Richard Rodriguez

The relationship between Richard Rodriguez and Richard Hoggart is supremely that of a student to a teacher with Rodriguez as the student and Hoggart as the teacher. In moments when Rodriguez says that Hoggart’s opinion of what a “scholarship boy” entails is “more accurate than fair,” Rodriguez is learning more as if he is a student (547). Of course Rodriguez now, after having written “The Achievement of Desire,” understands his place as a “scholarship boy” student; however, there are brutally honest aspects that Hoggart is able to recognize and Rodriguez does not want to acknowledge. Rodriguez lived through his education as a “bank,” as Paulo Freire would say, and there are many negative impacts that this had on his future and actual knowledge.
His epiphany forced him to come to terms with the reality of his situation and actually recognize that it is okay for his family to not strive to learn anything and everything, and that their relationship can involve both his school and home life. He used these findings to finally understand that his education gave him “ways of speaking and caring about [the] fact” that “because of [his] school, [Rodriguez] had grown culturally separated from [his] parents.” (550) Hoggart’s perception of a “scholarship boy” influenced the way that Rodriguez saw himself in his family in the future. As a result of all of this, Rodriguez uses these findings in his own writing by directly relating his story to Hoggart’s definition of a “scholarship boy.” For example, at the beginning of part three, Rodriguez uses what I assume is a paraphrase of a characteristic analyzed by Hoggart about a “scholarship boy,” and then he continues on to directly relate his experience to being an embodiment of such a student. Finally, Hoggart’s language permitted Rodriguez to see his faults, but, unfortunately, it is “inevitable” that if he tried to reform his ways of learning, he would fall back into the pattern of