The monster in Frankenstein was different and appeared unique due to which the society kicked him out and this example says a lot about the people. The people kicked him out because he wasn’t human and thought he couldn’t be like one of them and that was true. He couldn’t appear human, but mentally he was able to learn and think like a human. He even learned to read, and write just like humans. His appearance stopped him from gong to school, but that didn’t stop him form learning on his own. Todays society we see this where colored people are essentially in the shoes of Frankenstein and the society represents the white people. Only because of our skin color people are judged and especially blacks because people think they aren’t capable and due to their skin they are underestimated. Still they can learn and even have doctorate degrees, but we live in a society where education doesn’t hold that much weight anymore because today what makes getting a job easy is not your education, but your connections and the people you know. We live in a world where there are definitely better qualified colored people working in over qualified positions and white people working in positions whom other colored people are more deserving. Unfortunately living in a society where white supremacy exists is not fair and makes me think is my education really going to get me the position I want or is it the people I know. I even wonder whether I should spend more time studying and learning or should I just focus more on my networking and getting to know more people who can get me a job easily even if I don’t have all the qualifications for it. So I will always question myself whether education really is what I need when I go to school.
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Personal Connection with Grant
While reading A Lesson Before Dying, I was able to put myself in Grant’s shoes and understand why he felt angry and also frustrated. Since he was educated he almost represented the town or neighborhood he lived in. He was given all these responsibilities that came with his education. Since he was educated people had expectations from him and thought he had acquired the knowledge of everything. Even though he was a teacher Miss Emma and his aunt made him a counselor for Jefferson or a so called psychiatrists without realizing that Grant was not knowledgeable of how to handle something like that because he was simply a teacher. There was so much pressure on him and he was ‘forced’ to do things like counsel Jefferson without his consent and people felt it was his ‘job’ to do it. I can completely relate to this situation because as a first generation college student there are many career expectations my family has for me. It’s like educating me is for their benefit more than my own. Since I will be educated I will be able to take care of all their legal issues or other problems which I probably have no knowledge about whatsoever. Already because I am the most educated so far in my family I am expected to tutor other kids in my family who are struggling in school even though I am not good at it and also I have to figure out tax forms for my family as well even though I am not even educated about it. Their high expectations thinking that only because I went to school I should know everything is not fair. It’s not fair to anyone and I think that is exactly how Grant felt and so do I.
Education Through Experiences
Imagine a world with no school and you had to educate yourself? How would you live without this education? Is school mandatory to attain this education? A world without school would be different, but the education can still be acquired through different means. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the monster illustrates the importance of what Rousseau calls an education through “other things.” Through handling and encountering objects and phenomenon and nature, the monster learns all he needs to survive on his own without even having to go to school and be taught by a teacher, which Rousseau believes isn’t necessary to attain education. As you go along you will witness the monster in Frankenstein who learned the benefit of fire along with the danger of fire through his experiences. Next you will encounter how Frankenstein copied and enacted the emotions of others just by observing them. Then you will see how his experiences push him to educate himself about humans which eventually results in the monster learning to read and write on his own without attending school.
Frankenstein and Rousseau
In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the monster illustrates the importance of what Rousseau calls an education through “other things.” Through handling and encountering objects and phenomenon and nature, the monster learns all he needs to survive on his own without even having to go to school and be taught by a teacher, which Rousseau believes isn’t necessary to attain education.
Explain Rather Than Demand
Rousseau had stated, “Use force with children and reasoning with men; this is the natural order; the wise man needs no laws” (Rousseau 8), which I think means that when you want children to do something or to stop doing something you can forcefully control them, but you have to talk it out with a man. It means that when you want children to listen to you, you can scream at them, punish them or hit them to make them obey you, but with a man you can’t do that because a man is grown up and you have to explain to them and answer the “WHY” of the situation. This can be seen in A Lesson Before Dying when Miss Emma says, “I want the teacher visit my boy. I want the teacher make him know he’s not a hog, he’s a man. I want him know that ’fore he go to that chair, Mr. Henri” (Gaines 18), from this I think she’s treating him like a child by saying ‘make him know’ which is aggressive and forceful, instead if she really wants Jefferson to die a ‘man’ then she should let the teacher explain it to him and reason it out with him rather than demand him. Through Rousseau’s idea Miss Emma is basically treating Jefferson as a child rather than a man which she wants him to be before he is executed.
Malcolm X and Bach
| Describe It | Malcolm X was an African-American activist, but before that his life was a journey full of obstacles. He was a person with ambition who learned and educated himself while in jail through the use of the dictionary and his own unique ways of learning. He ended up in jail due to selling drugs on the streets in New York and he wanted to make a change and help the blacks, but he realized that he wasn’t educated and didn’t have the skills to translate his message and ideas to the crowd because he was illiterate. This is what encouraged him to learn and educate himself. |
| Trace It | Malcolm X was a black who didn’t get the opportunity to go to school and learn due to racism. He was discouraged by his white teacher that it wasn’t “realistic” for a black to become a lawyer. This had a huge impact on him that he dropped out of school, but not for long. He didn’t go to school and neither finished it, but he educated himself through the use of the dictionary while in jail. The brutality and unfair treatment of blacks pushed Malcolm to educate himself so that he could help bring a change and that’s what he did. His education brought him respect and he was able to fulfill his goal to a certain extent because he was shot so wasn’t able to finish it. |
| Map It | This relates to Frankenstein because even Frankenstein had to learn on his own just like Malcolm X, but Malcolm used the dictionary and Frankenstein used his experiences. They both weren’t taught anything from another person, but by themselves. This is also related to Bach because Bach said school wasn’t for everyone, but he he also said that when you need something you will work for it and that is related to Malcolm X. He really wanted to help the black community, but due to his lack of knowledge he wasn’t able to and since he really was determined to help them he learned on his own to help the society. |
Escaping Poverty
While reading about Jose I realized his life was all about overcoming poverty through education. I can relate myself to Jose because his grandma sent him to school so that he didn’t have to deal with poverty or work on the fields just like parents decided to send me to school. She wanted Jose to have a better life so she chose to educate him no matter what. This is my situation too because my family comes from a poor background and my parents always just had one dream which was to send me to school so I can become successful and not go through the struggles they went through. One similarity I see between these two situations for Jose’s grandma and my parent’s is that education is the so called ‘escape’ from poverty for them. Just like Jose, education became a very important part of my life. People take school for granted and don’t appreciate or ever realize that there are others in the world who never got the opportunity to go to school because of various reasons and for Jose’s grandma and my parents it was poverty. So only because someone who doesn’t have a college degree or doesn’t work in an office has nothing to do with how smart that person is. Its all about opportunity’s which not all are lucky to get. Jose at first didn’t realize how lucky he was to be in school and didn’t do well, but later on he took advantage and did really well in school as well. Many people don’t appreciate school, but school for people like my parents and Jose’s grandma is their ticket out of poverty.
Flaws are OK!
I agree with what T. Ahmed said about perfection. Especially when she talks about how it is almost impossible to be perfect for a human being. This can also be seen in the biography when he states that “Order, too, with regard to places for things, papers, etc., I found extremely difficult to acquire. I had not been early accustomed to it, and, having an exceeding good memory, I was not so sensible of the inconvenience attending want of method” (Franklin, Chapter9), this shows that even though he tried to perfect himself, but realized he wasn’t able to and found it difficult the more he tried. He tried so hard and wasn’t able to perfect himself and he concluded that every man has a fault and no one in this world is perfect. He admits that a person should have faults in him otherwise people will be jealous and hate him for his perfection and that is seen when he states that, “a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself” (Franklin, Chapter 9), he clearly says that a person of perfection is definitely going to be hated by society and that it is almost necessary for a person so have faults in himself to be so called “normal” in society. This supports T. Ahmed’s idea because she basically says that you can find happiness in your flaws and this idea correlates with the idea of having flaws and that being “normal” for society.
Freedom to Enlightenment
Kant states that to be an enlightenment thinker you have to think on your own and have your own ideas and thoughts. He states “The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among human beings; the private use of one’s reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted without this particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment”(Kant, 1798), he means that to encourage enlightenment in society freedom is enough and you have to go pubic with it so the ideas can spread instead of just keeping it to oneself because it can’t be spread and you can’t bring about change through the education which can’t or isn’t spread to others. This is contradicted by Douglass when he states that, “She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (Frederick, Chapter 7), so basically the woman says that a slave couldn’t be educated because those two things don’t compliment each other. These things both contradict each other because Kant says that to encourage enlightenment you only need freedom, but that isn’t true because you do need education to think whether its education from school, people, or experiences, but the woman said that education and slavery don’t go together meaning if you don’t have freedom your education is useless because as slaves they couldn’t even do anything with the education they got from their experiences. Even though slaves did get education, but there was no impact because they didn’t have freedom to spread it.
Education from Experiences
Education is not only attainable through schooling, but one’s experiences can be a means for his/her education, like Rousseau believed education is gained through “other things” and it can be seen when Frankenstein was able to learn to survive on his own through the education he gained from his experiences from nature.