Saturday, September 26, 2015

Aria By Richard Rodriguez. Connections

   Richard Rodriguez's Aria made many connections but I saw connections to two of our readings right away. The first one was to Lisa Delpit's The Silenced Dialogue. Delpit talks about how the different social classes use different ways of talking and teaching. A middle class child is used to hearing the teacher ask them what they should be doing where as a lower class student is more used to being told exactly what they should be doing. Delpit says that this difference can cause problems especially since most teachers ask their students "How should we be holding the pen?" or "How do we sit in our chairs?". Rodriguez says that when he was in catholic school, the nuns would ask "'Boys and girls, why do we use that word in this sentence? Could we think of a better word to use there? Would the sentence change its meaning if the words were different? And wasn't there a better way of saying much the same?" (Rodriguez 34-35). This is confusing to many kids, never mind a child whose first language isn't English but rather Spanish. This asking not telling made it more difficult for Rodriguez to want to learn and pay attention. English was something he thought was a public language where Spanish was his private language. 
    Rodriguez brought up another point that I connected to our S.C.W.A.A.M.P. lesson in class. The letters stand for, Straight, Catholic ,White, Able-bodied, American, Male, Property owner. If you aren't in this specific group, the odds seem to be stacked against you. Rodriguez was Catholic but he was Hispanic- he was an American citizen however, he wasn't seen as American. While in Catholic school, he struggled to pay attention and learn. His older siblings were struggling too. He says that one day a couple of nurses came to his house to talk to his parents. The nuns said to his mother and father, "With great tact the visitors continued, 'Is it possible for you and your husband to encourage your children to practice their English when they are home?'" (35). This is when Rodriguez's home life changed. The Nuns told his family that they needed to change. This  caused a split in Rodriguez's home life because his comfort in his Spanish language was taken away. He had no escape from this public life of English because it was expected that in order for him succeed in society, he had to learn English. He saw this as both good and bad. 
  And here is why:
  "Today, I hear bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of 'individuality' by becoming assimilated into public society... But the bilingualists simplistically scorn the value of necessity of assimilation. They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such as assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality" (39).  

1 comment:

  1. I really love the pictures that you put in. It really puts things into perspective on what is really going on.

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