Frederick Douglass And Education Essay

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” -Nelson Mandela. This quote applies best to the problem of education in slavery. In times of slavery, American slave owners would keep their slaves uneducated so that they couldn't revolt and take over the plantation. Why were the slave owners so afraid of education? Frederick Douglass was a slave in the 1820’s in Maryland. He escaped slavery and then built a life for himself in The North. Douglass was one of very few slaves who became educated.

As Nelson Mandela said, education gives people power. The more you know, the more you are aware of the outside world, and if you know of a better life you will strive to get it. Slave owners knew that and so, out of fear, they denied any and all forms of education to their slaves. This fear was ultimately their demise because when you limit information it always finds a way to come out. In Frederick Douglass’ book he describes the desperate way he got his education and without it he would not have

The slave owners in the time of Frederick Douglas “perfected” the art of withholding education. They created a “perfect” way of making sure that their slaves stayed obedient and many even suffered from the effects of Stockholm Syndrome. On page 12, Douglass states ”slaves are like other people… they think their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves.” It is clear that the slaves are so unaware of the outside world that they even start to feel possessively over the people keeping them captive. Here we can see that the lack of education can even brainwash the slaves into being mindless, working machines. When they become mindless they become the thing they are told they are by their masters: not