Contradictions In Rolling The R's

18 years. That is the average age of a child once they complete their mandatory schooling. Children as young as 5 begin their schooling with Kindergarten and thus begins an era of schooling that lasts a little over a decade. To many minority children, schools and the school experience in general, is a reflection of the impacts that race, class and sexuality have had in their lives. In the book, Rolling the R’s, R. Zamora Linmark uses contradictions in the schooling experience of Edgar and his classmates to make a larger commentary about the existence of education as a contradictory colonial institution where societal norms are enforced as well as differences.
.Contradictions play an important part in Linmark’s novel to create complex characters …show more content…
When Nelson proclaims his ethnicity is American, the teacher tries hard to get Nelson to change his mind and Edgar tries as well. But Nelson is steadfast about his choice to identify as American over Filipino, which draws the ire of Edgar and Katrina, the other Filipinos in the class. But even with someone like Nelson, who can be read as seemingly assimilated like in the previous example with Orlando on page 25, there are limits to the reach of educational imperialism and the reach of the assimilation narrative, especially when it seems like minorities are fully assimilated. In this case with Nelson, the function of schools as purely an assimilation institution is brought into question because as the reader finds out during this vignette, teachers are not necessarily comfortable with minorities identifying themselves based on which part of themselves they identify most with, but want their students to identify themselves based on subjective, classifiable differences like where a student’s ancestors are from. In Nelson’s case, the teacher, Mrs. Takemoto gently tries to steer Nelson away from identifying as American, when asked about his ethnicity, but apart from the gentle prodding from Mrs. Takemoto, the teacher is unable to do anything more (Linmark …show more content…
They emphasize that it doesn’t matter that Nelson “thinks” that his ethnicity is American, the truth is that his “real” ethnic identity is tied to his appearance. As Edgar states, “Windex your mirror cuz your reflection goin’ tell you you the best candidate for Mr. Pinoy-brown skin, yellow teeth, and no nose.” Soon after this remark is said, Mrs. Takemoto, the teacher steps in and quiets down the discussion in the classroom. What is interesting about this entire vignette is when Mrs. Takemoto chooses to step in. She steps in at the beginning, to try and correct Nelson about identifying as American when asked about his ethnicity and near the ending of the vignette, to quiet the classroom discussion about ethnicity and identity. By stepping in at the end of the vignette and silencing the voices of Edgar and Katrina, who are emphasizing the differences between Americans and Filipinos through their critique of Nelson’s “American” stance on ethnicity, it could be argued that Mrs. Takemoto is working to enforce the assimilation narrative by shutting down any discussion of the differences that occur within different ethnicities. But this act of enforcing the assimilation narrative is complicated when Mrs. Takemoto steps in the beginning of the vignette to emphasize the idea that his ethnicity is Filipino as opposed to “American,” emphasizing the “otherness”