Richard Rodriguez’s autobiographical essay, “The Achievement of Desire”, a chapter from Hunger of Memory, captures his academic experience from a retrospective adult and a young perspective. Rodriguez recalls his experience as a student before college and shares his embarrassments, his thoughts, and the steps he had to take in order to succeed in the education system. Rodriguez becomes an individual who begins to choose academics over his family. Young Rodriguez characterizes his parents as uneducated and his father as unsupportive of higher education, while the retrospective adult Rodriguez narrates his regret about his younger self’s misconception of his parents. Rodriguez portrays this through identifying himself as a scholarship boy, contradicting …show more content…
As he was doing research on being a “scholarship boy”, he begins to piece together and connect the reasons to his life. An example is how “a scholarship must move between environments, his home and the classroom” (599). As a scholarship boy, Rodriguez had to understand that his home and school were two very different environments. Rodriguez began to realize that when he was in the third grade. He states “I became more tactful, careful to keep separate the two very different worlds of my day” (598). Rodriguez exemplifies a scholarship boy as he begins to separate his two distinct worlds. Rather than bring together the two worlds, Rodriguez keeps them separate by “barely respond[ing] ‘Just the usual things, nothing special’”. (602) when his mother asked what was new in school. Rodriguez begins to accept the idea that he cannot accumulate the two worlds. He continues to epitomize a scholarship boy as he describes it as an individual “who cannot afford to admire his parents” (600). Rodriguez does not look up to his parents because his parents are uneducated according to Young Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s self identification of being a scholarship boy allows him to achieve his desire of understanding why he is successful. He begins to appreciate how school was “changing [him] and separating [him] from the life [he] enjoyed before becoming a student”
Guillermo González Camarena was a Mexican electrical engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television, and who also introduced color television to Mexico,
While staring back into the faces of small children much like his younger self, Rodriguez starts to run through points of his life where the need to know more pushed him further from his family and their norms and culture. Mainly focusing on the bright future an education offers him, he continues to knowingly distance himself from his family. Douglass went through similar situations on his path for education. Focusing on his chance for freedom, with no family ties to distance
Often the change and transition to middle is a difficult one for students, so it is no surprise that a student of Juanita’s caliber would be having trouble as well. Her regular middle school teachers were not going above and beyond to make sure Juanita succeed, if anything it seemed as if Juanita was a burden to them. If it was not for the Ms. Issabelle’s effort, Juanita would have failed the 6th grade, and possibly fell through the cracks of the education system.
Rodriguez’s situation was that “his parents are immigrants to the United States and several of his siblings were born in the United States in the State of Texas.” His dad was well educated back in their country, Mexico, but they’re being declined because of the existence of bigotry. “His parents were having a tough time finding a job because of their situation – they have found several jobs but are paid below minimum sometimes.” Rodriguez’s parents have multiple jobs just to survive on their daily basis. Rodriguez’s family situation has affected them all – Luis was affected the most and went astray as he was so desperate into fitting into the society and is able to help his parents. No matter how hard life will be, there are ways to avoid gangs and criminal behavior – government programs and other resource center helps a family to survive and even lend a hand to parents and educate them of how to suppress their child to go astray and be involved with crimes and gang
The authors mention Miguel Fernandez, a fresh graduate from a small high school who has had struggles that have affected his opportunities to go off to college. These struggles include financial hardships and also that Miguel “was undocumented and in the country illegally” (Noguera and Kundu par.8). Though Miguel
In the essay “Achievement of Desire”, author Richard Rodriguez, describes the story of our common experience such as growing up, leaving home, receiving an education, and joining the world. As a child, Rodriguez lived the life of an average teenager raised in the stereotypical student coming from a working class family. With the exception, Rodriguez was always top of his class, and he always spent time reading books or studying rather than spending time with his family or friends. This approach makes Rodriguez stand out as an exceptional student, but with time he becomes an outsider at home and in school. Rodriguez describes himself as a “scholarship boy” meaning that because of the scholarships and grants that he was receiving to attend school; there was much more of an expectation for him to acquire the best grades and the highest scores. Rodriguez suggests that the common college student struggles the way he did because when a student begins college, they forget “the life [they] enjoyed
Individuals in the educational field commonly use educational tracking, as it serves as the conduit that assists students in attaining reasonable and logical career opportunities. An example of this emerges as Yadira’s boyfriend of the moment, Juan, explains his rationale supporting his decision of not attending college. This person views the educational experience as a particular stimulus that differs for all depending on their area of interest. Juan discloses to Yadira that technical school is a beneficial opportunity for him simply as he enjoys the mechanical aspects and felt that this particular method of education concentrating on mechanical specialty is a better fit for him than attending a traditional college. Educational attainment is vastly diverse, purposely, as it is designed to meet the needs of every person on an individual
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian showed all of the problems that arose in Junior’s journey. From poverty and alcoholism to bulimic semi-girlfriends, he had so many excuses to stop, but the passion of his dreams pushed him forward. Like a hero, Junior continued, determined to do well and build a greater future for himself. An example that showed Junior’s passion for education and desire to achieve his goals was when he threw an old geometry textbook at his teacher: “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world…My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud” (Alexie, 31). Junior clearly understood his disadvantaged education and he was very upset about it. He longed for a better education. Junior was passionate about education, because it would allow him to achieve his goals and break the depressing pattern he was trapped in. Bravery and determination are caused by passion, and heroes are very passionate about their actions. Passion clearly drove Junior when he walked to school, since he said, “Getting to school was always an adventure…Three times I had to walk all the way home. Twenty-two miles. I got blisters each time” (Alexie, 87). Putting all of this effort into simply going to school, Junior must have had
Instead of loving and caring for her baby, and forgetting about Danny, she became worse than him. Rodriguez presents many aspects of the minority class that live in the United States, specifically the South Bronx. Even though the cases presented in Rodriguez’s short stories are difficult to mellow with, they are a reality that is constant in many lives. Everyday someone goes through life suffering, due to lack of responsibility, lack of knowledge, submission to another entity or just lack of wanting to have a better life. People that go through these situations are people who have not finished studying, so they have fewer opportunities in life.
In modern society, the rules for school are simple and straightforward. To do well in school means to do well later in all aspects of life and guaranteed success will come. Sadly however, this is not the case for Ken Harvey or Mike Rose. Author Mike Rose goes to Our Lady of Mercy, a small school located deep in Southern Los Angeles where he meets other troubled students. Being accidentally placed in the vocational track for the school, Rose scuttles the deep pond with other troubled youths. Dealt with incompetent, lazy and often uninvolved teachers, the mix of different students ‘s attention and imagination run wild. Rose then describes his classmates, most of them trying to gasp for air in the dead school environment. On a normal day in religion
As Juan mentioned in the case study, he very much regretted having to drop out of high school and he harbored significant resentment towards his father because of that. Elena also experienced her own unique difficulty as well, revealing to the social worker that as a child she was often held to adult standards while she was still very young.
Education is a topic that can be explored in many ways. Education is looked at in depth by both Richard Rodriguez in his essay, “The Achievement of Desire”, and by Paulo Freire in his essay, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” After reading both essays, one can make some assumptions about different methods of education and exactly by which method Rodriguez was taught. The types of relationships Rodriguez had with his teachers, family and in life were affected by specific styles of education.
I expected to be reading long and boring books about topics that did not pertain to my life; as it turns out, this assumption was completely false. All of the three essays that we were required to read in class were fairly difficult to understand, but after a second reading, the essays meaning became clearer. I also feel as though their messages and key ideas were captivating. I definitely thought they would be extremely dry and difficult to understand. When I first read Richard Rodriguez’ “The Achievement of Desire,” I had the feeling that I could closely relate to this man. Everything that he said about education and sacrifice reminded me of my own schooling. The same idea can be echoed in Michel Foucault’s essay “Panopticism”; I found his ideas fascinating. I was extremely intrigued with how he explored power relations and being able to examine a panoptic structure in my
...eral topic of school. The sister strives to graduate and go to school even though she is poor while her brother blames the school for him dropping out and not graduating. “I got out my social studies. Hot legs has this idea of a test every Wednesday” (118). This demonstrates that she is driven to study for class and get good grades while her brother tries to convince her that school is worth nothing and that there is no point in attending. “‘Why don’t you get out before they chuck you out. That’s all crap,’ he said, knocking the books across the floor. ‘You’ll only fail your exam and they don’t want failures, spoils their bloody numbers. They’ll ask you to leave, see if they don’t’” (118). The brother tries to convince his sister that school is not a necessity and that living the way he does, being a drop out living in a poverty stricken family is the best thing.
Slick showed Rios the “hotspots” where life shapes these youth environments. The structure, as well as the constraints, that shape these young boys life in the neighborhood, slick points out a corner where one of his best friends got shot by a drive-by shooting. The lifestyle of these young boys is tragic.