The Achievement Of Desire Analysis

Many of us are very family oriented and believe that family should always be present in our life no matter what do in life. While some of us feel that, our desire is worth more important than family due to the lack of communication with family members. In the “Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez recalls some of the difficulties he had at a young age, which was balancing his life academically and practicing the Mexican traditions. His desire was more important to him than his family because communication with his family was not as strong as before when he began to get more involved in his education, which separates him from his family mentally and physically.

     The Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt opened up a whole new concept for our class. The new term “contact zone” appeared and Pratt defined it as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today." The idea of the contact zone is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that trigger much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture.

To fully comprehend a work you cannot just read it. You must read it, analyze it, question it, and even then question what you are questioning. In Richard Rodriguez’s The Achievement of Desire we are presented with a young Richard Rodriguez and follow him from the start of his education until he is an adult finally having reached his goals. In reference to the way he reads for the majority of his education, it can be said he reads going with the grain, while he reads a large volume of books, the quality of his reading is lacking.

In the narrative called ‘Scholarship Boy’, by Richard Rodriguez. One can say that the biggest turning point is when Mr. Rodriguez himself realizes, at the age of thirty. The biggest attribute to his success and determination is schooling as a young boy. This is when Mr. Rodriguez had to live two separate lives. One as a young boy eager and willing to learn and develop, and another as a son and sibling to his family. At the age of thirty he finally is able to come to terms with this fact and be able to talk about in public and not have to keep it bottled up any longer. During this time in his life he is writing his dissertation and finds a written piece by Richard Hoggarts called, ‘The Scholarship Boy’. At this point in his life he sees that he is not alone with his life struggles. This was figuratively like lifting weights off of Mr. Rodriguez’s shoulders, you can see how while telling this part of the story stress is taken off of him. It is interesting to see that during the entire narrative Mr. Rodriguez seems unappreciative and ungrateful for the life his parents had given him. He is obviously resentful to the idea that his parents didn’t appreciate or value the idea of education, or at the very least learning the primary language of a country they moved to. Nothing in the story states that they were ignorant parents and didn’t know how to do simple math, the struggle that kept his parents from being able to give Mr. Rodriguez the attention and affection but most of all

Freire talks about the “banking concept of education”, explaining that students in this system are receptacles that are to be filled with the “content of the teachers narration”.(Freire, 1) These receptacles are expected to regurgitate information given in class, on tests, quizzes, and anything that requires an answer that is “word for word” what the teacher says. In a banking classroom, the teacher is the authority and the students are oppressed. Freire writes, “The more students work at storing deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.” (Freire, 2).

In his essay, “The Achievement of Desire”, Richard Rodriguez describes how his educational journey changed his life, particularly resulting in a cultural and emotional separation from his parents. In the essay, Rodriguez writes, “If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me the ways of speaking and caring about the fact” (355). Rodriguez’s unique understanding of his family and education fundamentally alters his interactions with them, which influences his ways of speaking and caring about this separation throughout various stages of his education. These unique understandings are exhibited through specific dialogues

In his essay “The Achievement of Desire,” Richard Rodriguez has certain ways of speaking and caring. In particular, he focuses on his education and his family. These two will eventually clash and interfere with each other. Rodriguez contrasts school, family, teachers and most importantly himself. He also tells us how left his childhood and family for education, but when he wanted to return he couldn’t fully do so. He learned he couldn't fully return due to his conforming to education that leads him to observe and analyze everything.

In Rodriguez’s essay, The Achievement of Desire, Rodriguez illustrates the characteristics of an automaton, thus confirming Freire’s views regarding the banking concept. Despite his classification as a "scholarship boy", Rodriguez lacked his own point of view and confidence, which led him to be dominated by his teachers and his books. In the eyes of Paulo Frerie, Rodriguez would be considered a receptacle. He was filled not only with his teacher’s information, but also with knowledge obtained from his reading of "important" books. Rodriguez is a classic student of the banking system.

Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave” and Paulo Freire’s “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” both contend that education is a process of freeing the chains of deception and false images that make us prisoners in the cave of ignorance. I agree with both Plato and Freire in saying that without education, like the prisoners, our perception of reality is distorted by our lack of knowledge.

Growing up, people realize that around the time of reaching a mature state, education has affected their personal family life in one way or the other. With that being said, in his essay, “The Achievement of Desire”, Richard Rodriguez headed towards a path where he was unconsciously distancing himself from his family and becoming much more independent than he had expected. Rodriguez gives the reader a sentimental idea of the two contrary lives he had growing up, the life he had as a child, and the life he has as an educated man. He continued believing in his aspiration of how benefits of education can remarkably outweigh the past struggles of both his family and himself. Like Rodriguez, I also, in the past, found some form of solitude

In Paulo Freire's essay "The Banking Concept of Education," he discusses the idea of the human mind and thinking. Specifically, he argues that education uses a system which limits the children from using their ability to think. This system is displayed in his idea of “The Banking Concept of Education. Freire’s main argument is that the way schools teach today is purely based on the idea of feeding information to the youth instead of allowing them to interpret it themselves.

Instead of absorbing knowledge, students are left gazing through their teachers’ eyes as information goes in one ear and out the other. The best students are the ones who memorize for tests, yet they do not understand what it is they are learning or how it can relate to the world. In school systems, the job of the educator “is to regulate the way the world “enters into” the students” (Freire 4). The teacher manipulates the way a student learns by allowing only certain information to be released. Only supportive statement for the “banking” concept is that an “educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is better “fit” for the world” (Freire 4).

Visualizing being a part of Mary Louise Pratt’s lecture on “Art of the contact zone” who was asked to verbalize as an MLA [Modern Language Association] member working in the elite academy, would have been a great accolade. However, I coined several notes on what I cerebrated was gainful and vital from her lecture. From a multi-cultural perspective, I was blissful to discern how crucial “contact zone” was to Pratt.

Furthermore, “[o]n Frankfurt's analysis, I act freely when the desire on which I act is one that I desire to be effective. This second-order desire is one with which I identify: it reflects my true self (Italicized by me; Timothy O'Connor, 2010 ).” So, their impaired second-order desire may bring OCD patients to feel their consciousness of self non-integrated.

In this essay, I will argue for Restricted Actual Desire Satisfactionism as the best argument for the theory. My argument proceeds in 4 sections: In the first section, I will articulate Lukas’ argument for self-regarding restriction and why idealized restriction does not work well. In the second section, I will show that Lukas’ argument for self-regarding restriction is not the best form of argument for Desire Satisfactionism, for the restriction that only desires which are relevant to well-being are counted can encompass irrelevant desires as well. In the third section, I will offer a response on Lukas’ behalf. Finally, in the fourth section, I conclude that this rejoinder is unsuccessful.