Aria by Richard Rodriguez

"Aria"
By: Richard Rodriguez

Connection

1. Lisa Delpit

     Aria relates to what Delpit says at the end of her document about the conversation between the Teacher and Joey. The teacher talks to Joey because she "believes that it is very important to discuss openly and honestly the issues of language diversity". Rodriguez had a difficult time in school, just like Joey, because they both did not speak the "standard" English; Joey spoke "Black English" and Rodriguez spoke mostly Spanish. Rodriguez even says that once he got into school, he "easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home". This is a big problem because once a student is used to their "home language", school will become difficult as they try to understand the "classroom language" and see how it differs from what they basically grew up with.


2. SCWAAMP/Johnson

     Aria also relates to our class discussion of SCWAAMP and our reading of Johnson. Rodriguez's document was about how it was difficult in school to understand and participate because he spoke Spanish, not the "classroom language" of English. Rodriguez was not white, so he "automatically" had a hard time because he did not have the same privileges as whites (White-ness). He also went to a school where nuns taught so he had to obey the rules of the church (Christianity). Being a male (Male-ness) did not affect him positively or negatively yet. When Rodriguez learned English for school, he said that "Mother and Father, Ma, Papa, Pa, Dad, Pop...[were] all-American" words and he did not like that (American-ness), he wanted to go back to his language he grew up speaking, his "home language". Rodriguez had to follow all of these rules because he was an American citizen and those are the dominant ideologies.

Points to Share/Questions:

I honestly have never thought of how hard it must be for someone to come to school in America and have to learn English because their "home language" was different. That must be truly difficult to try to understand a completely new language after growing up using and knowing another. I believe we need to be less strict and as long as the students are able to understand tasks in a classroom, they should be able to still use the language they know best to communicate, but obviously write and talk to the teacher and other administrators in English.

Just a side note, we use some Spanish words on the Pre-school side of the day care I work at and the children love it! Off the top of my head, the teachers will say sit down in Spanish and the children will say please, thank you, other greetings, yes, they can count, etc. It keeps the children engaged.