In this excerpt from Malcolm X's autobiography, he describes to the reader how he gained his education: by teaching himself to read and doing so liberally.
He was in prison, so he had all the time in the world to indulge in whatever the library had to offer.
His search for knowledge began with him wanting to become an impressive conversationalist like his fellow prisoner Bimbi, but later turned into a deep thirst to satisfy his own curiosity and ultimately use his newfound wisdom to help his people.
I too love to absorb information, reading often as I can, as long as the subject intrigues me.
For me, this sort of began in the same way it did for Malcolm X.
When Bimbi first made him feel "envy of his stock of knowledge," he began to try to
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read, but discovered that he needed to expand his vocabulary in order to do so. Covetous was I towards just about anyone who could captivate with their opinions, explaining why they thought what they did and backing it up with evidence. They could present themselves as intelligent and therefore trustworthy, making others understand exactly what they meant.
When I was younger, my mother taught me quite a bit about the world and how it worked.
Then, some one would come along spouting something I knew for a fact was invalid, but I had not the vocabulary nor the detailed examples to support my views.
I simply knew.
Like Malcolm X, my views would often contradict popular beliefs, which made my situation all the worse (although they were unlike his in context).
Today, I try to make sure I know the words I'm using and the terms I am voicing against thoroughly, and to be able to explain why.
I am still having a hard time working on this, however, because transfering from understanding everything in your mind as a whole to having to break it down and explain in ways others might understand proves much more difficult than I presumed.
It is sort of like a geometric proof: Students may know the answer through logic, but the problem at hand insists they go break it all up and explain it anyways.
I assume the point of teaching this skill was to help apply it to real life situations, but sadly, triangles simply aren't the same thing as world
views. After deciding he needed to be able to control a conversation just as well as Bimbi, Malcolm X started at the very beginning: he read and copied the dictionary. When I was in elementary school, fellow students coined me as "Dictionary" and would ask me questions instead of consulting the Websters on the shelf, because they knew I would be able to tell them. Rarely would I have to say, "I'm sorry, I don't know," and I would then consult the great book for them myself. Later in middle school, my classmates would have me scan their papers before turning them in, which normally improved their grades by ten points. I loved English. Actually, I loved languages in general. I've always been fascinated by how God split communication, and how the now separate tounges continued to expand so that there were hundreds of words for one meaning, and some words in one language not existing in another. The source of my other persistent strive for knowledge came from the label my elders placed on me, something Malcolm X did not really experience. I was repeatedly told I was intelligent by my mother and church leaders, and that scholarly things would apply to the important future God had planned for me. This daunted me, because I felt that if I didn't live up to this I was injuring my destiny. However, for the most part, I have broken free from that mindset. The more I read, (specifically biblical things) the more I began to realize my real need for knowledge, which I think will be to help people and satisfy my own curiosity. When Malcolm X got out of prison, he began to pursue concepts and ideals that may help his fellow blackmen break free from their unfair treatment. "My homemade education gave me," he writes, "with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America." The more I read things like my Bible or biblical teachings, the more aware I feel about the lack of God in the world. Just as Malcolm X said you couldn't pry him from the prophet Muhammad's teachings if you tried, sometimes when I read my Bible, it can be very difficult to stop. I feel like I gain more and more revelation each time, sometimes I will read a passage for the hundredth time and only THEN retain something from it. However, as i mentioned before, I am still struggling with remembering things in parts instead of absorbing them as a whole. In an instance where the Bible is being misquoted, I could shout "NO! It's not that, its..." but if I did not have a Bible on hand, I might not be able to explain the exact fault. This is what I need to work on the most, because if one cannot explain oneself, nobody will ever listen. I do have to remember that God will be there to help me, but sometimes it is very difficult to grasp that when I feel like a failure for not being able to remember everything correctly. Although I do not agree with Malcolm X's choices, he saw what was wrong in the world and wanted to do something about it. Many may not have accepted his approach, but with what he believed and from all he experienced, he tried his best to help. As I grow, I will try my best, and hopefully be able to carry God's message effectively across the world.
How his time spent in prison made him strive for more knowledge. Also, how he taught himself how to be more articulate. Malcolm X had an agenda of why he wanted to convey himself in more literary manner. Malcolm x talks about his use of language, he uses words
Malcolm X: His very name is a stab to the beliefs of the white supremacists of his time"X" symbolizing "the rejection of slave-names' and the absence of an inherited African name to take its place." Similarly, in his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm X denounces the actions of the white population, without any attempts to appeal to them; his approach to the civil rights issue is in complete opposition to the tactics of other civil rights leaders of his time, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Rather than trying to integrate the black community into the white, he focuses on the complete separation of them: he doesn't want the blacks to integrate into the white hotels, he wants blacks to own the hotels. He believed that the black population had to break the psychological, cultural, economic, and political dependency on their oppressors. By using tactical phrasing of his sentences that connects to his audience emotionally, Malcolm X attacks the tendency of African-Americans to identify with White America, and insists they identify instead with Africans, their ancestors; thus, he promotes his purpose: to instill a feeling of self-respect and self-help in his fellow African-Americans, which in turn is the stepping stone to the liberation of the Black people.
Malcolm X gains his first part of credibility from him simply being a civil rights activist. He was an extremely prominent figure
He first began his journey by learning a lot from Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI). The nation of Islam supported Black Nationalism and racial separation, and they disapproved Americans of European descent. The NOI members were only black Muslims. Elijah Muhammad’s teachings intrigued Malcolm who educated himself more about the NOI and took the last name of X which symbolized his forgotten African identity. Malcolm promoted self-defense and the liberation of African Americans. This is one of the main reasons why more and more African Americans admired Malcolm X because it made them feel like they do have a stand in their life and they can take charge in their beliefs. Within time he developed a better outspoken philosophy than Elijah Muhammad whom he felt didn’t support the civil rights movement. Eventually Elijah Muhammad realized that Malcolm X became too much powerful that he suspended him from the NOI. This is when troubles began to arise slowly for Malcolm X.
If a survey were to ask a group of individuals whether they could choose to either go to jail or go to college for their education, what would they prefer? Of course, college would be the satisfactory choice to any person because jails are not a place for learning, rather a place for people to be confined for the criminal actions that they have committed. If many of the individuals who would be asked this question, mainly early adults; they would have most likely not have read the autobiography of Malcolm X and the impact of being incarcerated for the crime he had done had on his educational path and how it helped him to be literate so he could interpret the world through writing and understand anything that he read. Many points he made referred
abilities of the people. He feels that after examining people through history, his conclusions of
Throughout the years there have been several social movements that have caused a great impact on the world we live in today. History has so many great people to thank for pushing for what they believe was right. But the one particular movement I found interesting, was the individual who helped preached against Americans who were white, committing crimes against black Americans. This individual was known as Malcolm X.
Malcolm X did the same thing skip over words he did not know by the end of the book he had little knowledge of what it was about. He decided that in prison he would teach himself, so he grabbed a dictionary and started to write each word and their definition and once he finished a section he would read them over and over again until he memorized what it meant. He then moved onto reading books about history which in school they will not teach students for some reason. Sometimes self-education will teach a person more than what school will and this is because schools are on a syllabus and they teach the same thing over and over again every year versus a person going on their own reading different books about history not taught in school which in school they don’t tell both sides of the story.
Another reason we should learn algebra is to enhance our pattern recognition skills. Pattern recognition is an important problem solving skill. If I can make a problem match a similar previously solved pattern, then the current problem is solved. This is a powerful tool. So powerful, in fact, that a mathematician’s work is more involved with determining whether a solution exists than actually finding the solution.
For example, a common fallacy is the equal sign. The most commonly used symbol in K – 12 and students have hard time understanding it. Its important for the students to know the equal sign, but also the inequality sign. “These signs are how we mathematically represent quantitative relationships” (Van De Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2016). If the students don’t understand the purpose of equal and inequality signs, then how will they understand and solve a mathematical model. However, misconceptions can be resolved if student are told or supported by a different kind of thinking. Every student can learn if they’re given the opportunity to really understand what they’re
How does the use of questioning strategies in a whole class setting improve student understanding of conic sections?
quarrel, and can even lead to war. Stimulated by an every-present thirst for knowledge, I
... solving encourages application of mathematical knowledge to a particular “real-world” context making learning meaningful. Applications of these multiple strategies in lessons, aligned with the Common Core Curriculum and Voluntary State Curriculum, support the goal of full participation of all students in the classroom environment.
A teacher’s role in the classroom should be to facilitate learning while allowing students to explore and draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately, in mathematics this exploration is often lost in
the good that could be done. He had no idea of the evils that dwelled upon