Escalante vs. Macfarland

Mr. Escalante and Mr. Macfarland were different in a few ways, most notably their teaching style. If you dig a little deeper however it becomes clear that they share much more in common with each other than first glance suggested. They both went beyond what was required of them to help students they, when no one else did, saw potential in. They were able to look passed what other teachers could not and help their students to achieve much more than even the student themselves thought they could. They were both also very determined to reach their students and strived to help them get into college. Mr. Escalante with his constant pushing and pushing to get his kids ready for the AP test that would earn them college credits and Mr. Macfarland with all the extra time he put in to get Mike into a school despite his poor marks. He even helped Rose get the student loans he needed to be able to afford the school that Mr. Macfarland was able to get him into. So despite the differences on the surface it boils down to the fact that both were great teachers that changed the lives of their students.

Stand Part 2

So I was right about the tragedy and the ultimate success of the students however the tragedy did not take form of a death as I had predicted. Early in the second half you see Mr. Escalante doing what Mr. Escalante does, pushing everything (himself included) too far. He is now working through all his breaks, through all his vacations, and through all his weekends! It seems he has taking on trying to save the whole school by himself! He then goes as far as to take on another task, teaching English night classes to adults. During one of these night classes his body finally said enough and he suffered a mild heart attack. This is where I thought maybe the tragic death would come in but no, Mr. Escalante survives his ordeal but must take time off and so the students are stuck with a sub 2 weeks before the AP exam. To make matters worse the sub they get is a music teacher who has never even tried to teach math before let alone calculus. All is lost! Right? Well no, Mr. Escalante ignores his doctor’s orders and goes back to work early so he can do some last minute drilling with the students.

The Day of the test is upon us and the students are pumped up from their last minute cram session with Mr. Escalante. After the test they all go out to the beach to confidently celebrate their hard work and success. The class has almost become a family at this point with all the time they have spent together. Then the good news comes, every single student in the class passed the AP exam and Mr. Escalante is awarded a plaque for all his hard work and determination.

This happy moment is short lived however as the foretold tragedy finally rears its ugly head. After reviewing the tests the ETS (Educational Testing Services) determined that the students must have cheated because all the students made the same mistakes they also did better than the rest of the more privileged schools and took less time to do it. This hits the students hard and they react very badly, quickly starting to revert to their former angry and not wanting to try selves. Angel tries to get himself arrested and the "family" the class had become breaks. They all begin to self-destruct  do to the fact that despite how hard they tried and how well they did people wouldn’t accept it from them and still tried to shut them out with accusations. Fortunately the students don't fallow this path to long and realize despite this ordeal they still earned those scores, they were still able to learn. The ETS Drills and drills the students trying to force a confession out of them, but no one cheated so no one will fess up to it. Other teachers think the kids must have cheated too and eyes are starting to look towards Mr. Escalante himself. Finally Mr. E decides to get the kids to take a retest to prove their scores. Mr. E warns his students that it won’t be easy and the ETS will be looking for any excuse to call them cheaters. He is convinced it is a race and social status issue. The kids do very well on the retest and all 18 of them pass it again setting a precedent for future generations at Garfield high. Because of the model that their success set by 1987 there were 87 students who passed the AP test at Garfield high!

Stand & Deliver Part 1

The first half of Stand and Deliver showed me that Mr. Escalante is a very strong willed and dedicated teacher. He starts off getting a job at Garfield high school in Los Angeles, which turns out to be a vastly underfunded school with a mostly underprivileged immigrant student body. the school is so underfunded that he was brought in to be a computer sciences teacher and was moved into teaching Math 1A aka Basic Math because the school could not afford to have computers. Even worse than that the school's massive underfunding caused a shortage in desks so students had to compete for a place to sit down in class!

When he first arrives to the classroom he finds his students to be uncommitted to education and in some cases completely uninterested in learning. He even has do deal with some of the tougher gang affiliated kids making threats to his personal safety. His first day there is a colossal failure as he failed to reach the students in any way. But the next day he is prepared for them. He starts to use humor to reach them and at first some resist but over time he develops a way of communicating to the kids with their own language while still forcing them to rise to the standard he set for them. He eventually implements a system of embarrassing students who don’t try to succeed thus reversing the social norm they are used to. He uses a few crude tactics to keep these kids engaged in his class but they work and soon he has all his students eager to learn. Mr. Escalante makes it clear that he is a firm believer in the notion that students will only rise to the bar you set for them and because of this, decides to teach them Algebra instead of Basic Math.

Though other teachers have given up on these kids Mr. Escalante pushes forward with his crude yet effective teaching style and gets great results teaching algebra to kids deemed unfit for basic math. He decides, to the chagrin of other teachers, he is going to take it one step further and teach his students calculus in order to prepare them for an AP test and earn them college credit. after some struggle with parents that had their own agendas for their kids, agendas that had no need for better education and no input from the kid themselves, he gets his students into a summer calculus program and begins vigourisly teaching them. What happens next I’ll just have to wait for part two to find out. However if they fallow typical Hollywood formula there will be some tragedy (typically a sad death) and then ultimately success. (In this case the students passing the AP test.)

Brain STORM

I’m a little lost on just what to do on this paper... No real ideas are coming to me yet. I do have a few thoughts which may or may not pertain to my future paper however.

Yes there are good teachers and there are bad teachers but I would say both are very rare. Teachers are humans and humans are never as black and white as the labels good and bad would imply. Humans like to nestle themselves in those happy little grey areas. Those areas were they say oh my I can’t smoke marijuana it’s against the law, but I can speed to work when I'm late despite it being illegal. A teacher is always the same way. Wow, I love how clearly Mr. Redford explains his assignments; I just hate how he doesn’t try to reach the kids who are lagging behind! This wouldn’t make Mr. Redford a bad teacher, but I don't think letting your struggling students fail makes you a good teacher either. It makes you a human teacher and through my experience you can’t ask anyone to be more than human. When you do come a crossed that superhuman great teacher pay attention, they are rare and they have the potential to change your life!

Whats Makes a Good Teacher

To me a good teacher is someone who doesn't feel they know everything! They need to be able to learn and grow right alongside their students. Not everyone will learn the same way so you can’t teach everyone the same way what works well for one student or even class might be a colossal failure for the next. It is important to have a structure and a plan to the way you teach but the walls of that plan should be padded and flexible or you will just have a lot of students smashing their heads against the concert walls of your educational plan while only a few notices the hallway you have for them to walk down. Don’t be too stubborn to take your students suggestions to heart. If everyone is saying hey Mr. Foster I really don't like how we rushed through Shakespeare I really didn't get it. The problem isn’t my students then huh? I would need to step back and say ok hmm how can I better teach these kids Shakespeare because clearly I’m falling short. On a more obvious note it doesn’t hurt to smile and be friendly. People will always respond better to that then sullen and unapproachable.

Audre Lord

Audre Lorde illustrates what her teachers were like with the best tool a writer has to illustrate something, her descriptions. She describes, in good detail, how here first grade teacher looked. I really like the way she describes the teacher as a blonde, not because she was able to see Sister Mary's hair, but based on the observation of Sister Mary having blonde eyebrows. More important to illustrating these teachers then their appearance, Lorde has a way of showing you their personality’s rather than telling you. You get a good sense of the kind of teacher her kindergarten teacher was based on how she treated Audre and how quickly she was willing to give up and drop her. She wanted Audre out of school not for being unable to learn or for being behind the class but for simply misunderstanding the directions given to her. Audre went above and beyond what the assignment asked of her and was condemned rather than commended for this. Audre's mom made a really good choice moving her out of that school and into first grade although from the sounds of it the first grade teacher was more worried about the children’s strict obedience to herself and to god then about educating her students. This however was still an improvement upon the last teacher.

Ed. Narrative Final Draft

How I Learned I Couldn't Skip College

The sudden impact to the back of my head was hard and unsuspected. It immediately took me off of my feet and I crashed down onto my knees. Eyes already filling with water, my hand went to the spot I was struck and there it met with a warm stickiness that was matting down my hair. Knowing full well what was now running down my fingertips I still felt compelled to look at my hand, to see, if just maybe, I was wrong. Through the dizzying blur that my vision had become I could see bright crimson red smears covering the hand, it was blood, my blood. My vision dimmed and tunneled, and it felt like I was spinning. I went from my knees down to all fours as my head throbbed uncontrollably. Tiny red droplets began to slip past my ears and tumble towards the ground below.  I watched them break against the floor in front of me as I tried to piece together what had just happened. The answer, I later realized, was I got hit in the head with a hammer. The part I don’t like to admit is, at the time I was working construction and the hammer that tried to cave in my skull was my own. And even more embarrassing is the fact that this was not the moment that taught me I needed to go back to school. Hell, worse yet, this moment didn’t even get me out of construction. Sometimes I’m a slow learner I guess, or maybe it was the whack to the brain that set me back? Either way, to understand how I learned I couldn’t skip college we will need to back this story up a little.

The Year is 2005 and I am the king poo of turd mountain. Why am I so damn awesome you ask? Well for no other reason than the simple fact that I am a graduating high school senior. And as any graduating senior knows, no creature on earth is cooler or smarter then you. I had it all figured out I was going to be a writer and based on the wealth I had pictured making with this dream job, I was going to be a damn good one. So screw college right? I mean you don’t need a degree to publish awesome literature. Besides all of my favorite script writes never went to college. I was taught all through school that I could be anything I wanted to be. So I proudly wore my big goofy cap and gown with an even bigger and goofier smile and was handed my high school diploma. Ah the relief the hard part was over, time to just sit back and become the super famous and insanely rich author I was meant to be.

As it turned out my parents weren’t fond of this sit back and wait plan of mine. So less than a year after graduation I found myself pounding nails at my father’s construction company for ten bucks an hour. The work was hard and painful. Blisters and splinters so big they would run the entire length of your thumb were a daily occurrence, smashed fingers and small cuts an hourly. But I persevered; I mean why not, I was just making some money while I waited for that super famous and insanely rich author thing to happen. Months began to fall off of the calendar, I somehow managed to hit myself in the head with a hammer, and a few more months drifted away. At this point I had been doing this making some money while I waited thing for almost a year.

 We were currently building this odd little house in Indianola and were just about done. All we had left to do was put up the roof. This roof however consisted of a series of twenty-five foot beams, each weighing approximately five hundred pounds. No problems right? All my partner and I had to do was carry each beam up a sixteen-foot ladder, him with his end, me on the other side of the house with my end. Once we reached the top it was my job to hoist the beam onto my shoulder, hold it steady with one hand, and nail the beam in place with the other. His job was to keep the beam level and take the brunt of the weight while I did this. This had been working nicely, a little over halfway done and no injuries! I was exhausted, sweating bullets, and I could feel a bruise forming on my shoulder from the weight of the beams. Still you can’t complain on day with no drawn blood. Then the inevitable finally happened, he dropped his end. I didn’t see it coming; I was in the middle of positioning the beam on my shoulder with my back turned toward him and suddenly everything was out of control. There was immense pressure followed by a loud pop, a lot of banging and crashing, and finally a tremendous amount of pain in my wrist.  My hand had somehow caught under the beam as it fell and was forced strait backwards to a degree that I hope it will never bend to again. The popping I heard, as the doctor later informed me, was the sound of nearly every single ligament in my wrist snapping.  I was put in a wrist brace for a month and was told it would be a month and a half before I could go back to work. During that time my brain must have recovered from the wallop I had given it because I never went back there and I’ve never regretted it.

Instead of going back I used my recovery time to land a job at the local video store. I quickly took advantage of some newly acquired job perks and gorged myself on countless free movies.  I vigorously explored every genre new and old; I revisited old favorites and devoured new treasures.  After at least a year of spending significant amounts of my life watching both the amazing and the awful I came to realize all of my favorites had one thing in common. They weren’t all explosions and quick cuts; they were all built around great and creative writing.  After this realization I found myself getting increasingly more and more envious of the writers. What greater feeling could a writer have then to see their words come to life on screen? My envy grew into a spark that got me writing again. Just small things at first, a short story, a poem, but it slowly built. Then it happened, one of my shorts inspired a screenplay idea and I ran with it! I don’t think I slept for a month as I did my best to teach myself proper formatting, and poured my words out onto the screen. Ninety-eight pages later I had a screenplay of my very own! Now what? Set it on a shelf to gather dust while you work a dead end job a few more years? I don’t think that’s the right answer so I’m really unsure of why that’s what I chose to do.  However I do know that choice led to a total drop in my self-confidence and some battles with depression. Until finally my girlfriend gave me a big push in the right direction and I realized I needed college so I could have the confidence, skills, and connections I need to pursue my dreams. So with a little paper work and a lot more pushing from my girlfriend I got myself into school. Now I’m working toward a goal and even if it doesn’t work at least I tried something this time and who knows maybe ill end up that super famous and incredibly rich author I mentioned earlier, although I would be just as happy to make any living doing something I love, writing.

Rough Draft

How I Learned I Couldn't Skip College

By Josh Foster

The sudden impact to the back of my head was hard and unsuspected. It immediately took me off of my feet and I crashed down onto my knees. Eyes already filling with water, my hand went to the spot I was struck and there it met with a warm stickiness that was matting down my hair. Knowing full well what was now running down my fingertips I still felt compelled to look at my hand, to see if just maybe I was wrong. Through the dizzying blur that my vision had become I could see bright crimson red smears covering the hand, blood, and my blood. My vision dimed and tunneled, the house began to spin around me, and I went from my knees down to all fours as my head throbbed uncontrollably. Tiny red droplets began to slip past my ears and tumble towards the ground below.  I watched them break as they splashed down in front of me, wondering to myself what just happened. The answer, I later realized, was I got hit in the head with a hammer. The part I don’t like to admit is, at the time I was working construction and the hammer that tried to cave in my skull was my own. And even more embarrassing is the fact that this was not the moment that taught me I needed to go back to school. Hell, worse yet, this wasn’t even the moment that taught me to get out of construction. Sometimes I’m a slow learner I guess, or maybe it was the whack to the brain that set me back? Ether way, to understand how I learned I couldn’t skip college we will need to back this story up a little.

The Year is 2005 and I am the king poo of turd mountain. Why am I so damn awesome you ask? Well for no other reason then the simple fact that I am a graduating high school senior. And as any graduating senior knows, no creature on earth is cooler or smarter then you. At this point I had it all figured out I was going to be writer and based on the wealth I had pictured making with this dream job, I was going to be a damn good one. So screw college right? I mean you don’t have to have a degree to publish awesome literature and all of my favorite script writes didn’t go to college either. Besides I was taught all through school that I could be anything I wanted to be. So I proudly wore my big goofy cap and gown with an even bigger and goofier smile and was handed my high school diploma. Ah the relief the hard part was over, time to just sit back and become the super famous and insanely rich author I was meant to be.

As it turned out my parents weren’t so fond of this sit back and wait idea I had developed and less then a year after graduation I found myself pounding nails at my fathers construction company for ten bucks an hour. The work was hard and painful. Blisters and splinters so big they would run the entire length of your thumb were a daily occurrence, smashed fingers and small cuts an hourly. But I persevered, I mean why not, I was just making some money while I waited for that super famous and insanely rich author thing to happen. Months began to fall off of the calendar, I somehow managed to hit myself in the head with a hammer, and a few more months drifted away. I had been at this making some money while I waited thing for almost a year now and we were now building this odd little house in Indianola.  We were rounding the last week on the house and all we had left to do was put up the roof. This roof however consisted of a series of twenty-five foot beams, each weighing approximately five hundred pounds. No problems right all a partner and myself had to do was carry each beam up a sixteen-foot ladder, him with his end, me on the other side of the house with my end. Once we reached the top it was my job to hoist the beam onto my shoulder, hold it steady with one hand, and nail the beam in place with the other. His job was to keep the beam level and take the brunt of the weight while I did this. This had been working nicely, we were a little over halfway done and no injuries. I was exhausted, sweating bullets, and I could feel a bruise forming on my shoulder in the spot I would rest the beam as I nailed. Still you can’t complain on day with no drawn blood. Then the inevitable finally happened, he dropped his end. I didn’t even see it coming; I was in the middle of positioning the beam on my shoulder with my back turned toward him and suddenly everything was out of control. There was immense pressure followed by a loud pop, a lot a banging and crashing, and finally a tremendous amount of pain in my wrist.  My hand had somehow caught under the beam as it fell and was forced strait backwards to a degree I hope it will never bend again for the remainder of my days. The popping I heard, as the doctor later informed me, was the sound of nearly every single ligament in my wrist snapping.  I was put in a wrist brace for a month and was told it would a month and a half before I could go back to work. During that time my brain must have finely recovered from the wallop I gave it because I never went back and I’ve never regretted it.

Instead of going back I used my recovery time to land myself a job at the local video store. I quickly took advantage of some newly acquired job perks and gorged myself on countless free movies.  I vigorously explored every genre new and old, I revisited old favorites and devoured new treasures.  After at least a year of spending significant amounts of my life watching both the amazing and the awful I came to realize all of my favorites had one thing in common. They weren’t all explosions and quick cuts; they were all built around great and creative writing.  After this realization I found myself getting increasingly more and more envious of the writers. What greater feeling could a writer have then to see their words come to life on screen? My envy grew into a spark that got me writing again. Just small things at first, a short story, a poem, but it slowly built. Then it happened one of my shorts sparked a screenplay Idea and I ran with it! I don’t think I slept for a month as I did my best to teach myself proper formatting, and poured my words out onto the screen. Ninety-eight pages later I had a screenplay of my very own! Now what? Set it on a shelf to gather dust while you work a dead end job a few more years? I don’t think that’s the right answer so I’m really unsure of why that’s what I chose to do.  I do, however, know that choice led to a total drop in my self-confidence and some battles with depression. Until finally my girlfriend gave me a big push in the right direction and I realized I needed college so I could have the confidence, skills, and connections I need to pursue my dreams. So with a little paper work and a lot more pushing from my girlfriend I got myself into college. Now I’m working toward a goal and even if it doesn’t work at least I tried something this time and who knows maybe ill end up that super famous and incredibly rich author I mentioned earlier, although I would be just as happy to make any living doing something I love, writing.

Rough 1st Revised

The sudden impact to the back of my head was hard and unsuspected. It immediately took me off of my feet and I crashed down onto my knees. Eyes already filling with water, my hand went to the spot I was struck and there it met with a warm stickiness that was matting down my hair. Knowing full well what was now running down my fingertips I still felt compelled to look at my hand, to see if just maybe I was wrong. Through the dizzying blur that my vision had become I could see bright crimson red smears covering the hand, blood, and my blood. My vision dimed and tunneled, the house began to spin around me, and I went from my knees down to all fours as my head throbbed uncontrollably. Tiny red droplets began to slip past my ears and tumble towards the ground below.  I watched them break as they splashed down in front of me, wondering to myself what just happened. The answer, as it turned out, was I got hit in the head with a hammer. The part I don’t like to admit is, at the time I was working construction and the hammer that tried to cave in my skull was my own. And even more embarrassing is the fact that this was not the moment that taught me I needed to go back to school. Hell, worse yet, this wasn’t even the moment that taught me to get out of construction. Sometimes I’m a slow learner I guess, or maybe it was the whack to the brain that set me back? Ether way, to understand how I learned I couldn’t skip college we will need to back this story up a little.

My topic lends itself naturally to suspense, drama, and comedy, all of this falls into the entertainment purpose. Because of this, to entertain the audience with my narrative was the direction I was already headed in, and the one I wish to stick too.  So I reworked my opening paragraph a little added more detail in parts that felt a little cloudy and added a pinch more humor. It now feels better polished to me as well as a little clearer.

My Preference

I liked Malcolm X’s educational narrative more than either Ben Franklin’s or Mike Rose’s. Malcolm X has a writing style that just feels so much more personal, like he is talking to you. You almost read it in his voice rather than your own. His Autobiography was hands down the most inspiring piece when it came to influencing my own Educational Narrative. When he talks about copying down the dictionary page by page I can feel all of his frustrations, then the turn where he starts to really feel his vocabulary and writing style improve and you want to get up and celebrate with him. I can also really identify with his constant reading to better himself as a writer. I myself read constantly and hope to always do so. I feel there will always be new techniques and styles I can learn from others peoples work, stuff that no amount of formal education may be able to teach me. The line “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life.” Really speaks to me, and I think it goes right along with what I was saying about reading being incredibly important to anyone learning to write.

How They Differ

The major differences between the narratives I read would be the education each was granted before they took the initiative to teach themselves. Malcolm X had the least help of the three, having almost no formal education before ending up in prison. He said “But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional.” alluding to his total lack of schooling up until this point. It was the writing of letters, specifically the ones he wrote to Elijah Muhammad, in prison that got him started on his path to self-educate. He was able to transform himself from someone who could barely write into someone who properly used and understood the word articulate while writing his autobiography.

            Benjamin Franklin was granted a more formal education then Malcolm X however his was cut short do to the financial burden school was causing on his family. In his Autobiography he states “At ten years old I was taken home to assist my father in his business” showing just how short his education was cut. Now, at ten, we would still just be starting our long journeys through the world of education. Ben Franklin was clearly afforded more formal education then Malcolm X, but he was still forced to teach himself through debating with a friend via letters and other such means. He worked at his education until he became the man known today as one of America’s founding fathers.

            Mike Rose was the only one of them granted a full, all be it incredibly poor, education. Which brings up the question, what is better a really bad full education or a small part of a really good education? In Rose’s case it seems the full education was of little benefit as he still had to teach himself a lot. Being on the vocational track in school slammed him with a lot of ridicule from non voc. Students causing him to, in a way, shut down and accept the lies about himself as truths. It was only later after being free from this that he was able to better his education.

HoW i UsE mY bLoG

I use my blog primarily to practice my writing and writing style. It is also good for getting feedback on rough drafts such as the opening paragraph I already posted. Doing write ups on our reading material has helped me find what I liked and didn’t like about each piece and gave me a good Idea of how to build my paper around the things I liked. It also grants you the opportunity to review other peoples work for inspiration or have them review yours to notice issues you were to close to the project to see.

How I Learned I Needed to go to College

My Educational Narrative: First Paragraph: Rough Draft

The impact to the back of my head was hard and unsuspected. It immediately took me off my feet and I crashed down onto my knees. Eyes already filling with water, my hand went to the spot I was struck and there they met with a warm stickiness that was matting down my hair. Knowing full well what was now running down my fingertips I still felt compelled to look at my hands, to see if just maybe I was wrong. Through the dizzying blur that my vision had become I could see bright crimson red smears covering the hand, blood, and my blood. My vision dimed and tunneled the house began to spin around me and I went from my knees down to all fours, my head pounding. Tiny red droplets began to slip past my ears and tumble towards the ground below.  I watched them break as they splashed down in front of me, wondering to myself what just happened. The answer, as it turned out, was I got hit in the head with a hammer. The part I don’t like to admit is, I got hit in the head with my own hammer. And even more embarrassing is the fact that this was not the moment that taught me I needed to go back to school. No to understand how I learned I needed to get myself into college we will need to back up a little.

I Just Want to be Average Questions

1.     Rose’s life in Voc. Ed. Sounded rough and showed that he and his friends had very little chance of gaining any sort of descent education through the program. With a slew of teachers who had given up, been beaten down, or were just plain inept in the first place how could these students have a chance? I am very glade I have never had to experience teachers like that.

2.     Rose and his fellow students were hindered and in a lot of cases even dumbed down by they’re Voc. Ed experience. It lumped them all together as the trouble students, the “slow” students, and the stoners. It put negative stereotypes on them and made them feel bad about themselves before they even had a chance to try. This was a major factor in why rose was uninterested and intimidated by his schoolwork.

3.     High school can be so disorienting because so much is happening all at once. You have both educational and social stress while also tackling the difficult task of figuring out who you are, where you are, and where you want to be. Ken Harvey Coped with all of this by taking on the role of the dumb stoner that had been unjustly applied to him. Unfortunately this is a common defense against these labels and even worse some students turn to drugs and alcohol.

4.    I personally don’t find college to be disorienting although at times it has been intimidating. I think if you find yourself overwhelmed and disoriented by school you just need to take a step back and breath school will still be there when your done giving yourself some air.

5.     My experience with education has been far different then mike roses. I have always had and least adequate teachers, not that I got along with all of them, but all of them were decent to great teachers. I also didn’t have to deal with unjust negative stereotypes being placed on me from the start.

Benjamin X

At first glance it would appear that Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin would have nothing in common what so ever. Even if you take the fact that over a century separates their existence out of the equation, Benjamin Franklin having died on April 17, 1790 and Malcolm X being born 135 years later on May 19, 1925, Your still left what seems to be nothing in common. Malcolm X was a strong and incredibly controversial civil rights leader; Ben Franklin is touted as one of America’s founding fathers. Malcolm X was outraged by the acts of the white man; Ben Franklin was a white man. But wait both fought to stop the injustices done to their people did they not? But more so these two seemingly disconnected people are strongly connected by how they were educated.

Both Benjamin Franklin and Malcolm X started off with some all be it ill education, Ben being afforded slightly more opportunity then Malcolm. However they were both unsatisfied by the meager education they were granted and both worked tirelessly during any free time to satisfy their educational thirst. Strangely although separated by over 100 years they both bettered themselves by the same means of examining and copying someone else’s work. Malcolm spent his days pouring through dictionary writing, reading, learning, and rereading all it had to offer in his pursuit of better ways to express his views. Ben spent his days pouring through the third volume of the spectator; a piece he had come to love for its superb writing style, A style he one day wished to achieve. He would read a passage and copy down little notes, and then when the passage was out of his mind he would take his notes and try to rewrite the passage as eloquently as it was written before. Comparing his work to the original pointed were the book succeeded and he fell short, and so he would try again aiming to rectify his errors. Both were also very big into debate and used it as a way to practice what they were teaching themselves and better express their thoughts.

Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin did in fact live to very different lives at two very different times but they are not as different as this would suggest. They were both educated men driven by a quest for more than they were given and a passion to learn. You can say that they were different and not be wrong, but it would be more accurate to say that their differences were only skin deep.