In the article, "The Achievement of Desire" written by Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez explores his goal as a child through education and compares them to the truths he has come to know as an educated adult. Through his abandonment of family, heritage and all else he thought would hinder his goal to achieve education, he realizes, after reflecting on his life, that education in itself is not what he truly desired. With the help of some writings form Richard Hoggart about the persona of Scholarship boy, Rodriguez achieves clarity about his life and embraces cleaved parts of his past.
In Rodriguez’s youth he made a decision to pursue academics. He enjoyed the attention and the praise he received from his teachers. During his pursuit of academics he became embarrassed of his home life. Rodriguez was raised in a bilingual home. His parents struggled some withe finer elements of the English language. The more he pursued education the further he drifted away from his family and emulated his instructors in speech and action. This choice alienated him in his own home. When he finally came to the end of his educational road he realized that there was still something missing. Something was lost along the way. Finally at the end of the long grueling educational road he realized that who he was had been lost and he had become just like the other people in his obscure highly educated elitist sect.
In reading Hoggart He saw his own life reflected in the life of Scholarship boy. From his alienation of his middle class family, his anger at his parent inaptness, to emulating the people in educational circles. But above all it was probably the most blazing statement by Hoggart cut Rodriguez deeply. "He longs for membership lost, He pines for a nameless Eden where he never was."(Hoggart) What Rodriguez had lost or never had was a childhood. A relationship with his family.
Rodriguez didn’t need to pull away from his family to become something great. True greatness is found in embracing who you are and taking the knowledge you gain from books and lessons and making them your own. To simply be able to recite something you have learned is something that can be done by all speaking life forms above the stature of a parrot. To truly make use of an education you have to let knowledge come in where you ponder on it, let it expand and evolve into something that you can use to create, build or inspire. Education creates the ability formulate thought and promotes freethinking.
Literacy isn’t just the compiling schools of thought. Literacy is also going on around us in homes were we are students of culture, tradition, and social science. Literacy is about understanding ourselves and embracing our hopes and dreams without losing who we are. If we loose sight of this fact we may ourselves become, even full of knowledge, hollow.