Chosen Quote: “He who opens a school closes a prison door.” – Victor Hugo
The quote was said by Victor Hugo who was a famous French writer. Hugo was alive during the seventeenth century and is considered one of the most influential French romantic writers of his time. One of his most famous pieces, Notre-Dame de Paris, was written in an attempt to save the Cathedral. The quote discusses the idea that ignorance is a societal and mental imprisonment of a person. Without knowledge, a person loses a lot of opportunities throughout life. For example, if a person is illiterate, they disqualify themselves from every job or career opportunity. Or if a person goes to school but only through high school, they not only disqualify themselves from every job and career opportunity that requires them to have a degree, but they also disqualify themselves from any potential raises they can get to their salary because they don’t have a degree. There are also other ways that a person ends up in societal and mental imprisonment due to ignorance. For example, after slaves were emancipated, in order to limit their suffrage, they were given literacy tests. However, since no slaves had attended school, none of them knew the answers to any of the literacy tests and therefore they were denied their right to vote, yet again. That is just one of the many examples throughout history that show that ignorance locked people in a prison, not a physical one, but a mental and societal one in which ignorance keeps the people at the bottom of the hierarchy, in the lowest class.
The quote is very meaningful for me because growing up, my family did not have a lot of money, and my father always stressed the importance of education and the power of knowledge. He always made it very clear that when a person was ignorant, other people were able to take advantage of them and their ignorance. He specifically always highlighted that in instances that involved the law because if you didn’t know the law, the cops and lawyers could take advantage of you. I always grew up knowing that ignorance was not something to strive for because it limited you, in every way shape, or form. It limits your ability to get jobs, to get out of poverty, can limit the quantity and quality of people who want to surround themselves around that individual, and can conflict a person’s morals. For example, I have seen many people that reach racist and outdated conclusions based on false information about history. It was for these reasons that I chose this quote. The moment I read it, it deeply resonated with me.