Better late than never…
After reading Rodriguez there are some similarities, but I personally don’t really identify with the “scholarship boy”. Growing up I was never really motivated in school and was a “C” student, not because I would get bad grades on the work I did (I’d usually get decent grades), but because I didn’t do the work. My home life was vastly different than Rodriguez’s. My parents divorced when I was young and I ended up living with my dad most of the time. My father is college educated and basically raised me and my brother himself. He’s probably the most influential person on my education. From a young age he would do science experiments, talk about history and politics, and take us to museums and other events like a physics show at UW-Madison where me and my brother were the youngest people there by a good 15 years. So we took pride in teaching ourselves. This made it difficult in classes because teachers would have a lesson plan and I would be reading or working on something else instead of doing what I saw as “busy work” (which I would be very vocal about). I would pull my grades up by doing well on tests, which is very different than Rodriguez, and the idea of a “scholarship boy”. “The scholarship boy pleases most when he is young-the working-class child struggling for academic success” (444) and “He relies on his teacher, depends on all that he hears in the classroom and reads in his books. He becomes in every obvious way the worst student, a dummy mouthing the opinions of others.” (446) When I was in grade school you can be sure I had an opinion no matter what the topic was and would find myself arguing for the fun of it, yea I was that guy. It wasn’t until later in high school and college I started to worry about my grades and was forced to start applying myself.
There is another major difference between me and Rodriguez. Rodriguez says “A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn’t forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student”. (432) I see myself as almost the exact opposite. I’ve always been a student. At least for me, learning is not something that can be turned on or off, and so I cannot separate myself from my education like he does. although my academic success pales in comparison to his, I can be sure the acquisition of my education was a hell of lot more enjoyable than his.
The connection between teacher and student and writer and reader are very similar. There are some teachers and writers that stand out more than others, and for me unlike Rodriguez it wasn’t the desire “to possess their knowledge, to assume their authority, their confidence, even assume their persona” (438) that drew me to teachers or writers. It was how they presented their knowledge, if there was a passion or enjoyment of the material it was easier for me to be involved in the classroom instead of coasting. For me that passion or desire is the most important thing when trying to create a connection between teacher and student or writer and reader.
Ben Pankratz
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