Malcolm X: Self-Education Behind Bars

In “Learning To Read” by Malcolm X he had talked about his time in prison and how he devoted his time there to work on his vocabulary and his penmanship.
While he was in prison he spent his day’s copying dictionary words down and repeating them to himself later on, learning some of the words with ease and practicing longer with the more difficult ones. Malcolm X also wrote letters to Mr. Elijah Muhammad, where his frustration to express what he had wanted came from and from that point he pursued teaching himself.
A whole new world opened up for Malcolm as he started reading books even more so when he started to read seriously. He read about black history and all of the troubles within America and how the white man abused their power. He

read about historical people and learned from their knowledge, then proceeded to take that knowledge and turned it into something more.
Malcolm X say’s “No University would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this new world opened to me, of being able to read and understand”(276). It seems that Malcolm believes that he has a higher literate education than a university student. I don’t doubt that he read and taught himself a lot of information, but I wish he had went to college so he had a offishall document stating that he has the knowledge.
I was surprised about what Malcolm had said about genetics “Reading it over and over, especially certain sections, helped me to understand that if you started with a black man, a white man could be produced; but starting with a white man, you never could produce a black man-because the white gene is recessive”(277). I was never taught that in my whole school career and I’m surprised it was never taught to the students, who need to know how the world works.
Malcolm X stated that all black people followed Muhammad's teachings, and it didn’t matter if they became followers or not they followed his teachings because it told more of their history and showed their true roles from the past into the future. I don’t doubt that Malcolm X was a very educated person, but I think if he had stayed in school and found his love for history earlier on it would have made him a greater educated person in life.