Education: A Blessing in Disguise

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Education: A Blessing in Disguise
Learning to read and write, or getting an education in general, is something that is easily handed to us in the world today. Imagine living in a world where you were expected to be uneducated, illiterate, and stupid. In the texts “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, these young boys grew up in different worlds where they were looked down upon and were expected to fail due to the standards they grew accustomed to. Although Douglass and Alexie underwent contrasting hardships on their educational journey, they both shared the realization that learning to read and write was both a curse and a blessing. With those shared realizations, both Alexie and Douglass used their hardships to influence them to fight for their education and make something of themselves.
Sherman Alexie, an Indian boy who was born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, grew up in a world where he was expected to be stupid due to his ethnic background. Alexie was different than all of the other Indian kids in his class at school; he had a willingness to learn and he didn’t want to be like the other kids who sat back, quiet as could be, with the thought that putting in any effort was pointless. Making something of yourself during that time and with that background was unheard of; instead, ‘those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians’ (Alexie, 17). The Indians wanted to appear as weak and stupid because that is what they grew accustomed to and because a “smart Indian” was considered a dangerous person (Alexie, 17). Alexie did not want to live that way; he did not want...

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...om the norm and make successful lives for themselves.
Although Alexie was considered a superhero in his text by breaking down society’s door, I believe that Douglass was one as well, by fighting for what others thought was impossible. These boys both lived in a world that wasn’t meant for them, and even in spite of all the hardships they endured, they overcame them all by simply learning to read and write. Throughout their journey to an education, I believe that Alexie and Douglass saw it as both a curse and a blessing. Getting an education was a curse because of the steps they had to take in order to achieve their goals, and also because being aware of the world they really lived in became a burden in that they felt they needed to take action. To both Alexie and Douglass, knowledge was power, and they used that power to live the life they thought they never would.

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