The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning "Basics"

Many students throughout their education, struggle to find a balance between academics and the various aspects of their social life.  In Richard Rodriguez's essay The Achievement of Desire, he explains his own personal struggle with finding common ground between these two distant worlds, and fulfilling the expectations of those around him.  Rodriguez depicts how from a young age he found it difficult to relate with others due to his academic success and how an essay by Richard Hoggart entitled The Uses of Literacy, helped him to discover his role as a scholarship student.

For Rodriguez, education played an important role very early in his life.  Growing up as a Latino-American boy, family and hard work influenced him greatly.  His brothers and sisters were successful students who pleased their parents and learning came easily to them.  He strives to be like his siblings and soon made education a priority in his life, though for Richard things were not so easy.  He had to work much harder to achieve success since he was not the brightest, spending hours upon hours plugging away at school work in order to be a scholarly student.  This aspect of his life is what disconnected him from his family as he struggled to relate with them, feeling they did not have the same capacity for knowledge that he did.  Rodriguez uses the term scholarship student, meaning "good student, troubled son", in order to describe his fight between academic success and being a good son. 

As education began to replace the role of his family, his struggles with his home life only grew greater (This being a main point highlighted throughout the essay and a main reason for his writing). As Rodriguez recalls, "I idolized my teachers. I began imitating their accents, using their diction, trusting their every direction." which shows how he began to replace the need for family with education as he became an Americanized scholarship student.  He continues to find success through education and becomes the well respected scholar he had hoped to be.  It is through achieving this success that he discovers what the role of a scholarly boy is and what the process of becoming one entails.  In response to a quote from Hoggart's essay, Rodriguez explains "The scholarship boy is a bad student, but in large part the reason he is so bad is that he realizes earlier and more acutely than most other students---than Hoggart himself!---that education requires radical self-reformation".  Rodriguez knows this because at a young age he had to chose between his family and education and now that he has reached scholarly success he wonders if he can ever rekindle the bond he once had with his family.  Though he seems to find a sense of understanding in all of this at the end of his writing when he recollects, "If, because of my schooling, I had become separated from my parents, my education had also given me in the end a way to speak and to care about that fact".

So when looking at Rodriguez's essay it is plain to see the emphasis he places on education, but one can also sense that he is warning the reader about the importance of finding a sense of balance between academics and life outside of education.  He uses himself as an example for those who strive for academic success, or for those who do not find it as easily as others that you must not sacrifice so much as to give away a whole aspect of your life.  We must not let one factor of our life dictate another in such a dramatic way.  He is speaking not only to scholarship students like himself, but anyone who has experienced academic struggles, success, or an interest in education.  It also speaks to anyone trying to fulfil a role or position in which they feel obligated and that it is important to not lose sight of your values in doing so. His writing can be viewed as a warning but can also serve a purpose for those trying to balance school and social life.

Overall I feel that Rodriguez did an excellent job of conveying his life struggle with being a good son and reaching a scholarship level of education.  He clearly supported his argument for what a scholarship boy is and why education served such an important purpose in his life by using great examples from Hoggart's text and detailed visualization of events that unfolded in his childhood.  I agree with Rodriguez that many feel the need to live up to other's standards but that no matter what path we choose in life that we must not get caught up in it and lose sight of who we once were. I also agree with him that education is an important art form that needs to be sought after and that it is mastered through hard work and sacrifice.  I do not feel that a sacrifice as big as family needs to be given up, but in his case it was so, and for that reason he shows regret and understanding for why education replaced his family. His scholarly journal style of writing is a great example of what we have been discussing the past few classes.  It is a great educational piece and can give others a better understanding of how and how not to be a scholarship student.

So some questions to think about after reading,

What makes a scholarship student? Do you feel a relation to Rodriguez in the ways in which you balance your education and social life?
Does education require sacrifices like the ones he describes in his essay?  Do you feel that education has changed you in any way, or lead you away from something you were once close to?  Home vs. School?  Any other comments on the reading or things to take away from Rodriguez's essay?