brother and

parents all recall reading that book to me and watching me attempt to guess at the words as the pages

turned, and over time I was able to read the book to myself and it was somewhat of a trophy which I

read to close family friends and grandparents. While my literacy skills were far from developed at this

point of my life, I had a false sense of my ability which remained active until I was asked to read a

different book, one which lacked the picture, word, phrase connection system which was a science in

my first book. This new literature was a name book purchased for me from my aunt, it featured me,

Cody, in a set of adventures with my imaginary dinosaur friend. This customizable book was a novelty

and sparked my interest due to its insertion of myself, mainly my name, into the text. Perhaps this is the

first true example of a book I independently read, and it was the story which was told not only by the

pictures but mainly by the text.

Following my introduction to general literacy skills, my influence from large scale institutions and

sponsors concerning literacy became evermore apparent. Events hosted both by my elementary school

as well as the local library for interactive storytelling, writing exercises, and practice became a common

occurrence in my weekly schedule. The goals of these sponsors were, as introduced by Brandt, a notable

English professor specializing in literacy research, to gain both political power, in the case of myelementary school, and economic stature, in the case of my public library. At the time of my

participation within these literacy developments methods I was unaware of the institutional goals which

overshadowed the activities. Perhaps the goals of these institutions were harmless towards my literacy

acquisition and evolution, however I do find it interesting to discover that school standing, library

funding, and even teacher stature from test scores were the underlying motives of my main literacy

sponsors. Not only does this revelation reveal the implications of a literacy based society, being political

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and economic desire, but it also invites me to analyze the changing literacy requirements expected from

higher education students.

As a student who attended school through the public education system of Florida, I have been subject to

the repetitive nature of mastering standardized test taking skills, and in my opinion, this portion of time

in my education was harmful towards the evolution of my English literacy career. Until now I had nottaken the opportunity to gather my thoughts on the degrading nature of such tasks, with rewards only

or high test scores, resulting in economic profit for the school system, as well as local political

prominence for the successful administrators of the testing material. I believe that the formulaic

processes which standardized tests force students to compute restrict their ability to achieve gains in

literacy understanding and evolution. Perhaps, this should be considered a danger of standardized

testing, not only due to its restrictive nature and formulaic stance, but mainly because of the impacting

period of a students life in which these requests are being implemented. As a high school student, my

literature and language classes were fixated on the achievement of high testing scores on a final exam,

and due to this overarching goal of the course I felt that much of my time was spent studying the exam

rather than the true pillars of literature, and due to the timing of the courses, being at the end of myhigh school career, I had lost interest in the study or consumption of literature of any kind.

Overall literacy achievement, for me, has been an ongoing processes sense my older brother began to

study the building blocks of literature. While it hasnt been until recently that I have taken the time to

collect my thoughts concerning my literacy evolution, upon the study I have come to realize the mass

number of influences which society, my family, politics, and economics have had on my knowledge of

literature, as well as the level at which I am able to analyze literary works. In summary literacy for me is

a growth, which over time allows for a deeper understanding of social connections, which can be

analyzed on various degrees of experience, and though these understandings literacy reveals itself to be

the foundation for an efficient society centered around the development of deeper, more diverseunderstandings of literacy.