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¶ … Mike Rose and Richard Rodriguez expose the weaknesses in the American educational system. In "I Just Wanna Be Average," Rose talks about his experience being accidentally placed into the vocational tract at school, when he was actually an advanced student. When he is eventually shifted to the college prep level, Rose notes that he lost all motivation to learn and it was a struggle to find inspiration in education. In "The Achievement of Desire," Richard Rodriguez describes how his education made him to feel superior to his working-class parents. Education changed him and made him smarter, but it did not necessarily make him a better person. Therefore, both Rose and Rodriguez explore different problems associated with being a working-class student. Being from a working-class background affects how other people view the student, and affects how the student views himself or herself.
In "I Just Wanna Be Average," Mike Rose describes his...
Because he was placed in the vocational tract, and because his parents did not challenge that decision, he lost all motivation to learn. "Students will float to the mark you set," Rose states (2). This means that when teachers expect very little of their students, as they do in the vocational tract, the students will achieve very little. When teachers have higher expectations of their students, their students will live up to their fullest potentials. Students need to develop internal motivation to study, and not be judged based on their test scores.
Richard Rodriguez has a different experience in Catholic school from Rose, as he was motivated to achieve good grades, but also finds problems in the education system. For Rodriguez, the problem is that education taught him to feel superior to his loving parents. "He enters the house and hears his parents talking in ways his teachers discourage," Rodriguez notes…
Education Richard Rodriguez and Mike Rose both write about their education. In "I Just Wanna Be Average," Mike Rose recounts his experience in Catholic school as an Italian-American from a working class family background. Because of a school error, he was placed in the vocational tract at school. The experience taught Rose a lot about the low expectations place on students, the lack of effective role models in the classroom, and
We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages. Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos' need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, language is a homeland closer than the Southwest -- for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and the East." The border language becomes a language
Hispanic-American Culture' Richard Rodriguez' article "Hispanic-American Culture' is about not only the experiences that he dealt with, but the way that the Hispanic Culture meets the American culture and how the two work together. Those that are Hispanic-American want to remember their Hispanic heritage, but they also want the benefits that they get from America. The way that Rodriguez tells the story it is clear that he is very proud
Language Both Malcolm X and Richard Rodriguez frame language in terms of political and social power. Malcolm X and Richard Rodriguez both comment on the power of language to demark social status. Language is also a form of empowerment, both personal and political. Rodriguez focuses on the social and political implications of bilingualism. The author shows that in the United States, English is the language of the dominant culture and all other
This is a type of assimilation that often allows some minority groups to maintain a connection to their previous culture. The white majority does become influenced in many ways, even though it may deny it. However, this process is very painful for many minority groups that feel helpless in the terms by which they must be assimilated into the majority culture. Thus, Rodriguez is saying that the more correct metaphor
Aria Rodriguez, Richard. "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood," an excerpt from. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: an Autobiography. Boston, Mass: D.R. Godine, 1982. Print. Bilingual education is one of the issues that have been hotly debated in the last few decades. Though proposed by Hispanic-Americans in the 1970s and '80s, many second- and third-generation immigrants from the south of the United States now have mixed feelings about