Essay On The Importance Of Literacy

The Importance of Literacy

Literacy is a powerful and important skill that every person should have the chance to learn. Literacy allows a person to have a successful career and education, communicate with other people, and form and express educated opinions and thoughts. The struggles of an illiterate person are shown in an excerpt from “Learning to Read and Write,” which was written by a former slave, Fredrick Douglas. Throughout the excerpt, Douglas describes the many obstacles and hardships he faced while learning to read and write. In one instance, he shows how literacy plays an important role in having and keeping a job.

Being able to read and write is a necessity in any work place, whether the job be at a café where a worker would

For example, I can usually use verbal communication to effectively communicate what I want to say, but there are some situations where talking is not the most efficient option. In these situations, I use my ability to read and write to try to express my feelings and communicate my ideas through writing in the form of texts, emails, or letters. Without literacy, I would not be able to send texts to my parents informing them that I need a ride and I would not be able to look up information about events happening around me. Fredrick Douglas was also able to use his ability to read to figure out how to communicate his thoughts. In his writing, Fredrick Douglas described how he would have thoughts about slavery and his situation but he would always ignore the thoughts until they went away, but after reading “The Columbian Orator” and some of Sheridan’s speeches, he was “enabled…to utter [his] thoughts, and to meet the arguments bought forward to sustain slavery…” (Douglas 102). These readings allowed Douglas to organize his silenced thoughts and to figure out how to communicate his ideas to other people and go on to eventually write and give speeches against slavery. Fredrick Douglas proved that communication and literacy are closely linked by explaining how reading the someone else’s’ thoughts helped him to express his own

In order to form an educated and factual opinion, background knowledge and research are usually needed. This information can be found in a wide range of sources such as newspapers, books, papers, and encyclopedias. I am able to access these sources and use the information I find to form my opinions because I am literate and I can comprehend the words on the page. Fredrick Douglas was also able to use his well-earned literacy to find out information about topics he was curious or confused about. For example, Douglas did not know what the words abolitionist or abolition meant so he tried looking in dictionaries for the definition but he was unsuccessful until “[he] got one of [the] city papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery…” and he figured out the words’ meaning using context from the news article (Douglas 104). Douglas then went on to listen in whenever the word was mentioned and this tendency led him to talk with some Irishmen who encouraged him to try to escape from his enslavement. Fredrick did not acknowledge the advice at the time because he was afraid that the men were trying to trick him but the idea stuck in his mind until he found the right moment to attempt the escape. In today’s world, I can use the news sources to follow the events that happen around the world and in politics to stay informed. This ability helps