UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What effect does Douglass believe slavery has on slaveholders? How do the actions of his former mistress support his assertion?
Why does Douglass not name the white boys who helped him learn to read? What does this decision say about the society he was living in when he wrote his autobiography?
What kinds of ideas did Douglass encounter when he read The Columbian Orator? How did these ideas influence him?
Why did Douglass become depressed after reading The Columbian Orator? Why did he feel that he would have been better off not knowing how to read?
What role does Douglass suggest education has in ending oppression? Why do oppressors keep their victims in ignorance?
How well does Douglass's narrative support his argument? How would you phrase that argument as a single thesis (p. 634)?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Compare "Learning to Read" with Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (p. 425). How does each writer draw on noncontroversial sources and ideas to support his then-controversial assertions?
Compare Douglass's experience of educating himself with John Henry Newman's understanding of "liberal education" (p. 31). How well does Douglass's learning correspond to the kind of education that Newman advocates? How "useful" to Douglass are the things he learns?
What role does rhetoric, as exemplified by the dialogue and speech in The Columbian Orator, play in Douglass's education? Consider the impact of this material on Douglass from the standpoint of Plato's (p. 166) and Aristotle's (p. 177) conflicting views on the usefulness of rhetoric.
Contrast Douglass's view of the importance of learning to read and write in Standard English with the views of Gloria Anzaldua (p. 205) on the importance of cultural minorities' retaining their linguistic distinctiveness. Might the two positions be reconciled? Why or why not?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Write a personal essay about an early experience that significantly influenced your education. If appropriate, describe how something that you read had an impact on you and your course(s) of study.
Imagine that a person from another country arrived in your community able to speak English but not able to read and write. You are that person's tutor. How would you begin to teach? What reading materials would you use?
Other abolitionists criticized Douglass for accepting the tenets of the U.S. Constitution, because it did not repudiate slavery. Write an essay examining the Constitution as it stood in Douglass's day and arguing for or against Douglass's proposition that it is inherently antislavery. Perhaps also examine other founding American documents and judge how Douglass might have viewed them.
Explain the connections between education and liberty by using Seneca (p. 13) as a theoretical background and Douglass as a primary example.
john henry newman
from Knowledge Its Own End
[1852]
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890) shocked his students, his colleagues, and much of England when, in 1845, he resigned his positions as Anglican minister and Oxford professor and converted to Roman Catholicism. At the time, Catholics held an extremely tenuous position in English society; they had received the right to vote only sixteen years earlier, in 1829, and the Catholic Church had no formal organization in England. Newman's conversion was a matter of deep, personal conviction, which he discussed in his famous 1864 autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII named Newman a cardinal, and in 1991, Pope John Paul II set in motion the process to proclaim him a saint. Newman was as committed to education as he was to Catholicism, and, from his conversion to his death, he was a prominent spokesperson for both.
Newman's conversion meant that he was forbidden to teach at Oxford or any other English university. However, the Catholic population of Ireland was large enough to support a major university. In 1852, Newman traveled to Dublin to deliver a series of lectures on the importance of Catholic education. Two years later, in 1854, he helped found the Catholic University of Ireland and was named its first rector. In this capacity, he revised his early lectures on education, which were published in 1873 as The Idea of a University.
The Idea of a University reflects on much more than the role of education in a religious life. Newman understood "Catholic" in its broadest sense, including the meaning "universal," and he believed that a "Catholic education" involved all branches of knowledge. The Idea of a University argues for a "liberal" education, meaning an education that crosses disciplinary boundaries and gives students a solid background in the arts, sciences, and humanities. Newman's concept of a liberal education had a tremendous impact on the subsequent development of universities in England and the United States. Even today, most colleges and universities have a general education component whose core values can be traced back to the ideas that Newman articulates in this book.
"Knowledge Its Own End" was the fifth of Newman's original lectures on education to Irish Catholics. In it, Newman argues that a true education need not, and in many cases cannot, be attached to practical purposes. Relying on quotations from Cicero, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Francis Bacon, Newman draws a sharp distinction between "useful knowledge" (knowledge that has a practical application) and "liberal knowledge" (knowledge that is pursued for its own sake). Newman acknowledges that useful knowledge is important—people need to be trained for careers, taught to accomplish tasks, and provided with ways to make their lives more fulfilling. However, Newman also sees tremendous value in education that exists solely for the sake of imparting knowledge and fostering inquiry. This kind of knowledge, for Newman, lies at the heart of a university. His own essay on liberal education draws much of its authority from the words of thinkers that most educated people in Newman's day were familiar with.
2.
I am asked what is the end of University Education, and of the Liberal or Philosophical Knowledge which I conceive it to impart: I answer, that what I have already said has been sufficient to show that it has a very tangible, real, and sufficient end, though the end cannot be divided from that knowledge itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward. And if this is true of all knowledge, it is true also of that special Philosophy, which I have made to consist in a comprehensive view of truth in all its branches, of the relations of science to science, of their mutual bearings, and their respective values. What the worth of such an acquirement is, compared with other objects which we seek, wealth or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble in the attaining.