Frederick Douglass Learning To Read And Write Summary

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In the article, Learning to Read and Write by Frederick Douglass, it tells the lengths Douglass went through to learn how to read and write on his own. As he learned how to read on his own he came across books that brewed insights and new views of what it’s like to be a free slave. The freedom was there, but he had a find a way out on his own. Frederick Douglass faced many obstacles as he learned to read and write. He used a variety of strategies to overcome these obstacles in his pursuit of reading and writing
Douglass had various obstacles in his way in the pursuit of learning how to read and write. It should be noted that it was dangerous for any slave to know how to read or write. It’d be even worse for a slave owner to be discovered that they were teaching their slaves how to do so. His Mistress began to teach Douglass the alphabet, but when the husband found out he instructed her to stop. Douglass’ first obstacle was when she had to cease to instruct him. Since Douglass learned the
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When he was sent on duties, he’d take advantage of the situation by taking his books with him and made sure to finish his errands early so he’d get a chance to take on a lesson before he’d have to go back to the house. He’d also approach the poor white children while he was out on errands to ask them how to read in exchange for bread he always had. His strategy to learn how to write was different than learning how to read. He figured out that the carpenters out in the shipyard would write on the wood where it was going to be sent to a specific part of the ship, and he memorized the four letters they would use. Douglass would challenge the street children that he can write better than them, and this is how he would learn more. Then when the young master child in the house began school, Douglass would use the leftover spaces in his workbooks to practice his handwriting until it was