Scholarship Boy By Richard Marquez Summary

Martin Bang
June Wagner
ENG 121
13 November 2014
Educational Expectations The educational authorities in Dalian Bay port, a tiny fishing village, in China's Liaoning province, know that they have only twelve years to prepare their citizens for the life they will face as adults. Based on this, without a doubt, they have to prioritize three things. Their town’s fishermen are accidently wandering into North Korean waters and many have been arrested making it dangerous to fish. Yet they have no choice. Fishing is this area’s sole industry. This means that three subjects are critical to a graduate of Calian Bay Port Secondary School: swimming, Korea, and map reading. Everything else is trivia.
Throughout the centuries, education has been and continues to be a process that helps human beings thrive. Learning involves critical examination of errors made in the past as well
as accomplishments. For most people, the complexity of life in the twenty-first century requires that young men and women obtain a higher level of education than what was necessary for their grandparents. In colleges and universities people are exposed to new ideas, learn how they work, and embrace them as a part of their functional repertoire. Generally, when students learn about any subject they are interested in, the awareness broadens them both intellectually, behaviorally and often this makes life better for others as well as for themselves.
Wisely, most nations have made access to higher education increasingly available to their college-aged students, as well as older learners which is also true in the United States. According to a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Education’s, the US saw a thirty-three percent increase in the number of people earning a Bachelor’s degree in the last decade and a fifty percent increase at the graduate and professional levels (US, Dept. of Education, "Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment," Indicator 47). At the same time, competition for admission to U.S. colleges has increased. State-sponsored universities now recruit students from across the nation in order to increase revenue by collecting the higher, out of state tuition rates and all of the selective schools consider international students as part of their applicant pool, without preference for Americans. Together these trends should indicate that the US is becoming more academically competitive with the rest of the world. But this assumes that American students are working harder to be ready for college. Unfortunately this is not the case. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Pearson prepared an Index Ranking of Educational Achievement. The U.S. ranked twenty-first out of the forty countries placing its citizens in the same quartile as placing category as Hungary and Romania. This index measures the percentage of men and women who complete college. In the US, many high school graduates enter college or university but only half complete a degree, according to the ____________________ (______________________________). Among other reasons for this is a lack of readiness for college-level course work. Today, the basic milestone in education, a high school diploma, has become too easy to attain and for most students it does not indicate that they are ready for college. Although Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan has expressed a desire to do away with remedial classes in college and make high school curriculum more rigorous, currently sixty percent of high school graduates who attend community college are forced to take these non-credit bearing classes before beginning real college work (________________). This indicates two problems. The first is that students and their families fail to exert the level of personal responsibility necessary for obtaining a college preparatory education. The second is a system of public education that confers diplomas without demanding college readiness without considering the impact this policy has on the future lives of their students.
The education system must change so that the achievement of a high school diploma is equivalent to a demonstration of the fact that a student is fully prepared for university. High school must be difficult enough, while not so difficult that graduation is unachievable. What is needed is a system built on assessment of each student’s achievement and application of continuous quality improvement practices, borrowed from other industries. Together students, families, and educators must work towards meeting the goal of college readiness. These ideas are not new. American leaders, from a variety of cultures and professions, have spoken about the need for high educational standards.
Just last year, Dr. Ben Carson, a physician who is not affiliated with either political party, was chosen to address the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. He spoke about the need to demand a high level of achievement from every student and to reward those that rise to the challenge. Only eleven minutes into his speech, Dr. Carson asked his audience to consider the nation’s declining standards stating, “In 1900, all 2nd graders in the US were functionally literate”, and he went on to equate the United States citizens “becoming less informed with becoming more vulnerable” (Carson). However, he was not the first to discuss the need for more rigor in the curriculum.
A century and a half earlier, Frederick Douglas wrote about experiencing the benefit of having one person in his life who gave him a taste of education (Douglass para. 2). His personal reach for higher levels of education resembles the scaling of a steep and dangerous mountain by a novice climber. As he ascends to greater altitudes the risks increases, until he reaches the summit. During descent there is a greater ease but unfortunately the climber, like Douglass, can’t anticipate this place of comfort until he reaches safety once again. Students will find the work they face in college increasingly difficult and we have to accept anxiety, fear, and even moments of despair as normal experiences. In other nations students who fail a course simply redo course or even the year of study again and it is not seen as an indication that the climb they have chosen is too steep. In the end, the only important thing is whether the student like a climber who falls, gets up and perseveres.
The wife of Douglass’ master offered Frederick a taste of educational opportunity when it was against the law for her to do so and it’s obvious that Douglass appreciated her bravery (para.2-3). Due to her husband’s anger, Sophia turned back from her role as his instructor and Douglass had to journey on alone. Yet, she still served a role in his life, demonstrating that every student needs and deserves early encouragement. Throughout his narrative, Douglass reveals the heart break that accompanied his nation’s unwillingness to educate its Black citizens.
After 150 years, Dr. Carson acknowledged this inequality continues to exist when he speaks about the special needs of children in Title One School; those serving high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families (Carson). This is where it students are most likely to lack the equipment they need to survive steep slopes they encounter, but this is also where in one generation it is possible to move a significant number of mountaineers from settling for the view from the top of Barr Trail to striving for the Summit of K2. A Bachelor’s degree can take a family living in poverty into the middle class and beyond.
Yet from another angle, Richard Rodriquez, a second generation Mexican-American, in his essay “Scholarship Boy” explores the effects of becoming the first college educated person in a family.
He reflects on the individual’s responsibility to move beyond what is comfortable towards what is uncomfortable, but necessary, during the process of becoming an educated man or woman. He points to one reason American children and teens in some cultures may not be achieving their optimal level of performance in school. He implies that they are being held back by not wanting to be more successful than their parents (16-18). This may be holding back some American students from committing to the work of preparing themselves for college success but it is the opposite of what happens in other cultures. For example, East Indian, Asian, and Jewish families, among others, stereotypically push their first children more vigorously when they are members of the first generation to attend college. Perhaps cross-cultural events would favorably impact the expectations of both groups has of another; the zeitgeist, on this
issue. Students want to reach their goals in college and to be competitive with the rest of the world American society needs the majority of high school graduates to be ready to succeed in university. Just as a mountaineer needs specifically chosen equipment to reach the peak of a given mountain, so too, students require programs that will help them, as unique individuals, navigate their way to success in college studies both in high school and the early college years. Frederick Douglass benefitted from early, individual attention to learning and this is what students need from their parents and grandparents. Later, as the student proceeds through high school, as Dr. Carson said, it is the rigorous expectations of students by teachers as well as their friends support a student drive for success. In the end, it is the individual student who has to take responsibility for overcoming any challenge that would be an obstacle, whether, like Rodriquez it is a culturally-based fear, or it is another issue like not having the money to attend or not being willing to sacrifice everything else in life, for a time, in order to earn a degree.