Achievement of Desire
The story Achievement of Desire by Rodriguez is one of a self-introspection of a young boy from the working class who gets an opportunity to attend one of the best academies that would later turn out to define his entire life. With social stratifications such as the middle class and the working class as the antagonist group, access to education by the latter group is minimal (Rodriquez 239). Upon starting his studies, the young boy finds the difficulty in creating a balance between academic life and real-life, especially of the working class in which he belongs. As time goes, Richard becomes in sincere pursuit to achieve many desires in education that is he has found in the new culture in what can be termed as “Achievement of Desire.” In this essay, two concepts, private and public, stands out. By individual, it implies the personal life of Richard, his family, and the native culture of Mexico and the middle class in which he belongs. The other aspect of the public is the view of the experience that he has gained into adopting the new American culture and the passion for education that is superseding the love for his family and lifestyle. This paper will opine on how the life and experiences of Richard in his pursuit of education and excellence reflects on the idea of private versus public as robustly discussed below.
To begin with, Richard’s first interaction with a school in Sacramento provided a new life together. Even as he was considered “Problem student” because of his middle-class affiliation, his pursuit and hunger for education and success remain admirable and yet unfathomable. The school environment, which was among the wealthy population, provided a context for a contact of two cultures. Because he comes from working-class family background, he was accustomed to congestion in the rooms and noise that could not provide a conducive environment for studies. As a result, the new school environment provided him with a mental calmness that proved essential for studying (Rodriguez 548). It is at this point that the perception of two different worlds within one individual begins to surface. In reflecting on the family background that he comes from, Richard gets a private picture of himself and that of the family at home. And also, the view of life he gets in the public context like school. Indeed, he confirms from the assertion of his instructors that “emphasize the value of reflection that opens a space between thinking and immediate action. In this sense, the school environment and education, in particular, should be able to give an introspection on the private before making actions. As such, education should be an eye-opener between the relationship of the self and the environment, which Richard seemed to have lacked in relation to parents and culture.
Ideally, in his pursuit of education and further advances, the scholarship boy loses the family touch and connection, which he had before going away to school. For instance, during Christmas break, there was no proper conversation between a son and the parents “lacking the same words to develop our sentences and shape interests, what was there to say” (Rodriguez 554). In his attempt to delineate from the family unit, which is a significant fabric in holding together the mores and the values of the society, he misses more than education can provide. According to him, memorization of book content has proven to be more significant than the life teachings that the parents could afford to him based on their long-life experiences. In this sense, the scholarship boy losses all sense of self/ private, which is essential in constituting the whole. To him, education and impression of excellent intellectualism/ public are supreme than the person. He, therefore, runs away from achieving a holistic being that is comprised of both the self/ private and the environment/ public
Also, in the pursuit of success, the scholarship boy loses identity by abandoning the role of parents and creating the admiration of the teacher as his role model. He admires the intelligence, well education, and dominance that his teachers have something that actually he really desires to achieve (Rodriguez 553). In this process of admiration and desire, he losses reverence to the role of the parent in his education. For instance, in introducing his parents to his teachers, he admits getting embarrassed by his father’s broad accent. He attributes the embarrassment to his father’s lack of proper education that cannot meet that of his teachers, who are his role models. Critically, in getting ashamed of his father’s accent, is equal to getting ashamed of one’s culture. This is because language is part of the social culture that defines every society. The variations in linguistic patterns of different people account for the existing differences in words of the world across all global cultures. The insecurity that Richard felt caused a sense of inferiority as to belonging to a lower class not equal to his teachers who felt were admirable and, therefore, role models. He focuses on the public in what people hear and see and omits the crucial bit of self in culture and identity, which is encompassed in linguistic patterns like accent.
Moreover, in coming together with American culture, Rodriguez associates his impoverished background to lack of education and knowledge that comes with it (Rodriguez 562). As a result, he sees books as a last resort and therefore engages in the reading of books like Plato’s The Republic and Alice in Wonderland, to mention a few. Upon reading, Rodriguez seems knowledgeable and could answer questions in class into the admiration of teachers who hailed him for such attainment. In this sense, he satisfies his sense of self or private, achieving his goal of being knowledgeable.
However, after completion of reading, he cannot comprehend the ideas, interpret them, and use them to address the problems in real life or say public. He, therefore, becomes a collector of ideas and fails to conceptualize such thoughts into practical approaches. For instance, why the family background is the way it is, what contributed to it, and going forward, how can it be solved. To him, all solutions to every problem in the society are found in the book, and failure to read implies no progress and realization of full potential. In this end, he abandons a vital aspect of success, the correlation between the book content and the real-life situation, which is public.
Lastly, the bond that the scholarship boy created with the writers of books provided a kind of eccentric association instead of the intimate societal relations (Richard 253). Richard seems to be excited during the summer holidays as his perfect time for reading. This is because the neighbors and other people have gone to vacations provide him with enough space to further read as many books as possible. According to Rodriguez, social ties like the neighborhood is not something that he celebrates as they prevent him from reading as comfortably as he wishes. It’s their absence that actually makes him happy (Rodriguez 259). This kind of weak social ties is a result of the need to amass more book knowledge as possible to satisfy an individual need. However, he forgets the critical role of kinship and neighborhood in understanding many aspects of society.
Summarily, towards the end of his education, Rodriguez realizes that there is an existing gap that has remained unsatisfied despite achieving all that it pertains to. The difference is created by the failure to recognize his culture and heritage, abandoning social mores and values like appreciation of neighborhood and, most significantly, the role of parents in educating their children. There is a sense in which Rodriguez’s achievement desires have finally provided him with the opportunity to look at the holistic definition of education that book knowledge alone rather than the daily experiences of our lives is education itself.