Education and Richard Rodriguez Essay

In Chapter 5 Mike Rose starts working with the Urban Teacher Corps in East Los Angeles. Of all the chapters I read from this book, I found chapter 5 as one of my favorites. Rose provides us with a look into the academic and personal lives of his students. He integrates pictures and music with his teaching methodology to get his kids to think creatively. And of course, it helps him to understand their lives and complications better. I really enjoyed reading about his idea of taking photos of the kids and let them write about what they see in those photos. Their answers show how they see life. I think Rose tries to show us that education is more complicated than just teaching the syllabus. He seems to be more enduring with his student’s like

The second turning point is like a surge of hope amongst the sadness. We are brought a new perspective of the scholarship boy from his reading of the book “The Uses of Literacy”. Rodriguez learns he is not alone in his feelings, “For the first time I realized that there were other students like me, and so I was able to frame the meaning of my academic success, its

Upon being over qualified to make his claim, he also appeals to the emotions of the audience by telling several personal stories and relating to the audience. He tells short anecdotes about teachers, mostly bad, to emphasize how poorly qualified the teachers are. He talks about one specific encounter with a gym teacher who was an ex-lineman; he claims “He routinely had us grabbing our ankles to receive his stinging paddle across our butts.” He goes on to tell a personal story about how the same teacher asks him, “Rose, do you know what sound a bag of shit makes?” Rose answers, “No, sir.” The teacher proceeds to hit him with the paddle. Rose says this in order to emphasize how terrible the teachers were. Not only does he only talk about how bad his gym teacher was, but he mentions

Rose writes about his high school educational experiences after he is inadvertently placed in vocational education when the results from his placement tests are confused with another student named Rose. Vocational education is a "euphemism for the bottom level." Rose went to school at a time when tracking, or sorting students by the results of placement tests was common in public education. Rose recounts his experiences in vocational education in order to elaborate on the problems of such system. The author calls the vocational track "a place for those who are just not making it, a dumping ground for the disaffected." To further aggravate Rose's situation his parents lack the capacity or understanding of the educational system in order to question his inappropriate placement. "How would someone like Tommy Rose, with his two years of Italian schooling, know what to ask? And what sort of pressure could an exhausted waitress apply? The error went undetected, and I remained in the vocational track for two years." However the most significant issue raised

Every so often, Mrs. Brown pokes her head in and attempts to steer Pat Conroy’s teaching methods back on course in her favor. Pat Conroy works for a revolutionary change in the students, while Mrs. Brown’s continues a heartless attitude towards the children.

Even though the teachers saw the students in agony, they somehow had the nerve to continue. Stanley writes on what emotion the teacher shows. “What is extraordinary,” Stanley writes, “is his apparent total indifference to the learner; he hardly takes

In Richard Rodriguez’s essay, “The Achievement of Desire,” he informs the readers how education became the essential meaning of his life. He established how remorseful he was for neglecting his parents for education and to the extent of disapproving his lowly-educated parents. “At home, life was less noising than it had been. (I spoke to classmates and teachers more often each day than to family members.) Quiet at home, I sat with my papers for hours each night. I never forget that schooling had irretrievably changed my family’s life” (Rodriguez, 519). Rodriguez would pile up on books and neglect his family as a form of escape. His education formed a thin line between homework and readings with his family. He felt as if he didn’t belong with his family because they have no connections to each other. He was stuck in his own world where nothing but education mattered to him the most.

Richard Rodriguez was a smart kid, he loved reading and learning new things. He saw education as a way toward a better life. He takes all the credit for his academic success. He often blames his parents for pushing him into education when he becomes nostalgic to who he was before going to an “English” speaking classroom. Although, he then aspired to be nothing like his parents, but like his teachers. His parents didn't give him the support he needed. His parents also contradicted themselves often. The contradiction was a battle Rodriguez often fought with his parents but also with himself. His parents' lack of support and contradiction toward education causes Rodriguez to be bothered by their lack of education.

In Richard Rodriguez “Scholarship Boy” the audience notices several tensions throughout his experiences; and how they affect his upbringing to become the man he is today. Rodriguez’s two most important levels of tension were, his homelife home where he separates himself from his family while feeling a form of anger towards them. Rodriguez distances himself from his peers despite his educational success, nevertheless he thrives in his studies in the classroom. Since he is so dedicated on his studies he lacks time to interact with them because his free time is spent reading.

The article provides many examples of the teacher's cruel nature including, "I'd head off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, 'Here's proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx'"(Sedaris 86). It would have been easier to give up and try again with a different instructor or even switch instructors. The author shows just how cruel this teacher could be and how she insulted her students from day one. This shows how determined the narrator and the other students in the class to keep dealing with this cruel teacher. Only the students determination to succeed in the class made them return each day. It's easy to return to a class where the teacher is supportive and nice. It is not easy to deal with a cruel teacher. Many other people would have given

In this selection from Why School, Mike Rose expresses his belief that the economic and competitive aspects of the modern education system limits true intellectual growth and development. Rose acknowledges that economics have always been a driving force for the brevity and efficiency of the education system, essentially forcing in as much material as possible into the developing minds of children. To mass distribute the most valuable knowledge, a system has been created, like most economic systems, to gain the most return from the least amount of resources expended. He notes that some students cannot keep up with the fast and focused pace of learning, and fall through the cracks of the system, creating intellectual borders, only leaving those who are able to learn in the way the material is presented to be successful. Although the streamlined orientation of American education is undoubtedly efficient, Rose believes that this draws focus away from the more important aspects of a youth's education, primarily creativity. It removes individual perspectives from the pool of students and promotes similar thinking, which minimizes the variety of ideas.

Generally, it was not easy to compare my and Mike’s educational journeys because we were born and educated in absolutely different ways. I always had a serious attitude to education and was completely focused, but Mike did not do this at all. However, Mike had

In the essay “Achievement of Desire”, Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulties of being a nonnative English speaker trying to fit into the mainstream American culture, while balancing life in the academic world and in the working-class. Rodriguez describes his education as a burden that caused many hardships throughout his life. Rodriguez was inspired by the British cultural historian Richard Hoggart’s “A Scholarship Boy”, and inserts passages and quotes throughout his essay to compare himself to the “scholarship boy”. The two authors had their own versions of the “scholarship boy” but they both showed similarities due to the fact that Rodriguez lived through the expiriences of the “scholarship boy” and Hoggart provided the definition.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” (Confucius) this quote

While it is not until his final chapter “Young People: Improving the Odds” that we read Edelman’s thoughts on American education at length, I argue that the theme of education is one that motivates Edelman’s writing.