Education Divided Us

Rodriguez, R.  (1983). Hunger of memory.  New York:  Bantam Dell.  (autobiography)

Chapter 6: Mr. Secrets (p. 120-135)

"All those faraway childhood mornings in Sacramento, walking together to school, [my siblings and I] talked but never mentioned a thing about what concerned us so much: the great event of our schooling, the change it forced on our lives. Years passed. Silence grew thicker, less penetrable. We grew older without ever speaking to each other about any of it. Intimacy grooved our voices in familiar notes; familiarity defined the limits of what could be said. Until we became adults. And now we see each other most years at noisy family gatherings where there is no place to stop the conversation, no right moment to turn the heads of listeners, no way to essay this, my voice" (Rodriguez, 132).

One of the main things that Rodriguez was open about was his feelings and relationship with his family. At times it seems as though there is a huge gap between his education and his family, but one thing that remained was his love for them even when the silence grew. From the beginning, we can see his struggling with losing the intimacy in his home and learning to function in the public. This struggle grows deeper when his family encourages him to get an education, and he begins to see the benefits. It is obvious that he feels some embarrassment towards his family because of their lack of education and ability to speak English. He speaks of being embarrassed by his mother's "visitors voice", and how his parents struggle to speak English. By the end of the memoir, there is complete silence between Richard and his father, and the conversation with his mother is limited. When she writes to him, he decides to reply with a letter because a phone call would have been too painful for him. He knows that there is a separation between him and his family but the big question is, how does he really feel about it?

I feel that Richard is proud of his accomplishments and his education. However, I wonder if he wishes that his family was apart of his success. As the only person in my family to go to college and graduate this upcoming Fall, I can see the distance that education creates. I find myself holding conversations about topics that only I can relate to. The things that used to interest me no longer interest me anymore. I have taken way more English classes than I needed too and learned about Medieval literature and the Harlem Rennaissance. I have written 10-page papers, and love reading in my spare time. Do I feel that I am better than my family who has loved and supported me throughout college? Of course not! Do I see the distance between us? Yes! Richard Rodriguez's separation from his family is understandable because it is difficult to remain the same person for some people when you all you want to do is grow.

Overall Rating: ★★★★

Scholarship Boy

Rodriguez, R.  (1983). Hunger of memory.  New York:  Bantam Dell.  (autobiography)

Chapter 2: The Achievement of Desire (pg. 31-53)

"Those times I remembered the loss of my past with regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the things my teachers could give me. (They could make me an educated man.) I tightened my grip on pencil and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget. But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers. I remembered too well that education had changed my family’s life. I would not have become a scholarship boy had I not so often remembered" (Rodriguez, 36).

"Playfully she ran through complex sentences, calling the words alive with her voice, making it seem that the author somehow was speaking directly to me. I smiled just to listen to her. I sat there and sensed for the very first time some possibility of fellowship between a reader and a writer, a communication, never intimate like that I heard spoken words at home convey, but one nonetheless personal" (Rodriguez, 44).

Throughout the memoir, Rodriguez refers to himself as a scholarship boy. Early on he demonstrates a love for reading when he attempts to read all of those books. He would get frustrated when his family did not relate to his love for reading. At one point, his mother asked him for a book and because she did not read it he decided to take it back. He realized pretty early on that his education was something private to him and could not be combined with his family.

He also struggles with becoming an independent thinker. Although he reads so many books he is only able to recite the ideas that he gets from other people. In order for him to be a true scholarship boy, he has to learn to formulate his own ideas and opinions. We see him evolve from this state of mind by the end of the memoir. He sees his writing as a way for him to express his emotions about life. He says that he would rather write about his personal life for strangers to read rather than tell people that he knows. By this point in the memoir, he has grown into more of a free thinker. He knows that without his education he never would have been able to articulate his experiences. 

I Am Not A Minority Student

Rodriguez, R.  (1983). Hunger of memory.  New York:  Bantam Dell.  (autobiography)

Chapter 5: Profession (pg.99-119) 

"I believed it. For the first several years, I accepted the label. I certainly supported the racial civil rights movement; supported the goal of broadening access to higher education. But there was a problem: One day I listened approvingly to a government official defend affirmative action; the next day I realized the benefits of the program. I was the minority students the political activists shouted about at noontime rallies. Against their rhetoric, I stood out in relief, unrelieved. Knowing: I was not really more socially disadvantaged than the white graduate student in my classes. Knowing: I was not disadvantaged like many of the new nonwhite students who were entering college, lacking good early schooling" (Rodriguez, 101).

Richard Rodriguez is pretty straightforward about his opposition to affirmative action and being labeled as a minority. He sees this label as a handicap, and reverse discrimination. He states that Affirmative action benefits all minorities but does not take into account the "minorities" who were raised in middle-class homes and obtained a quality education prior to college. Rodriguez did not see himself as being disadvantaged. Therefore, there was no reason for the benefits of affirmative action to apply to him. Being considered a minority only makes people look like a charity case. In many cases, minorities are accepted into colleges and given positions in order to make a college or company appear more diverse. It completely eliminates meritocracy. Rather than minorities earning positions, they are handed positions despite the fact that they were already qualified. In a New York Times review by Le Anne Schreiber, she states that "The pity is that Mr. Rodriguez's very personal reservations about bilingual education and affirmative action will be conveniently taken up by some conservatives who do not also share his very personal concern for the people those programs are intended to help" (Schreiber, 1982). Schreiber is right! His opinions of affirmative action and bilingual education can easily be misconstrued as a way to disregard the fact that there is some racial inequality. However, when considering his viewpoints, we can't forget that he would have experienced

inequality on either side of the spectrum, whether he was educated or not. Whether we are against affirmative action or for it, we have to remember that both sides of the system are completely broken.

Public Langauge

Rodriguez, R.  (1983). Hunger of memory.  New York:  Bantam Dell.  (autobiography)

Chapter 1: Aria (pg. 10-31)

“Supporters of bilingual education today imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language. What they seem not to recognize is that, as a socially disadvantaged child, I considered Spanish to be a private language. What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right – and the obligation – to speak the public language of Los gringos. The odd truth is that my first-grade classmates could have become bilingual, in the conventional sense of that word, more easily than I. Had they been taught (as upper-middle-class children are often taught early) a second language like Spanish or French, they could have regarded it simply as that: another public language. In my case, such bilingualism could not have been so quickly achieved. What I did not believe was that I could speak a single public language" (Rodriguez, p.15).

The biggest conflict that Richard Rodriquez faces is trying to find a place where he belongs. At the beginning of the memoir we see him struggling to hold on to his language, and his reluctance to give up the intimacy it creates in his household. When his family begins to speak English in the home, he sees the intimacy slowly fade away, and the silence moves its way in. Initially, I thought that he was against being forced to learn English because he wanted to hold on to his native language. Little did I know that Richard Rodriguez was against bilingual education. In the passage above, he explains why he is supportive of having to learn English. 

As a future educator, I would assume that a student whose first language is not English would find issues with having to speak English. Personally, I would feel the need to help that student preserve their native language while helping them learn English at the same time. Richard Rodriguez saw this way of thinking as a disadvantage to Spanish speaking students. Rather than meeting them where they are, they should be required to learn the public language in order to be able to function in the public. However, this way of thinking made others of his race see him as the Uncle Tom of his people. Although I could definitely understand why they may see him this way, I also had to try to see where Richard Rodriguez was coming from.

Richard Rodriguez understood that in order to fully function in an English speaking country, he had to understand the language. His access to a good education depended on his ability to speak the public language. Although it seemed like assimilation to many, he saw it as a step towards new opportunities. Yes, he would lose the intimacy that Spanish creates between him and his family, but without English, he would have never learned how to articulate those emotions and experiences. Learning English gave him access!