Richard Rodriguez's "Aria"
- Date: November 14, 2006
- Level: College, Undergraduate
- Grade: A+
- Length: 4 pages (940 words)
- Essay rating:
- Keywords:
richard rodriguez, classmates, mexican immigrants, wealthy households, childhood experience, native language, ...bilingual education, simply put, working class, english speaking, memoir, refuge, sanctuary, peers, sympathetic, aria, atmosphere, knowing
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Subject > Literature Research Papers > North American
In Richard Rodriguez's "Aria: A Memoir of Bilingual Childhood" he discusses his views on bilingual education by sharing his own childhood experience. Simply put, the story is about how out of place Richard Rodriguez felt in school, not knowing the language of his peers. To make this transition easier on children some believe teaching in the native language of the child is the solution. Richard Rodriguez strongly disagrees with this method of education; he has seen first hand how much easier it is to adapt to a culture if you speak the language.
Rodriguez went to a school where all his classmates were white and came from wealthy households. This was not the most welcoming atmosphere being a non-English speaking Hispanic ...
... between sounds uttered at home and words spoken in public, I had a different experience. I lived in a world compounded of sounds. I was a child longer than most. I lived in a magical world, surrounded by sounds both pleasing and fearful. I shared with my family a language enchantingly private-different from that used in the city around us."
After Rodriguez grew older he could no longer differentiate the sounds of home from the sounds outside so distinctly. He began to learn the English language and stopped hearing " the high troubling sounds of los gringos." After Rodriguez and his siblings became comfortable with the English language and the people speaking it, so did his
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