Frederick Douglass Importance Of Education Essay

The past weeks we have read a book named Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The book is about a former slave named Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery which he didn’t fully understand until a later stage of his life. The book addresses his life as a slave and how he came to understand the meaning of slavery in a segregated world where white supremacy existed. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the author Douglass mentions the importance of education and how it helped him to freedom but at the same time how painful it was to learn the truth of how Africans ended up as slaves in the first place. In the book, Mr. Douglass challenges many of the beliefs of the slaveholders and the purpose of education, and how …show more content…
After Douglass moved to Baltimore his new master, master Auld wife taught him how to read and write. Once master Auld found out what his wife was doing he yelled at his wife saying, “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (63). This shows that the slave owners wanted to keep the slaves as ignorant as possible. They were afraid if the slaves got educated they would demolish the belief that slaves couldn’t learn anything and they would lose order and law in the system. Not only that but they also knew that nothing was going to keep them in chains anymore because master Auld himself said: “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell” (63). I think what master Auld meant by this is if the slaves got the education and became just like the white people there would be nothing to stop the slaves from enslaving the white people because the white people in the first place used education to enslave the colored …show more content…
The white people believed that those colored people couldn’t learn anything in the first place so having a slave learn how to read and write would stand against everything the slave system stood for so they basically made it unlawful because it was unsafe for the white slave owners (63). If somebody is not ignorant it’s going to be very hard to keep that person imprisoned because the slave owners wanted a slave that knows nothing but to obey his master 's orders (63). This shows by keeping the slave out of the bigger picture they are able to control them because if the slaves do not know more than what they are told they are dependent on their slave owners.
After Douglass learned how to read he learned that he was actually enslaved by the white race by stealing his ancestors from Africa. Upon learning this Douglass could not stop thinking about his situation, how his people were stolen from their continent to work for white men and as a result this pained Douglass very much and not so long after he learned how his people ended up as slaves he started to plan a way to escape which is not surprising because master Auld himself said that a slave who is educated would never be fit to be a true slave