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Cameron Porter

Mr. Wolfe

English 101 and 101 Lab

23 Oct. 2022

Self-Educated Opportunist

There are so many ways to learn in day in age. Whether the learning is at school, at a

job, or even at home, there are many ways to learn. Is it important to learn? Yes, it is important.

Now, not all people get to learn through the school system, or, they may even want to further

their education after school, but problems come up in life like if they can afford it or not. So that

means they have to self-educate themselves. There are two great men who learned many

different things than the normal person does, and they had a story to share. Those men are

Sherman Alexie and Malcolm X. Both men had an interesting way of learning, but it helped

build themselves a future. Malcolm X and Alexie are similar in relation to the importance of

literacy and self-education; however, they differ in relation to their purposes in their pieces.

Starting off, talking about Malcolm X’s thoughts on literacy, Malcolm X was a well-

known man in his time who was known for learning to read by memorizing the whole dictionary

while he was in prison. Those days in prison might have been the best years of his life for his

education. Literacy was very important to him, and he even said that it; “changed the course of

his life” (X par. 22). He also talked about how it brought out a “dominant craving to be mentally

alive” ( X par. 22). He wanted to learn, and then it became his future and something that would

help him defend black men in years to come. Those important factors changed his future for him

to go on and be a successful man using the education he had taught himself.

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Now when we talk about Sherman Alexie, he was a Native American boy who turned

into a great example for others. Alexie himself also thought that literacy was very important. He

had learned so much through learning how to read and write. It set up his life for him. He talked

in the statement “Superman and Me” about how the paragraphs he read were like a “fence that

held words and how each fence had specific reasoning behind it” (Alexie.1). After learning about

literacy, his future consisted of him becoming a writer instead of becoming a pediatrician using

his self-education to write and to teach others about literacy. Malcom X and Sherman Alexie

both relate to how they thought of literacy and how it affected their lives.

The next fact that Malcolm X and Alexie had in common was how they described how

they got their education. Starting off again with Malcolm X, he had learned how to read and

write by using a dictionary. That dictionary was his only way of getting any sort of education

while being in prison. So, when he started reading and writing, he would go to bed, and then

think more and more about the words he had just learned about. And when he woke up, he would

be thinking of the words he had just learned the prior day and how accomplished he felt ( X

par.9). His thoughts about words continued for weeks as he continued to educate himself.

Malcolm X had learned in a very different way than the average person, but there is a person

who learned in a similar way. That man was Sherman Alexie.

Alexie was a man who learned how to read by looking at the pages of a superman comic

book. He would look at the picture that was on the page, see what superman was doing, and then

try to figure out what he was saying in the picture. Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie both

mentioned about how important self-education was in their papers and they talked about how

they each had their own specific way they had to teach themselves.
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And finally, one difference between the two men was their purpose towards the later part

in their lives. For Malcolm X, he was a man who went on to defend black men. He went on to

join the Islamic religion, and continued following that for years, sharing his faith and what he

believed at the time. But then later on, he left his religion and focused more on defending people

against racism. Malcolm X would constantly be trying to find ways to fight for black men. He

even stated in his autobiography, “You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which

I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.” ( X par.22). His main

goal was to defend the black men and you can see that he was always defending them through

his words.

Now for someone who’s goal was to help educate young Native American kids is

Sherman Alexie. Not a lot of Native American kids were blessed with an education, so when

Alexie got the chance, he would go and visits the schools that they were at, and he would teach

them about creative writing, poetry, short stories, and novels. His main goal was to teach Native

American kids so that they could have a better life for themselves so that their “lives could get

saved” (Alexie 3). Even though Alexie and Malcolm X learned in very similar ways, they both

had different goals later on in their lives. While Malcolm X wanted to try and help the black

community from racism, Sherman Alexie on the other hand wanted to help educate the Native

American children who could not get an education themselves.

With all this in mind, you can see that Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie were both similar

influencers in their time. They were very important in the aspect of self-education and the

importance of literacy. Even though they were similar in those ways, they ended up having

different goals in the end. Another detail about these men that is shown through their writings is

that anyone can learn. It doesn’t have to be through a school system. People can be successful
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whether they do or don’t go to high school, college, or even further education. It just depends on

how the person views their situation and if they apply themselves. Malcolm X and Sherman

Alexie are great examples of two men who were in tough situations, but applied themselves to be

successful men.
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Work Cited Page

X. Malcolm “Learning to Read” from the book, The Autobiography of Malcom X. 29 Oct.

1965, http://accounts.smccd.edu/bellr/readerlearningtoread.htm Accessed 5 Oct. 2022

Alexie, Sherman “Superman and Me” Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1998,

http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/SupermanandMebyAlexie.pdf Accessed 5 Oct. 2022