"Scholarship Boy", Page 431, The Achievement of Desire, Richard Rodriquez
I found the term "scholarship boy" the term the author uses to describe himself and also used to set him apart from his family. He says that "For although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student" because, as he writes later he is "--the working class child struggling for
academic success." (Rodriguez, p.431,444)
I believe that he was looking to be very different from his parents and the way he wanted to achieve this success he decided to aim for at a very age was by by the separation, he gains by
first speaking English without his Spanish accent. He later found that he needed the knowledge
that you only find by reading, and he used this knowledge to travel away to college, where he became the true "Scholarship Boy" who was rewarded with his scholarship to college.
He stated that his brother and two sisters were also successful in life but that " "ambition set me apart" (Rodriguez,p.431)
He was different from other members of his family in this approach to obtaining an "end" or education. Here he was more active in learning to be a student who was taught how to read in silence. He says it best that "He has used education to remake himself" (Rodriguez, p. 444)
I agree that he did remake himself from his early life as a child.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I liked the quotes that were used. What I got from reading the remark is, in school they seem to want you to discount what happens in your home, try attempt to make you a better student, make you achieve success that your parents may not have. To make you look at their faults and try not to make them your own. That he wanted to go beyond what the class room taught him, and try achieve something more than, what his family and schooled offered him in terms education. He had goal set out in mind to achieve something more than what he had, and learned this at a very young age. To use your last quote "He has used education to remake himself" (Rodriguez, p. 444)
ReplyDelete