Overcoming the Challenges of Slavery with Education

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Slavery has made a huge impact on African-Americans throughout the world. It has made education for African-Americans more difficult to accomplish. Fredrick Douglass was an African-American born to a slave mother in Maryland. After he escaped the south he was adopted and then later on he worked to free other slaves. He worked to protect the rights of freed slaves. In Douglass's essay “Learning to Read and Write,” Douglass expresses how he overcomes the difficulties of slavery. He learns that the only way to fight through his battles is to become literate. In the process of becoming literate Douglass perceives himself to be treated as a brute, beast, and a human in ways that he is able to figure out who he is.

In the essay Douglass is treated as brute, someone who should remain unknowledgeable to the world they live in. In Douglass's childhood, his mistress is trying to instruct him, but she stops because she thinks that it gives him power.

For instance, he states, “It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute” (67). This signifies that it was required for his mistress to have more power because Douglass was a slave. But to make him feel worthless she had to treat Douglass as a non-intelligent person. In other words, since she is the instructor she does not want Douglass to become literate and over power her in a sense that he becomes better than her. In the process of his mistress teaching him, she changes because his master tells her to become tough on him. Once she changes she becomes more violent because she knows she has more power over him. So, she does not allow Douglass to read newspapers because she does notnow want him to gain any knowledge. For this reason, Douglass acknowledges himself to be treated as a brute.

Later on in the essay, Douglass refers to slaves as beats, even though he himself might easily have been one. By beast he means a person who can change his current situation but doesn't believe that he can do so. In Douglass's childhood, he looks up to the non- intelligence of other slaves because he did not know any knowledge but once he realizes that there is no purpose of having the ability to read, he wants to become something lower then the slaves. Douglass states, “ I have often wished myself a beast, I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own" (69). In Douglass's text, Douglass realizes that he is going to be a slave for life and he is not going to progress into becoming something better than what he already is; a slave. In which it has affected him and does not want to know or care about the world that has destroyed him mentally.

Douglass feels that reading did not have a purpose because he was not able to use it. For this reason, Douglass states, “Learning to read has been a curse rather than a blessing"(69). He is basically stating that learning how to read brought him no knowledge to move on to a better level in life but brought him a disaster. Thus, he wants to be lower then a slave in which he describes as a characteristic of a beast.

In the essay Douglass talk about being human by which he means someone who is treated with respect. In Douglass's childhood when he first lived with his mistress she was a kindhearted women and treated others friendly. Douglass states, "when I first went to live with her to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another...she did not seem to perceive that I sustained her relation to mere chattel" (67). In other words, when he goes to his mistress place, she treats him with respect. Just like one person would like to be treated. Douglass then becomes aware of her knowing that slaves have no rights. So, when he starts reading the book The Columbian Orator and Sheridan's speech it gives him a better look at freedom and human rights. Once Douglass had read and understood human rights he was able to look at himself as a human. In other words, he was able to respect himself. Overall, as human Douglass was able to perceive who he was through the obstacles that he has faced.

In conclusion, Slavery has made education for African-Americans difficult to accomplish. In Douglass's essay “Learning to Read and Write,” Douglass overcomes the challenges of slavery. Douglass has learned that the only way to fight through his struggles was to become literate.

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Overall, throughout the essay Douglass is treated as a brute, beast, and a human, which allows Douglass to perceive who he really is.