In today’s world education plays a vital role in everyone’s life. No matter what you do or what you intend to do, education is needed. It was clearly not the same in Frederick Douglas and Bich Minh Nguyen’s world. In both cases the author’s education wasn’t needed and took a back seat because of their race and other factors. Frederick Douglas the author of the article “Learning to Read and Write” shares his experience of how he educated himself but it didn’t bring any change in his life. Similarly Bich Minh Nguyen the author of the article “The Good Immigrant Student” shares her experience of how she wasn’t given importance based on the fact that she was a foreigner despite her being smart. Education maintains social hierarchies among minorities …show more content…
Frederick explains “When I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, ‘I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.’ I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that” (Douglas 80). The fact that the white boy wasn’t ready to believe that the author being the slave could write portrays racism. Douglas had to show him to actually make him believe that he could write. It literally shows that your class and your social status just shows your learning and not actually your education. The boy just assumed the author wouldn’t know cause he was a slave. Somewhat on the same path was Bich Minh Nguyen saying “ My quantity of gold stars was neck and neck with that of my two competitors, Brenda and Jennifer,... Week after week, the lion perched on Brenda’s desk or Jennifer’s desk” (Bich Minh Nguyen). The lion was the sign who was doing the best. Despite putting all her effort and doing so well the lion never came on the author’s table because the teacher wasn’t ready to accept that an immigrant can do so well. The author’s teacher, being racist in this case, doesn’t give credit to the author as she is Vietnamese yet treats Jennifer and Brenda better than her due to the fact that they are White. Again the education is not playing the main role but the race is which shouldn’t be the main factor.
Frederick Douglas the author of the article “Learning to Read and Write” and Bich Minh Nguyen the author of the article “ The Good Immigrant student” share their personal experience to show how education takes a back seat when you are a slave or an immigrant student. No matter how smart or educated one is, you are degraded as humans. Deprived of their freedom and treated with racism
In Douglass work, he mentions the significance of education. “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach
Mrs. Auld took the time to teach Douglass how to read and write before having her husband, Mr.Auld force her to stop. Mr. Auld’s reasoning for why he didn’t want Douglass to learn how to read resonated with Douglass and caused him to realize the importance of education. Mr. Auld told Mrs. Auld that “ Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. ... If you teach that nigger how to read there would be no keeping him.
After reading Frederick Douglass’s essay “How I Learned to Read and Write”, I found that it is a difficult read as it involves a lot of perplexing and unfamiliar language style. I had to take notes and highlight certain phrases and fragments in order to understand his life story about reading. At the beginning, it was challenging to understand the idea he was suggesting – how his struggle to read lead him to a new world for him and changed his perspective about slavery. However, in the end, the essay is almost self-explanatory as it concludes that he managed to learn how to write, enables him to communicate better. One of the biggest difficulties I had when reading this paper was due to the confusing language and metaphors that leads to the
Guzman,Alyssa At first glance Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Sandra Cisneros come from different worlds and are completely different people, they lived during different centuries and experienced different things. Frederick Douglass was a slave, Malcolm X was in prison and Sandra Cisneros was the only daughter in a family with six sons. What could these people possibly have in common? They all let reading and writing change their lives, but not necessarily for the better. Reading and writing liberated their mind and help them a better connection to their goal.
Many of us take education for granted and don’t learn to our fullest potential, but Fredrick Douglass soaked in every piece of information up because he knew it was his way out. “Learning to Read and Write” is a famous article based on what Fredrick Douglass went through to earn a valuable education while being enslaved. Author Fredrick Douglass, wrote “Learning to Read and Write”, published in 1845. Throughout the article, he takes us through different events he goes through while being enslaved. Douglass begins building his credibility with personal facts and successfully demonstrating logic and pathos appeal.
Today, you either get educated or you get stuck in a dead-end job without much prospect for the future. The gap between those with a higher education and those without one is becoming wider with advancements in technology and the growing competitiveness of the job market. There are many dangers of this gap. One such danger is the people who have a higher educations having the leisure to ignore those who are less educated. Joy Castro in her essays “Hungry” and “On Becoming Educated” discusses her life and educational journey.
Richard Rodriguez wrote “Scholarship Boy” to explain the range of conflicting emotions he felt over receiving an education while growing up at home with his immigrant parents. He enjoyed school and learned quickly, but soon he knew more than his parents could comprehend. He was ashamed of his parents for not knowing as much as he did and this drove him away from them and more towards his instructors and his books. Though his parents were proud of him, he struggled to feel anything but embarrassed of them and this affected how he viewed himself and the education he was blessed to have. When Gerald Gaff was young, he did not feel that books related to his life and that they, therefore, were not worth reading.
Frederick Douglass in his narrative “Why I learned to Read and Write” demonstrates how he surpassed many obstacles along the way towards getting an education. These obstacles not only shaped Frederick’s outlook on life but also influenced him in his learning to read and write. Frederick’s main challenge was that of not being an owner of his person but rather a slave and a property to someone else. Frederick Douglass lived in the time when slavery was still taking place and slaveholders viewed slavery and education as incompatible. The slave system didn’t allow mental or physical freedom for slaves; slaveholders were to keep the apt appearance and slaves were to remain ignorant.
African-American slaves were forbidden to obtain the knowledge of being able to read or write, stemming from the fear of white masters that educated slaves will overpower them. Douglass managed to learn to read by bribing poor and hungry white boys into teaching him in exchange for bits of bread. Douglass illustrates his thirst for literacy through “[The] bread [he] used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge” (pg 23). This reveals how much Douglass valued education and took advantage of all the knowledge he had access to. Today’s youth, especially the ones belonging to a minority
In the essays, “The Joy of Reading and Writing; Superman and Me” and Frederick Douglass’s “Chapter 7: Learning to Read and Write”, Sherman Alexie and Frederick Douglass write about their hardships and challenges they faced while learning how to read and write due to their social economic status. Despite the fact that Alexie and Douglass are incredibly different people, they both use education for freedom and a sense of self-worth. Alexie and Douglass both struggled to receive education and struggled mentally and physically because of their social economic status. Although, Alexie and Douglass both experienced these hardships, they saw the world through a totally different perspective. Alexie saw the world in a more positive manner than Douglass
Learning to Read and Write Fredrick Douglas was a well known figure in the abolishment movement his narrative “Learning to Read and Write” Fredrick Douglas shares his own personal journey of how he learns to read and write. His chronological organization also helps the reader get a better grasp of the stages in his life; his innocence, his epiphany, his loathing and his finally his determination. In the expert Douglas uses syntax and diction, intelligent metaphors and he use of irony to portray his thoughts that went through his mind as a slave.
Human slavery requires ignorance, just as an individual’s freedom, from oppression, requires knowledge attained by education. To maintain order and control over slaves, slavery demands ignorant slaves; thus, keeping slaves ignorant prevents slaves from recognizing the empowering value of education and education’s ability to liberate slaves from the effects of ignorance. Frederick Douglass’s pursuit of education helped him discover the dark, hidden truths of slavery in his article, “How I Learned to Read and Write.” Thus, the pursuit of education inspires a desire for freedom. The desire to learn generates determination and motivation.
Although chapter four of “The Boy’s Ambition” by Mark Twain and chapter five of Frederick Douglass's “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” were written in the 1800’s and tell about the author's childhood, they are written very differently. While Twain uses exaggeration to create humor, Douglass uses a formal diction to create ethos. The use of these writing techniques make each piece of writing believable and lasting. Although the situation for each author was very different, the similarities between the texts show the similarities in their character.
Tan noted that in general, Asian Americans perform better on math and science achievement exams than on English ones. The low representation could be the result of Asian American students who use broken or limited English being steered away from writing into math and science. Similarly, in “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María”, stereotypes and popular portrayals of Latina women as domestics or waitresses have partially led to the denial of opportunities for upward mobility among Latinas in the professions. Whether misrepresentations are brought on by the analysis of someone’s appearance or their linguistic abilities, those stereotypes and misjudgments can hinder the potential for growth and success of an individual within their
Douglass states: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” (Douglass 51). Reading and writing opened Frederick Douglass’s eyes to the cause of the abolitionist. He became knowledgeable about a topic that white slave owners tried to keep hidden from their slaves. Literacy would eventually impact his life in more ways than what he could see while he was a young slave under Master Hugh’s