Sunday, February 22, 2015

Scholarship Boy

               The Achievement of Desire by Richard Rodriguez is an example of autoethnographic for it is about a Spanish child going to an American school where we starts out not knowing much English to where it seems like he is losing his Spanish background.  Throughout the article he talks about being a scholarship boy.  Not one that needs help in schooling but one that excels in it.  In the text the boy tells a story about his school career and how he is so successful. 
               At the begging of the story he tells you that his parents helped him be successful and his brother and two sisters helped him for he wanted some trophies that they were bringing home for himself.  Latter in the text he says that his success is from wanting to learn all the way through school.  He starts off with a story that he is in front of the class and his hardly able to speak for he cannot speak the language very good.  This show autoethnographic for he is from Mexico and his having trouble communicating with his fellow students.  This shows us that since he is from somewhere else he is having to find out new ways of expressing himself in order to do good in school.
               Latter he talks about how when he got into the third grade he asked his father to help him with some math homework.  The father kept reading over the directions over and over again trying to understand them but could not.  He eventually took the book away and said that he would try it a little bit longer by himself.  You can also see a gap when he likes to read and his parents could find him reading in some quit place in the house instead of doing some work that he needed to get done.  With all his reading he did end up finding a book about other kids that had the same problems has him and what happened to them positively and negatively.
               As he advances in school he always found ways that he could stay after school and help the teachers for he got along with them more than his own family for he felt that they understood him better.  For he read every book that his grammar teachers told him to read and frequently when back to them and ask them about it and if he should like it.  Once he got into fourth grade he was able to get along with his parents closing the gap in the cultural barrier that now separated him from his parents, brother, and two sisters.
               As he got older and into high school he found it more difficult for people are looking at the person that you were in early years of your educational career and looking at how you have changed.  He faced another barrier where he was still closely to being the same kid as he was in elementary and middle school as he got into high school.  This made another gap that was between him and his fellow classmates.

               All of this are examples of autoethnographic and this text is full of a lot more at the advances in his educational career and beyond.   Even if you thought that this would not be an interesting story just thank how you can relate it to something and you could see how it applies for some people might read this story and thank it had nothing to do with autoehnographic and some people would think that some parts where and some parts where not.  To see what you think about the topic read the article and find out what you think about it.

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