Bilingual Education in Richard Rodriguez' Aria Richard Rodriguez offers an alternate yet equally profound truth: While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language. In the United States, the dominant language is Standard English. In this excerpt from "Aria," a chapter in his autobiography entitled "Hunger of Memory": The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez discusses public and private languages, and agrees that his achievements in English separated him from his Spanish family and culture but also brought him "the belief, the calming assurance that [he] belonged in public." We as human beings want to feel we belong. We search for that place in society where we are most comfortable all our lives. One should consider the benefits of mastering the dominant language of the society they live in, but should also take into account the harm of taking your native language for granted. I will attempt to explore both of these considerations and examine Rodriguez place in life now, by stating the facts of who is now by the childhood decisions that were made. Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se... ... middle of paper ... ... all as a society can benefit from today. Such as, studying his literature, reading his autobiography, and looking up to him as a role model. Rodriguez is an educated man with a very good grasp on what life and the American society expect from all of us. Speak our language if you're going to live in our country. If one chooses not to make any sacrifice needed to accomplish the basic skills needed to learn English then your chances of belonging and succeeding will not happen easy. While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language.
Gloria Anzaldua, wrote the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” communicating and describing her adolescence in a society brimming with sexism, cultural imperialism, racism, low self-esteem, and identity formation. The reason one comes to America is to finer themselves academically, and intellectually. One must learn to speak English to live among the American’s, because that is the language they speak. Though, no one has the right to deprive you of your familiar tongue. At a young age, Anzaldua was scolded, even mistreated for speaking her native “Chicano” tongue. Anzaldúa described this ignorance, cruelty, and discrimination when she states: “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess – that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler.” She overcomes this hostility throughout her life.
Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood by Richard Rodriguez is an essay that shows his readers a part of life that many have never experienced. Rodriguez uses this essay to show how he fights through his childhood to understand English. Speaking clear English will help him to fit in to society. He faces society while forfeiting his happy home life, to try to become a typical English-speaking student.
In his essay, Rodriguez, a Mexican, reasons that when he is learning the new language, English, he faces the difficulty to balance his own native customs with the new culture he’s absorbing, causing him to slowly forget his own Mexican traditions. Since Rodriguez and his family now live in the United States, he decided that he should
Anzaldua grew up in the United States but spoke mostly Spanish, however, her essay discusses how the elements of language began to define her identity and culture. She was living in an English speaking environment, but was not White. She describes the difficulty of straddling the delicate changing language of Chicano Spanish. Chicano Spanish can even differ from state to state; these variations as well as and the whole Chicano language, is considered a lesser form of Spanish, which is where Anzaldua has a problem. The language a person speaks is a part...
Since Richard’s family did use, for the most part at least, mostly Spanish at home, the nuns decided to ask his parents if they could make their children speak English at home to help them get over their shyness and others reasons they were uncomfortable in school. “Is it possible for you and your husband to encourage your children to practice their English when they are at home?” Of course, the Rodriguez parents complied.
Richard Rodriguez uses many rhetorical strategies in his essay, “Aria: Memoirs of a Bilingual Childhood” to convey the differences between his native Spanish and the English spoken around him. Diction, pathos and anecdote elucidate the differences between native English speakers and his parents, effectively giving the reader a clear impression of how Rodriguez experiences life as a bilingual child.
He also talks about if his teachers did not push him to speak English he would not have learned the language as easy. He states, “ I would have felt much less afraid. I would have delayed- for long postponed?- having to learn the language of public society” (Rodriguez 4). His teachers forced him to learn the public language, but that also encouraged his family to learn too. Now knowing the public language, they speak it more fluently and regularly. Rodriguez vocalizes “ Most of all I needed to hear my mother and father speak to me in a moment of seriousness in broken-suddenly heartbreaking- English” (Rodriguez 6). He also states “ But I had no place to escape to with Spanish” (Rodriguez 22). Rodriguez feels his family no longer carries a connection with their private language and he no longer has a safe place to speak Spanish. Because Rodriguez realises this he states “No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and the troubling knowledge of our public separateness” (Rodriguez 8). Since his family invited the public language in they have let their private language out. His family no longer has this feeling of
Richard Rodriguez lived a life that went against the norms of society. He rejected the same policies and practices that opened many doors and helped him to become a very well know writer. Richard Rodriguez was born in San Francisco on July 31, 1944 to Mexican immigrant parents. From a very young age Richard realized that in order to make it in America he had to conform to American society. He would continue on this path of conformity until he reached the breaking point in his life. Richard Rodriguez typifies nonconformity through his educational choices and his literature. His views on society would have a lasting impact on the social structure of America.
People are often viewed differently because of their linguistic differences. It is hard for some people to understand those that speak with accents and that makes those listening having various opinions about that speaker. In the except of “Hunger Of Memory,” it was mentioned that Richard Rodriguez would speak english that he did not
Rodriguez discusses in his piece. In his childhood, he spoke Spanish at home and English in his
In the essay “Private Language, Public Language” by Richard Rodriguez he made a comparison between public and private language. I believe he made this comparison because of the battle between their family and public languages. Rodriguez grew up in an immigrant family, and depending on the location they were staying in, they had a hard time using the different languages they had to speak at home and in society. In their lives they had two forms a language, the private language only spoken with the family and the public language with people outside the family. Rodriguez struggles to overcome the difference between his home language, Spanish and English. The purpose in this distinction is to illustrate the struggle with the different types of languages that the author had to adapt to in his childhood.
It was almost like he was learning two languages at once. This made it a bit more difficult for him and his parents to understand what the whole schooling/ education system was. Rodriguez spent a lot of his time reading while Hoggart says, “reading is a woman’s game.” (PDF). By him saying this, he is implying that men are more likely and more accustomed to do activities outside, while women are supposed to stay inside and read. Rodriguez’s parents did not understand this whole concept because of their lack of the language. This changed Rodriguez’s life in a very big and impactful way. The education helped Rodriguez in a weird way with him saying that “ If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.” (355). This means that he had grown distant to his parent from being involved with his parents through the whole education process. It took time away from them being together, taught him different cultures, and made him make decision in which his parents were not fond
In the beginning of the article, Richard started out by mentioning how his public language which is Spanish will not get him nowhere in life, however by learning a public language which is English will help more in life and make stuff way easier for him. He mentioned being scared and hard for him to learn a public society language. When I came to America 11 years ago, it was hard for me to learn a second language and I doubted myself all the time, however I had family members, teachers and friends pushing me to learn and telling me to not give up even
My parents decided to immigrate to the United States when I was six years of age. As we established ourselves in the United States, my first language was only Spanish. Spanish was the language that I was taught at home, and it was the only language to be spoken at home. Rodriguez describes when he first entered his classroom where he was introduced to a formal English-speaking context, writing that, ?I remember to start with that day in Sacramento-a California now nearly thirty years past-when I first entered a classroom, able to understa...
Similar Themes in Richard Rodriguez' Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood and Carmen Tafolla's In Memory of Richi