Minority Education In Richard Rodriguez's The Hunger Of Memory

In Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez situates his individual experiences with education in such a way as to expose what he sees as the fallacious logic behind bilingual education and affirmative action. He uses arguments to propagate the systematic problems with such programs. His autobiography explains in great detail the entangling problems all American children face by instituting bilingual programs and affirmative action endorsements.

The occasion was in the year 1996 in the gang-ridden streets of South Central, Los Angeles while California was on the ballot for affirmative action. Corwin, a newspaper reporter, was covering the shooting of a teenage boy. The victim turned out to be John Doe, a student from Crenshaw high school. In his pocket revealed an “A” paper on the French Revolution; he was a gifted student who had a bright future ahead of him. Before he knew it, Corwin realized that South Central isn’t just a place full of gang activity, but rather a place filled with hidden successes. This motivated the author to approach the high school the boy had attended to shine light on the students who shared a similar background story. Miles Corwin decided to set the location at a predominately black school such as Crenshaw because it would be an ideal place to set his book. Afterward, Corwin successfully explained how “affirmative action” put these gifted students at a disadvantage. Furthermore, he was able to describe the obstacles these students would have to deal with such as abuse, financial instability, and the poor education system. Thus, Corwin would set his tone as concerned and hopeless of the students who faced the impending, one-way trip they will be part of : graduation

In Richard Rodriguez autobiography, Hunger of Memory, Richard himself writes about his educational journey. Rodriguez wrote such book in 1982. The book revolves around the life a young immigrant child, whom has a difficult time understanding how to adapt himself in the given environment. Furthermore, the book navigates the readers though Richards transition form boyhood to adulthood. Not only so, but Richard discusses how the opportunities that were presented to him altered his viewpoints in life as well as education.

In James Baldwin’s article “A Talk to Teachers” he utilizes paradox, tone, and anecdote to persuade the audience that an educational system where students are taught the true meaning of American history and identity must be established in order to create a society where people of all races contribute their ideals to society.

194). This is how Latino American felt when they attended public schools in America. This is why I believe African American and Latinos when through similar problem with American Public schools. They both had to go through segregation and figure out how to live in a cruel world. There weren’t that much difference between these two groups but one of them would be that African American had to face the world outside of school more than Latinos did. There were riots due to African Americans in white schools so they had to go through a little more. One of the groups that helped African American achieve equal education were the people that took part of Little Rock. There were nine kids selected to go to a white public school and manage to survive and get a good education. They were called bad names and even got spit on according to (Clark, p.289) but this one girl called daisy Bates made a difference because she went to that school and showed courage and one day a white girl helped her to the bus and sat next to her and that’s when she knew that there was hope in this world. Another person that was a huge part to fight for equal education opportunity was Septima

“Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.” (Steven Hsieh, 2014) Until now, we are still finding unequal treatment from school in American Society from different aspects, such as school discipline, early learning, college readiness and teacher equity. However, education is more than learning from books. Education enables individuals potential to utilize human mind and open doors of opportunities to obtain knowledge. But the US educational system doesn’t serve the majority of children properly and gaps remain between white and black students. What’s more, nowadays, a lot of schools only treat education as a curriculum and test scores; ignoring the stimulus of curiosity. Therefore, “Between the World and Me” is a book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who weaves his own personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. In this book, Coates writes about education and pleasures of his own educational experience in Howard University. Although bad education hides the truth and restricts students’ ideas, education also contains pleasures, which broaden people’s mind, help people build their own thoughts, and prevent people from prison. As a result, there are more pleasures in American education that positively impact on black body than dangers.

While I read "The Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez", there were tons of ideas that struck me. It was very interesting because so many of the different parts could relate to my life. Also, given his story, it's so interesting to me that he is against bilingual education, having benefited from it in his own life. To me, it places the book in a different light as I read it. This book is a narrative and it is telling in how his opinions were formed because the experiences that he had. In the narrative, the themes that I thought were most important were Rodriguez's experience of separation from his family, his feelings of personal alienation and finally assimilation into American society because he had to break away from

In the two readings “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the similar idea presented in both text is that students whose families come from immigrant background tend to work the hardest as in adapting to the English language. The reading by Richard Rodriguez provides a different message of how him coming from Mexican heritage had to adapt to the school environment in the U.S., albeit he was able to obtain academic excellence. However, having success in education cost him to be isolated and to have less communication with his family. Richard as a student was able to develop strengths in literacy and grammar thanks to his immense curiosity and habit of reading books. Since he would read many different books, he was able to gather different points of views and perspectives.

Ronald Takaki was one of the first professors to teach about ethnic studies in the United States, he argues that we must see things in an accurate but educated way just like it is unfolded in his book A Different Mirror. Carlos Fuentes, was one of the most acknowledge writers from Mexico. He dealt with two cultures coming together. In his book, The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories, He expresses to the readers that our literature, perspectives, culture, and race is exposed to change among society. The fact, people do not educate themselves. They rely in believing or perhaps accepting what they see or are being told by majority or by inaccurate history; in a way to just cope with the surrounding environment. Race

Research Assignment Education and the knowledge acquired from the pursuit of it are like waking up from a dream. This is so because education makes one cognizant of their environment. Education personifies things that seem abstract from the past. Education makes one know their identity because knowing your identity gives you a sense of purpose in life. Through this class, I have come to know and appreciate African American history, culture, and value; all of which define the African American’s identity.

Clearly, Sandra Cisneros' writing style is one representative of a minority voice. Her amazing style allows her readers to take an active part in the minority experience. For this reason, I believe Cisneros has had a lot of influence and success in the status of minority writers, especially in the canon of what is read and taught in schools today. But, more than anything, Cisneros has shown that liberation can come through creativity and literature, and not just through geographical excursion.

intro/Thesis: As an English second language learner, starting school is laborious. it makes a child feel like they do not belong and like they are not good enough. It as if society would want them to lose motivation because they know the power of words. Sherman Alexie writes in superman and me “I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives,” (80).

This paper includes literature relating to the achievement gap with minority students verses non-minority students in America. In general, this literature seems to indicate that studies show that there is a large gap between minority students such as African –American, Native American, and Hispanic students’ vs non–minority students such as Caucasians in America. This is greatly seen in academics in the subject areas of math and reading. However this “gap” starts before students enter the instructional classroom; thus creating a challenge for many minority students to be successful academically and in their personal lives. Furthermore, the other unspoken factors that contribute to these student’s disadvantage are socio-economics, crime, poverty,

For centuries, America has wondered why minority students consider rhyming and playing basketball more important than receiving a proper education. The theme of my research is to discover why there is such a vast educational achievement gap between minority and Caucasian students. Many Americans are aware that a educational gap exists among today’s students but they do nothing to bring attention to it. This proposal will inform one of alarming statics that are affecting the welfare and future of minority students. For example, African American students representing a majority of the special education population but they only make up 40% of the student population. My research will also tackle key events that contributed to the mediocre education that minority children are currently receiving. For example, in the past, it was illegal to educate African Americans and when it became legal, blacks were treated as second class citizens and placed in impoverished school districts ( Billing, P. 33). African Americans were segregated from their white counterparts and given used textbooks. They were also beaten and murdered for attempting to seek a proper education. This research will analyze factors that are contributing to the poor education of minority students such as moral principles, socio-political, economic status, and racism. It is the year 2014, the amount of time that has past is tremendous but today’s schools are similar to the ones from the past. Minority children are

From the time I was a small child my family has always stressed the essentiality of education, but I’ve learned that the process of acquiring knowledge in this country comes with a steep price. The loss of one’s identity while being forced to assimilate into “American culture” is the price many of us must pay. This barbaric process of cultural genocide occurs in the schooling system because in order to be perceived as fully human, minorities are obligated to forfeit their history and lose a piece of themselves with the hopes of acceptance. This is fundamental when constructing agents who will just go out into the world and perpetuate the same nauseating racial, social, economic hierarchies which we call freedom in this