Richard Rodriguez’s Challenging The Traditional Classroom Essay

Rodriguez starts off by discussing the struggles he faced growing up as a bilingual Hispanic in an American society, it was quite a roughhouse due

Rodriguez parents become the melting pot of America because per the request of the nuns they had to give up their language in order for Rodriguez to do good in class; however, they were not obligated, it was their own decisions. Whatever it took for their beloved son Richard Rodriguez.

Richard Rodriguez was born in Sacramento, California and his parents are immigrants from Mexico. He went to a private catholic school and was a scholarship boy which means that the other parents that had their kid there had to pay a little extra for Richard to stay. Richard read a lot in his classes and he never understood why reading was so important when it came to his education, but

There is one thing that Rodriguez wanted and that was to be like his teachers. He was ashamed of his parents because they were not like his teachers. Rodriguez assumed they were never going to understand, he thought of them as uneducated (Rodriguez 600). Amy Tan talks very differently about her mom. She says “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation, and imagery” (Tan 2). The way she talks about her mom is very different from how Rodriguez describes his parents. Christine Leong says, “...language is the tool used to define us…”(Tan 2) and she's

Rodriguez uses language and details about his siblings to show the distance between them and their parents due to material success. Rodriguez's siblings have become wealthy and successful. Rodriguez’s siblings have become “business executives” and one is a “lawyer.” Rodriguez’s siblings have grown and now have jobs and more responsibilities in their life so they would not be able to spend much time with their mother. Rodriguez

In chapter 1 of “Always Running” by Luis J. Rodriguez, it starts off as Rodriguez reminiscing about his family, when he was young and how it was growing up. Rodriguez begins to explain that his father was a principle of a school in mexico, and his mother was a school secretary. Both Rodriguez parents were unable to find a job within their profession in the U.S. This really describes how Rodriguez and his family grew up and how their lives were hard to live. As I read through chapter 1, it explains how he and his family had to move often because of financial problems, his ethnicity was a major factor in his life too. He recalls being discriminated against because of his race, he also recalls being pushed aside because his first language was

Rodriguez begins to actively distance himself from his family and heritage. On nights when the house is filled with Spanish speaking relatives, he leaves the house as a way of breaking the connection. He begins to imitate his teachers? accents and use their diction. As time goes on, he desires more solitude. Again, this is all normal according to Hoggart. ?He has to be more and more alone, if he is going to get on?the boy has to cut himself off,? (47). This is exactly what Rodriguez does; he chooses his education and the classroom over his

When it came to his parents Rodriguez parents really didn't care to much about him reading. When Rodriguez mentions his mother’s instruction to him " don't write in your books so we can sell them at the end of the year." (Rodriguez pg 190). That's the first sign that shows they don't care much. Worried more about money it's clear that they don't have time to try to care about what their son is reading or even ask what type of book it is. That's makes Rodriguez fade away more from people and more into reading where he doesn’t feel as Lonely at times. Another example is when Rodriguez compares to reading in school to reading at him claiming in school the teacher and Liberian appreciates him reading. At home it's different stating "he hears his

In the text, he recalls “the urgency with which [he] came to idolize [his] grammar school teachers” (341). Rodriguez began to “imitate their accents, use their diction, trust their every direction” (341). He began to adopt his teachers’ opinions, rather than think for himself. This idolization of his teachers further pushes Rodriguez away from his parents, and will eventually contribute to the dissatisfaction he feels towards his educational

After successfully winning several academic competitions, Rodriguez began to believe that he was too good for his family; he corrected them, avoided them, and unaccredited them, ‘I was not proud of my mother and father. I was embarrassed by their lack of education.’ His attitude remained throughout his teenage years, peeking when Rodriguez received acceptance and scholarships to attend Stanford College. It was at this time that his parents finally expressed their frustrations as well, suggesting that local colleges aren’t good enough for Rodriguez. He notes that, ‘Rodriguez’s] departure would only make physically apparent the separation that had occurred long before,’ which suggests that although the separation was apparent to him earlier, he chose not to do anything about it.

By the third grade Rodriguez had begun to distant himself from his family. He had devoted himself to his studies. He would be caught reading when he was suppose to be doing his chores. Rodriguez would try to read as many books as he could to obtain more knowledge. His parents for very supportive of this though. They liked the fact how dedicated he was towards success in education so they gave him that extra encouragement. The 7th grade was when I started isolating myself from my family. I had realized that my studies were becoming more of a priority than my own family. I would find myself hiding in my room studying.

At the begging of his essay part two Rodriguez specify that reading was not an important thing on his family but for him it was. When I first moved to Puerto Rico I remember trying to learn in Spanish by reading things such as, agendas, my grandmother, diary, and even products manual or instructions I knew I wouldn't understand but somehow I thought I would get something out of it, Meanwhile people in my surroundings would constantly tell me that talking and hearing i would learned Spanish faster and not reading it. Rodriguez mentioned how his teachers would say to the rest of the class, "I only wish the rest of you took reading as seriously as Richard obviously does". To clarify this made it even more obvious that he based most of his life

During the pinnacle of his bittersweet life, Rodriguez eventually realized that he had sacrificed one of the biggest things in life to do what is best for himself, his family. Being from a different

Rodriguez means that he is a descendent of two different cultures and that he is proud to be a part of “Una Raza encendida.” He is actually a part of three world he is African, Taino, and Spanish.

Richard Rodriguez begins life feeling alienated from Americans due to being Mexican origins, however, as he gets older he also gets isolated from his family due to Americanization. Education closed the door on his parents, and it never opened the door into him being fully accepted by other Americans. He got caught between a cultural sort of purgatory, caught in the middle of being neither American nor Mexican. Gaining an American education meant assimilating into American culture. This assimilation brought him far away from his own