Richard Rodriguez Scholarship Boy Analysis

Richard Rodriguez’s The Achievement of Desire puts a very unusual point of view on how to look at the education system and how it affects the everyday person. Rodriguez talks immensely about the term he uses called “The Scholarship Boy.” He claims that the scholarship boy is technically defined as a student who is extremely talented but is changed by the school environment. This means that they (the students) can be extremely cultured at home but as soon as they start learning about other cultures through the education process, they change remarkably. Doing this can cause a lot of things to go right or wrong in the ones culture back home. It can cause problems between the kids and parents, siblings and siblings or even the parents at each

“My mother had to remind him to “say something” to one of his children who scored some academic success.” (Rodriguez 345). When something good was done it was hard for him to feel good about it because he wouldn’t get the praise and joyfulness that other students would receive from their parents. Hoggart would say that he has to be more on his own if he would like to be a so-called scholarship boy. Being allegedly babied by your parents is not a key to becoming the scholarship boy that is wanted by Hoggart. To be what Hoggart wants the perfect child to be one would have to break away from their parents at a very young age. Being independent and being able to do all work without help from them would mean that they are grown and able to work on their

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