"Homemade Education"

I am again being productive, and decided to go ahead and do the next of our assigned readings early. This is the "Homemade Education" an article of Malcolm X's learning of language.

Beginning this article, I had some knowledge of who Malcolm X was. I knew he was a civil rights activist, and Muslim minister, but that was about as much as I could tell you. So in reading this article I wanted to know more. Which I know is partly what we are supposed to be doing while we are "critically reading". So I did what any college student does. I wikipediaed him. I know it's not the most well thought of source, but I didn't need to know every tiny little detail, more just a broader overview of who Malcolm X was. I now know that Malcolm X was a civil rights activist that "indicted white America for its crimes against black America" according to wikipedia.

So once I had a better understanding of who Malcolm X was I could really begin the reading of "Homemade Education" and focus more on what he was saying, rather than who he was. The part I found most interesting in this essay was the way Malcom X went about becoming someone knowledgeable about language. By reading and re-writing the entire dictionary? This is something that I personally could never imagine doing. The dictionary is there when you need to know one or two words, not for someone to sit and read and write the whole thing over again. That's just madness. But then I started to think, for someone who unlike me didn't have a great education, this is a way for them to learn. I started to realize that not everyone is as able to learn language at a young age as I was. Not everyone is as exposed to books and words as a small child. And after all a dictionary teaches people language and words. I've realized, that the dictionary was his only real source of being able to learn all the things he wanted to learn about language.

The next part of the essay I found most interesting was how proud Malcolm X was after copying down the dictionary. To me sitting and writing the entire dictionary would be the most tedious, boring, annoying thing I could imagine. But for him it was a sense of pride. That wasn't something that came easy for him, or something he'd always been able to do. He worked at it, and accomplished something that he hadn't been able to do before. Although I may not agree with all the actions of Malcolm X throughout his life, hearing how proud he was really was inspiring. I am someone that wants to be a teacher, or do something to help people, and seeing someone be so proud is something I truly enjoy.