Frederick Douglass on slavery and education's incompatibility

Frederick Douglas

According to Frederick Douglas, slavery and education are incompatible with each other for many reasons. First, education will lead to discontent and rebellion. Secondly, education provides to ability to express oneself which in turn fosters the creation of a new identity. and, education would allow the slave to see the inconsistency of slavery and, therefore, reject it as a moral institution.

Slave owners, Sophia and Hugh Auld repeatedly tried to stop Douglas and other slaves to read. According to Auld, "A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you taught him how to read it would do him nothing but harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy." After Sophia stopped teaching him to read, Douglas said, "The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me.... She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other."

Douglas shares a dialogue he read in a book between an escaped slave and his master, where the speech of the slave is so convincing -- the identity of intellectual power so undeniable -- that the slave is emancipated. The slave had created a new identity through education that replaced the older one. Further, Douglas gives an example that if a slave were able to read the Sacred Scriptures, the slave would be able to see the inconsistency of slavery. Therefore slave owners deny education to slaves to prevent any change of the slave detecting any inconsistency in his or her position. Slaves must not know why they are slaves, or they would understand that their masters are robbers.