“The Achievement of Desire” profiled the academic career of Richard Rodriguez from his own perspective as the ‘scholarship boy’. Although I can not share in the same ethnic and socioeconomic experience as Rodriguez, I can relate to his struggle with education. For my entire educational career I, like Rodriguez have removed myself from intimate social situations to further my ‘knowledge’. In my household however, there was room for this type of detachment and was frequently encouraged by my college educated mother and father. Turning down a family movie night to study my biology homework was praised as good behavior by both my parents and would even be rewarded. Unfortunately, Rodriguez’s search for this type of solitude was chastised by his parents and siblings who did not understand his thirst for facts and thus encouragement. “When my brother saw me struggling home with stacks of library books, he would laugh, shouting: ‘Hey, Four Eyes!’” (Rodriguez 431). These types of negative interactions would frequently occur as a result of studying between Rodriguez and his family but were praised by teachers in the classroom. The conflicting opinions Rodriguez received about formal schooling convoluted his own understandings of the importance of education.
Rodriguez’s mixed feelings on his own academic success also caused him to disregard his parents unique cultural wealth. Unlike Rodriquez, I was raised in a typical upper-middle class small town home. Nearly everyone in my community had some form of higher education and consequently there was little diversity. I blended perfectly with the public education system and did not have to sacrifice any aspect of my life to succeed in school. Rodriquez however felt an enormous amount of pressure to remove himself from his Mexican heritage to become a successful academic. Similarly, he felt ashamed of his upbringing, most noticeably his parents lack of education. “I was embarrassed by their lack of education. It was not that I ever thought they were stupid, though stupidly I took for granted their enormous native intelligence. Simply, what mattered to me was that they were not like my teachers” (Rodriguez 436).
This quotation brings up another interesting point that almost all students whether the ‘scholarship boy’ or other experience, the idolization of teachers. I have always idolized some of my teachers, one so much that he inspired me to become a teacher myself. In elementary school, I was especially impressionable and would quote my teachers word or word. This act never threatened or belittled my parents since they felt on the same level as my teachers. In contrast, Rodriguez struggled with this type of relationship since it caused his parents to feel attacked. “The enthusiasm I felt in second-grade classes I flaunted before both my parents. The docile, obedient student came home a shrill and precocious son who insisted on correcting and teaching his parents with the remark: ‘My teacher told us. . .’” (Rodriguez 435). Rodriguez’s mimicking made his parents feel ill-educated and at times disrespected since their son was becoming more ‘knowledgeable’ then they were, a problem I never experienced with my own parents.
Lastly, Rodriguez was only taught learning through repetition and was not taught to formulate his own beliefs. Although my education consisted of memorizing facts and definitions, I was also taught by teachers but more so my parents to think for myself and be an individual. Because of this, I believe that I am a good student since I can apply what I learn in the classroom to the real world. Yet Rodriguez never fully grasped the concept of formulating his own beliefs on preexisting knowledge until much later in life. He carried the ‘scholarship boy’ mentality of learning then regurgitating throughout his entire academic career, which led him to believe he was a bad student. “ The scholarship boy is a very bad student. He is the great mimic; a collector of thoughts, not a thinker; the very last person in class who ever feels obliged to have an opinion of his own” (Rodriguez 445). Even though Rodriguez felt he was a bad student I do not believe ‘bad’ is the right word for it. He was a perfectly good student in the standard view of it. He merely lacked personal depth and the ability to formulate his own understandings of the world. He did not realize that education is the catalyst of personal fulfillment.
No comments:
Post a Comment