Summary Of Achievement By Richard Rodriguez

By the end of the “Achievement” chapter, Rodriguez has some very profound things to say about his views on educational reform and personal evolution. The things that he says in the ending pages of the chapter do not really seem like they are the tale of a “happy ending” but more so, a large pun or an ironic statement made about how our desires entail such influential consequences.
On pages 72-73, Rodriguez basically states that education is a tough process, a changing process even, and if one wants to become educated, one must be willing to embody some type of mental and/or spiritual change. He makes the point that some people, which would most likely be hippies or democrats –but he refers to them as “Radical educationalists”, are quick to
credit a school’s failure for their lack of creativity and originality, yet the schools are the ones who fail to see the bigger picture. Reform, to Rodriquez, is a good and bad thing.
It is bad because, much like in Rodriguez’s case, it teaches you to be studious, to know the material and be able to regurgitate it at will, however, it does not teach you how to digest it and make it your own. Reform gives people a “purely literate education”, one that lacks innovation and novelty, one that lacks intimacy (Rodriguez 71). On the other hand, reform is a good thing because it promotes change. One cannot really learn unless they are open to interpretation, and being open to interpretation means that you allows things to transform your thoughts, opinions, beliefs, etc. Rodriguez sees this from both sides and uses that to state an opinion about how educational reform personally shaped him. In the last two pages of the chapter, a simplified version of his analysis is that “they wanted me to be like them, and in turn, I wanted to be like them too. I worked my hardest to change who I was, and now we are so much alike that they are unsettled by me”. In that respect, Rodriquez got exactly what he wanted in his childhood as an adult. He actually worked very hard for it to be that way. Embarrassed and ashamed of his parents, even though they pushed him to assimilate, young Rodriguez wanted nothing more than to be like
the people that he was surrounded by. No individual that looks up to and feeds off of the approval of another culture, does so accidentally. From the very beginning, he knew that he wanted to be just like los Americanos, but he did not quite see his actions for what they were. His effort in school and disconnection at home formed him, or re-formed him, into the person that he is now. It’s just that he happens to be the assimilated brown skinned guy, so white it makes even the white people cringe.