Richard Rodriguez Aria

In the reading Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Education, by Richard Rodriguez, he challenges the idea of bilingual education, and takes us through his personal experience of a bilingual childhood. Rodriguez explains about what he encountered in America as he attempts to adjust to the American culture, and why he believes that learning the public language in school is more important than learning the private language. Throughout the essay he forfeits his happy and comfortable life in exchange for the opportunity to become an English-speaking student supported with the help of his parents and his teachers’ encouragements. And what he thinks of the private and public individual. Rodriguez doesn’t believe in the bilingual education system, he believes …show more content…
He said that he had classified English and Spanish into two categories, English was the public language and Spanish was the private language. He stated “Spanish seemed to me the language of home, it became the language of joyful return” (Page 325). To Rodriguez Spanish was his comfort zone, it acted as a connection between him and his family, hearing it brought back good memories of security, it was a blissful language and every time he heard that language it made him happy. Spanish was what made him feel safe and joy, whereas English made him feel isolated from society. Eventually, though, through his parents’ encouragement he finally determined to learn English, the process to learning English was tough but it was worth it, and when Rodriguez finally was able to communicate with people in English. He said “The belief, the calming assurance that I belonged in public, had at last taken hold” (Page 328). He began trying hard at improving his English and gradually he did, he started to become more confident and started speaking up in class, and by being more confident people started to like him more, which helped him made more friends in school, also slowly started to feel like he was a part of the public society. Hence this is why I admire Richard Rodriguez’s parents, they are the reason for his success today. He had a strong family, a strong father, who was willing to sacrifice so much for his son. We can tell this when Rodriguez said “One night his children and even his wife helplessly giggled at his garbled English pronunciation of the Catholic Grace before meals. Thereafter he made his wife recite the prayer at the start of each meal, even on formal occasions, when there were guests in the house. Hers became the public voice of the family.” (Page 332) His father gave up being the voice of the house, so they could maintain speaking more English at home. That is really