The Joy Of Reading And Writing: Superman And Me

Most of us learn to read through various outlets such as television, books, movies, etc. Becoming literate is essential to functioning in society. Looking back at one of the most influential figures of the 1960’s, it is hard to imagine that at age 21 Malcolm X tried to start a letter with “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat…” (X 256). He spent 7 years in prison for robbery, and during that time he underwent a self-metamorphosis. His way of putting it is “books opened up a whole new world to me” (260). History, philosophy, genetics and a whole dictionary all contributed to his learning process. But, as he learned more, he found the terrors of slavery and the other atrocities that the white man had brought upon the

In both The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, literacy and education play a key role. The education of a man gives him power, and can determine his stature or influence in the community. Literacy gives a man an insight to knowledge that can be important. By developing characters with different levels of education, Khaled Hosseini and Harper Lee develop and strengthen the idea that literacy and education are dangerous tools, and can make the difference between life and death. Khaled Hosseini and Harper Lee depict literacy as both helpful and harmful. They also show how being uneducated leads to being taken advantage of. Using these ideas they strengthen the idea of educating and literacy being

Since the past, black people had been oppressed and excluded from a formal education, leading them to find ways to educate themselves. While they open their minds to new worlds and perspectives, they encounter themselves with a disastrous world that discriminates them and unjustly takes their rights away from them. In these essays, “Learning How to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, both authors tell their stories about how they found their way into the world of literacy even though they were banned to do it. Because they left ignorance back, they realize all the injustices that surround them. In my opinion, literacy is one of the most important tool humans possess to be aware of the issues of the world. Knowing about world problems makes people able to decide how to act towards situations and helps avoid being led by people that the only thing they want from others is power.

Literacy is power. Being taught to read and write is important to function in society. You learn to read and write to express your feelings and communicate with others. Frederick Douglass and Malcom X both succeeded in learning how to read and write, but in different ways. The education of Malcolm X was learned more formally. Frederick Douglass learned from his surroundings and the people around him. Malcom and Frederick battled in reading and writing, but learned in similar and different ways.

In Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read”, we learn the story of how Malcolm turned his how life around while serving a sentence he earned from a robbery in 1964, which lead him to spend seven years in jail. During this time, Malcolm discovered the power that reading and self educating himself brought to his consciousness. Who would have known that this man’s entire life would of changed and transformed him into one of the biggest political figures of our time. He himself probably never would've guessed that this would of been his fate while he was in prison serving time for a crime he committed before his enlightenment. A negative choice he made which ultimately altered the path he was destined to go down, Malcolm X is the prime example of how change is possible for anyone as long as you start within yourself.

In the Daily Gazette, Micaela Baranello states that Diane Anderson, a Swarthmore Education professor, emphasized, “The importance of realizing that just because students speak outside of the dominant discourse does not mean they are deficient, but rather that they are different” (Baranello). This demonstrates that if someone is different somehow, it should not degrade them, and that is what both Gloria Anzaldua in How to Tame a Wild Tongue and Frederick Douglass in Learning to Read explain in their texts. Even though Anzaldua promotes language identity while Douglass encourages an overall education, they both promote social justice and tolerance through the role of literacy.

James Baldwin was an African American author who grew up in Harlem. In his “Talk to Teachers”, he discusses how society connects to education. He shows that society shapes a child’s education by conditioning and telling them how to view their place in life. According to Baldwin, society shows that there are unfair rules and regulations in a country that is supposed to believe and practice freedom. When the child grows up, they will realize that they do not have equal opportunities as other children and will then question their own identities. To fix these contradictions, Baldwin believes education should “create the ability to look at the world for himself.” He also believed that a child should “examine everything in order to achieve change and a sense of their own identity.”

In the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, racism and prejudice are clearly evident and talked about throughout the novel. The novel expresses the oppression of the blacks under a white-ruled society through the narrator, Grant. Grant is a well-educated black man who struggles to free himself from the oppression he has felt from the white community. Despite the fact that he is educated and a teacher, he initially lacks the vigor needed to take the first step against black discrimination. He has all this intellect, but does not realize until later on that it is not only intelligence he needs to overcome the oppression, but self-assertion, too. Education does not prove your intellectual worth in society; rather, it is what you do during difficult times that define your intelligence and strong character not just to yourself, but to the world.

It can be quite a shock to confront the possibility that reading, writing, and talking exercise almost none of the powers we regularly attribute to them in our favorite stories. The dark night of the soul for literacy workers comes with the realization that training students to read, write, and talk in more critical and self- reflective ways cannot protect them from the violent changes our culture is undergoing.

Although both Richard Rodriguez and Malcolm X’s lives were profoundly impacted by becoming educated, how they acquired their education and the consequences of becoming educated were different for each author. The path that Richard Rodriguez took in his quest

In the excerpt “Learning to Read” from his 1965 Autobiography, Malcolm X argues that he had more opportunity to learn about the world and specifically black history in prison than he would have received in a formal education setting. He describes the process in which he essentially taught himself how to read and write, and how it lead to an awakening of his desire to learn everything he could through voracious reading. X illustrates to the reader the painful histories that he read about and the powerful knowledge which he gained to show that one needs little more than access to a book collection and the motivation to learn in order to become educated. This reading resonated with me as a learner whose love for independent learning often takes a backseat to the demands of academia and provides a key concept which I plan to instill in my students as a future teacher.

Frederick Douglass was a young slave with an aspiring dream to learn and further his life of knowledge and education. There was only one thing stopping him: his lack of freedom. The ability to read and access to an education is a liberating experience that results in the formation of opinions, critical-thinking, confidence, and self-worth. Slave owners feared slaves gaining knowledge because knowledge is power and they might have a loss of power, which would result to the end of cheap labor. Slave owners made the slaves feel as if they had no self-worth or confidence. If the slaves got smarter they could potentially begin to learn how unjust and wrong slavery was and they would have enough reason to rebel against it. Douglass was learning how to read and write from his slave owner’s wife. Unfortunately, both of them were told how wrong it was for him to be learning because a slave was not to be educated and was deemed unteachable. There was also another fear that the slave owners had. They feared that slaves would have better communication skills which would lead to escape and ways to avoid slavery. Reading opens your mind to new ideas and new knowledge one has never had the opportunity of knowing.

As I read, “The Dark Night of the Soul” by Richard E. Miller, I found it to be an interesting read. He inquires, why we read, why we write and what might literate arts be said to be good for? In his essay he describes the school massacres that have occurred throughout the years. As he describes these events, he asks a deeper question, “What is the point of continuing to read, write and learn in the face of such underlying dangers. I think that with all that is happening, individuals/students should continue with education because reading, television, writing and communication makes a difference in the lives of individuals around the world. The bottom line is that literary art has a way of touching students unexpectedly one way or another and students should not just throw the art away because of society’s perception.

Katherine Sky slid quietly along the wall of the silent corridor. Beads of sweat were running down her face and dripping onto the slick floor. As she wiped them away, she checked her watch, for the hundredth time that hour. If she didn’t find it soon, then there was nothing that she could do. She already pictured in her mind, that crazy, sick son of a b*tch ripping off the head of that man, enjoying the blood running down his rough hand. The same hands he had used, all those years back. She had read about this evil man, in the newspaper, in her school textbook, and even on the television. Everywhere she had gone, his name had been mentioned, his sly-looking face staring back at her with a demeanor that spelled “psychopath”. But no image on

In the tapestry of life, I’ve have accustomed myself with people from diverse colors of race, textures of belief, and patterns of culture. Different threads of individuals with their unique life experiences have surrounded me in my every stage. Each relationship has woven me into an expressive piece of fabric that refuses one-dimensional uniformity.