Rodriguez

This week, I chose to do a quotes post.

I was a bit confused by “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez this week, and had a moment of frustration when I finished. Throughout the article, Rodriguez discusses a personal account of his experience with assimilation, detailing how it broke down communication and the relationship between his family, and the internal struggle he had with public and private identity as a result, but concluded with his disagreement with anti-assimilation bilingual educators, which seemed contradictory to me.

“At school, words were directed to a general audience of listeners (‘Boys and girls’). Words were meaningfully ordered. And the point was not self-expression alone but to make oneself understood by many others” (Rodriguez 34).

This was a good distinction between the public and private identity, illustrating that the way you use language in public is for the benefit of others. It contrasts with how Rodriguez describes delighting in speaking Spanish at home as a child. It seems that children who speak English at home are also taught a “public” form of their language, one which exists to encourage understanding rather than self-expression, but I imagine it’s probably more subtle. When Richard and his siblings brought their school-English home and introduced it as the only form of the language that was spoken there, it means that a public identity is the only one that exists anymore. If the words at school were not meant for self-expression, and the family stopped speaking the language that allowed them to explore that side of communication, how do they ever express themselves?

“But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates. We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close” (36).

This quote seems to support bilingual education. Rodriguez talks about how he lost an incredible bond with his family, and describes a house full of silence. I was very confused about why Rodriguez would discuss this and evoke empathy in the reader if his point is that this was the right way for him to learn English and be taught. If anything, his account made me resent the nuns for initiating the process that tore apart Richard’s family.

The wording of the quote also makes it clear that he does not think only speaking Spanish would be good for him as a child, either. He talks about how his family was close but in a “desperate, urgent” way, since they needed each other to feel understood. This supports his point, but it also greatly supports bilingualism in classrooms.

“But the bilingualists simplistically scorn the value and necessity of assimilation” (38).

How I saw Rodriguez's idea of the right way to teach
 English language learners

This is where I got frustrated. Rodriguez gives a very personal account of how assimilation is not a simple or easy process, and how it diminished the bond of his family, but then concludes by saying bilingualism is the approach that looks at things as too black and white. He seemed to explain why assimilation is bad and then advocate for it. This is his overall point, but I do not know if it matched what he had been saying throughout the whole piece.