Richard Rodriguez Essay

In the essay “Achievement of Desire”, author Richard Rodriguez, describes the difficulties balancing life in the academic world and the life of a working class family. As a child Rodriguez was the exception to the stereotypical student coming from a working class family. He was always top of his class, and rather than spending his time out with friends or with his family he spent his time with books and notes. Initially this approach makes Rodriguez stand out as an exceptional student, but as time goes on he becomes an outsider both at home and in school. “Achievement of Desire” chronicles the not-so-typical education of a young boy from a working class family.
Richard Hoggart, author of the book Working with the Past, states that a scholarship boy “is at the friction-point of two cultures”. The scholarship boy comes from a working class family background and when he starts school is thrust into a totally new environment. Where the chaos of a working class home is gone and the boy is surrounded by a sort of, “mental calm”. The instructors at his school “emphasize the value of reflection that opens a space between thinking and immediate action”. School is a part of the world that is completely alienated to a boy from a working class family. He enters the class barely able to speak English. It is easy to see a young boy might get caught up in all this. He has parents who are barely scraping by and know he is in a place where he can ensure his future by getting a good education.
Rodriguez’s parents had very little schooling. He recalls that in third grade he was “annoyed when he was unable to get help”, on a simple mathematics assignment. His mother was: a new girl to America who had been awarded a high school diploma by teachers too busy or careless to notice that she hardly spoke English. Having lived most of their lives with little education Rodriguez’s parents encouraged him to work hard at school. They knew first-hand how hard it was to get by with little schooling. Rodriguez also witnessed the difficulties of his parents due to this lack of education; he describes most of their jobs as “dead-end work”. Coming from that type of low-income environment with difficult day-to-day living conditions and then entering a world of stability at school it is easy to see why Rodriguez or any scholarship boy would desire to reside in that type of stable educated environment.
The problem with the scholarship boy is that in attempting to advance himself and separate himself from his home environment he loses all sense of self. Rodriguez lost the connection he had with his family after going away to school, he recalls how at Christmas break he and his parents were, lacking the same words to develop their sentences and to shape their interests. He also did not take advantage of any of the more worldly advice that his parents had to offer, “stupidly I took for granted their enormous amount of native intelligence”. Parents have great amounts of wisdom and values that they can pass on to their children besides the facts and figures that children are taught in school. Parents have years more experience at life then their children, and can help children avoid the same mistakes they did. This is even more relevant in a situation like Rodriguez’s, his parents had such diverse backgrounds and had worked so hard to get to where they were that even though they are not the most academically intelligent people they may be intelligent in other ways.
The most ironic part of the scholarship boy’s life is that he will never truly reach the goal he has for himself of being “knowledgeable”. A scholarship boy does not comprehend his studies but is rather, the great mimic; a collector of thoughts, not a thinker; the very last person in class to have an opinion of his own. The scholarship boy does not realize that there is more to being knowledgeable than just know the answer to two plus two. He is incapable at least, initially of understanding, that true knowledge comes from understanding and cannot be gained through simple memorization. The scholarship boy desires so much to be successful that he loses track of the meaning of success. He strives to be like his teachers, to possess their knowledge, to assume their authority, their confidence, even to assume a teacher’s persona. The keyword in that statement is “their”, he does not allow himself his own opinions but instead takes the opinions of others. It makes the boy seem smart at first, but that is only on the surface, beyond that he barely understands the meaning.
Richard Rodriguez’s experiences’ are comparable to those that a high school student may experience going into their first year of college. In high school, the environment is far more relaxed, the student’s day is structured and their path is for the most part pre-determined for them. Upon entering college there are radical changes to this high school way of learning, students have more freedom to make more decisions about where their education will take them. There can be a struggle to find the proper balance for the new student. Some students may embrace the new environment and excel, others may find it hard to adjust and fall behind in their studies. A new college student may not experience the same issues that Rodriguez did when growing up, but the principle is the same. When entering a new environment people must find a way to balance their new life with the life that they came from. It is imperative that they are eventually able to make this adjustment otherwise they will be unable to be successful in any environment.
Rodriguez strives to remind his readers that there is more to an education than just books and facts. An education encompasses not just school but one’s entire environment to ignore one area and focus on only another is to reject an entire part of one’s growth as a person. It is important to remember that life itself is an education and that the quest for knowledge will never truly end.