Frederick Douglass Influence On Education

Frederick Douglass Education allows us to see the world in a new light and gives us opportunities to better ourselves. To be educated can mean many things but in many ways becoming educated can liberate us. It can liberate us from socio-comic strains or simply from our own stubborn opinions. Through the process of becoming “educated” we can learn to see things from a whole different perspective. For Frederick Douglass, education allowed him to become aware of the cruelty and disgusting truth of slavery. Mrs. Auld was Douglass’s mistress in Baltimore. She was very kind to him and even taught him the alphabet with the intention of eventually teaching him how to read and write. However, once her husband found out about this he quickly made …show more content…
From my grand-parents down to my parents and my sisters and I, education has liberated us from what was to be our reality. Unlike Frederick Douglass’s case, education was able to free us both mentally and physically. My grand-parents pushed education on my father from the beginning. This pushing and encouragement allowed him to succeed and escape the poor upbringings in El Salvador’s coffee picking country side. Once my mom married my father, he also encouraged her to pursue education and so she immediately begin her college career. Unfortunately the dangerous reality of our country eventually pushed us out. My parents left everything they had achieved behind in hopes that my sisters and I could achieve greater things in the United …show more content…
It is special because in many ways education can be both oppressive and liberating. I have experience it, and it can be very confusing. Many times you feel encouraged to do well but at the same time you realize that your instructors have set limitations to your own success without knowing your capabilities. I remember one incident in particular at Dowling. I was putting together my schedule for the senior year with my counselor. I told him that I would like to take American Lit instead of creative writing because I enjoyed reading. In response he said to me “Are you sure? there is a lot of HARD reading” as if I was not capable of reading the Scarlett Letter at the same pace and level of my peers. As I said before, it is very hard to perform well when your own instructors have already set low expectations from you. In my case, it was those very low expectations that inspired me to over achieve above and beyond what I could imagine for myself. It was through that process of achieving what they thought I couldn’t that I was able liberate myself from the pre-conceived stereotypes that had been set upon