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The Autobiographies Of Doctor Isaac Asimov And Malcom X

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Everyone has received some sort of education in their lives and with whatever knowledge you’ve received, do you consider yourself educated? First of all, you need to know that being educated means knowing that you yourself are ignorant. Likely, education is supposed to show how there is always something more that could be learned and to aid in learning it. Just as Will Durant said, “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.’’ Through the autobiographies of Doctor Isaac Asimov and Malcom X, as well as a passage by Alfie Kohn, you will begin to understand what education really means.

Beginning with the autobiography “What is Intelligence,” Doctor Isaac Asimov writes about how he learned how ignorant he was after meeting a mechanic who he first described as someone who was only half as intelligent as he was. The doctor opens up by talking about an aptitude test he took when he was in the army, scoring a …show more content…

When Malcom was writing a letter to Mr. Elijah Muhammad, he realized that he couldn't express what he wanted to say and was annoyed because he thought of himself as the most articulate person from where he lived. Although he felt this way, it wasn't until getting put in Charleston Prison that he began to try and change that feeling. At Charleston Prison, he met a person named Bimbi. Bimbi was a very wise man was Malcoms motivation to learn because he was jealous of the amount of knowledge Bimbi had. For this reason, he decided to ask for a dictionary and a table to try and learn words. When he spent two days looking through the words, he realized that there was a vast amount of words that he didn't know. During this time he was educating himself by writing letters and by going through the dictionary which allowed him to realize that there was so much that he didn't

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Malcom X gives his history on his own literacy in Literacy Behind Bars. He reveals that he did not go any farther academically than the 8th grade. The impression people retain of his literacy and his intelligence extending into advance schooling is largely imparted to his days spent in prison. Malcom would spend every waking hour absorbing everything that he could. He went through the dictionary, copying and memorizing every page from a to z.

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If education is not teaching you how to use the knowledge, the diploma would be the most useless stuff in the world. While, the common sense of people still tend to believe education means smart, vice versa. “You got college degree, you, you must be smart!” that’s many people may say to a college graduate several decades ago. However, are the graduates really as smart as people believe?

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(X, 3), he also does this to improve his handwriting. To achieve his goal he starts to copy the dictionary, page by page, until he copied the fully dictionary. Each page he wrote he would read what he wrote out loud, so he would truly understand all of the word he was copying down. Malcom

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In a Homemade Education Malcom talks about his time in prison, in which he learned how to read. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving

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He taught himself to read by first writing the pages of the dictionary and rereading what he wrote, memorizing these word by reading “back, to myself everything I’d written on the table over and over, aloud” (X, 2004, 246). Then once he completed the dictionary he went on to read books. Reading more advanced books as time went on. Although a different way of reading this way was proven to be very successful for Malcom, he describes the first time he read a book after completing the dictionary as a “new world that opened” (X, 2004,

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It all began when he was sentenced to a term at Charlestown Prison. He met a man named Bimbi who was fader more educated than young Malcolm had ever been, which eventually led him to his determination in his prison studies and gain knowledge. He began first by looking at available books, reading only the words he could and skipping the ones he couldn’t because his lack of reading skills which he soon found to be complete a waste of time. It wasn’t until he got to the Norfolk Prison Colony that he finally realized what he really needed was to use a

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The reason for this is so he could read books and copy words that he would stumble on. This made him gain more knowledge and also perfect his vocabulary. He was so determined to learn that he would copying the entire dictionary.

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Finally, he decided faking was not the answer to bettering himself, so he found a dictionary. Excited, Malcolm wrote that he “spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed!” (274) Malcolm creates a visual,

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He thought that the best thing he could do to improve his comprehension would be to study and learn words from a dictionary. He spent two days reading a dictionary and became overwhelmed by all of the words that he did not know even existed. He began copying all of the words onto his tablets, one page every day, and he would read them aloud to himself. Eventually, he was able to remember almost all of the words he had studied. Ever since his “word-base broadened,” he was able to pick up a book and understand what he was reading (3).

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Intellectualism is the factor of being intellect or intelligent. The idea of what it means to be educated can be interpreted many different ways by different people. Some think it’s having a 4.0 and going to Harvard, while others believe in the idea of having common sense. In the essay, “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff reflects how lack of education is viewed negatively in society. On top of that, a question also lies what it means to educated.

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This painstaking work soon became easier as he realized with some effort that he could recollect the words

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In addition, he was jealous of Bimbi, who always over controlled the conversations. Therefore, Malcolm X put all of his effort into learning new words and their meaning in each section of the dictionary. By writing down the words on the tablet and read them back to himself after days, his vocabulary was broadened. As a result, he could read, understand what a book said, write his own words, and have interested in reading.

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Furthermore, Malcolm x was sent to jail where he was motivated to begin his homemade education by struggling to communicate with Elijah Muhammad and envying Bambi for his competence to assume control of the conversation and his stock of knowledge. For that reason, Malcolm learned to read by copying dictionary, beginning to read and comprehend books, exploring black history, especially slavery and studying world or global history.

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  Frustrated by an inability to articulate his thoughts, Malcolm X studied a dictionary in prison and worked hard to improve his penmanship.    By copying portions of the dictionary onto paper,  Malcolm X eventually learned to read books. This allowed Malcolm X to understand the writings of Elijah Muhammad, and eventually to become a well-known civil rights leader.   While in prison, the ability to read was liberating for Malcolm X; instead of focusing on his imprisonment, he focused on educating himself.

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Many people grow to be intelligent by studying and learning so much in school. But even at a young age, Albert was an incredibly intellectual person in a logical sense. He may not have been able to walk until three years old, but in school, he was incredibly accelerated. “By the time he was 13, Albert was reading and understanding scientific material that many adults would have found impossible to follow” (Ireland 7). This shows that Albert Einstein is intelligent because it shows how gifted he was above all people.

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