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Frederick Douglass Role Of Education Essay

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Frederick Douglass Role Of Education Essay
The Role of Education in the Narrative

Slavery tends to be looked at casually by people in today's society. People have little knowledge of the truths that lie behind slavery. Many people view slavery as white plantation owners abusing the civil rights of colored people and forcing them to work using physical punishment to reinforce their authority over them. Although these events did occur, slavery was more complicated than this. Frederick Douglass' autobiography opened the door on a new view of what slavery was about. The main conflict in the story is Douglass' struggle to be free physically and mentally from slavery. He discovered at an early age that education was the key to freedom. Slave owners were not ignorant to the fact …show more content…
While working on the plantation Douglass overheard a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Auld about her teaching him to read. He overheard the reasoning behind the white man's emphasis on keeping the slaves uneducated: If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy. (78)
After hearing this Douglass developed the understanding that whites maintain power over black slaves by keeping them uneducated. Douglass vowed to educate himself and escape from slavery at that point: "I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom
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