The Importance of Learning to Read

His calloused hands sting with each flip of a page. Threats of lashings hang over his head, weighing down his thoughts. Still, African American slave Frederick Douglass continues his task of learning how to read. With each letter learned, his vision clears, his mind grows more intuitive, and his perspective develops. Like Douglass, learning to read and taking advantage of this ability breaks our chains of monotonous thinking. Learning to read and developing this skill polishes our understanding of communication and enables us to form our own thoughts and opinions.

By learning to read, people also develop a better understanding of language and communication. For instance, in developing countries across the globe, illiteracy is linked to poverty. While learning to read couldn’t single-handedly fix economies or stop wars, having a basic education provides citizens with the ability to communicate and analyze, which is a strong foundation for improvement. Illiteracy creates instability, especially when nations fall behind regarding technological forms of communication, but learning to read opens the mind and leads to innovation. Developing the ability to read furthers our understanding of communication, which is a starting point to further understand people and social habits.

The ability to read also assists people in analyzing situations and forming opinions. Rather than accepting what everything peers, leaders, and the media believe, a person can analyze a situation. For example, a gym-hating hypochondriac who sees an advertisement about the newest, fastest, and cheapest way to lose weight might initially fall victim to the ad’s propaganda techniques. However, when he decides to research the product, he finds that it has a reputation for its unhealthy side effects. Instead of thinking in a conformed manner, we can all remain open-minded and recognize instances in which there are many different perspectives. Along with this, reading requires one to form images of characters on personality rather than physical appearances. When a young child with a growing mind visits the library, a book won’t supply her with much information about the characters’ appearances. For the most part, she is provided with their decisions and actions. She develops the habit of forming opinions about peers and elders based off of their personality, which is uncommon yet necessary in our society. Learning to read teaches us to think for ourselves and form individual opinions.

Through learning to read, Douglass was able to discover the injustices of slavery, and more importantly, that this oppression was so massive and atrocious that he’d been taught to think slavery was normal and acceptable. Learning to read gives people the opportunity to better understand communication and to leave behind monotonous or conformed thinking.

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