Hunger of Memory pgs. 1-73

In Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez tells of his childhood and adult experiences in the American education system. When arguing against bilingual education he writes:

Today I hear bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of individuality by becoming assimilated into public society… They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized…The fact is that only in private—with intimates—is separateness a prerequisite for individuality…In public, by contrast, full individuality is achieved, paradoxically, by those who are able to consider themselves members of the crowd. Thus it happened for me: Only when I was able to think of myself as an American, no longer an alien in gringo society, could I see the rights and opportunities necessary for full public individuality. (26-27)

Rodriguez argues against bilingual education because, as he says, it separates one from his public individuality. When schools insist that children be taught in their native language (in order to remind them of their separateness, their heritage), they distinctly remove them from public society and any chance of having a public identity whatsoever. Because Rodriguez was forced to learn English from an early age in school, he was at first very aware and afraid of the differences    between himself and his fellow pupils; however, as he became more and more fluent in English he began to value the power it gave him to be a competent and extremely intelligent member of society.
    Later in his memoir, Rodriguez recalls the differing reactions his parents had to his education. While his mother constantly encouraged his learning and praised his achievements, his father “never verbally encouraged his children’s academic success;” however, he “recognized that education…could enable a person to escape from a life of mere labor” (58). This passage, along with many references the author makes to his family life, strikes me as a poignant reminder of my own father’s family life. His parents, too, were immigrants to America with very little education and, perhaps less so than Rodriguez’s parents, little ability to speak and write English. From their perspective, the desire to work hard and a strong education was everything one needed for a successful life in America. Like Rodriguez, my father struggled to learn English at an early age in Catholic school. Although my father barely succeeded in graduating college, his work ethic enabled him to go on to become a very successful businessman. My brother, sister and I, along with my father’s only brother’s children, represented an even greater future for my grandparents. And when my oldest cousin became the first person in our family to graduate college, and my grandfather was there to see it, it was a very proud moment for everyone in our family. Education isn’t a guarantee for success, but it gives one the opportunity for a greater life than the generation before.

Brandt Essay

In Deborah Brandt’s essay “Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading,” the author relates her study of forty Wisconsin residents of various ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Brandt asked the participants questions about their earliest memories of reading and writing, questions that revealed information about “literacy learning as it has occurred across the twentieth century” (Brandt 460). The author ultimately concludes that the processes of learning to read and write, while often connected in school settings, are drastically different, something the author calls the “cultural disassociations of reading and writing” (461).
The patterns Brandt found among her interviewees reveal that the process of learning to read is often a pleasurable experience shared with one’s family, while writing is “remembered as occurring in lonely, secret, or rebellious circumstances” (464). Brandt provides many examples how this pattern plays out in our society—parents encourage reading, yet they shy away from writing or discourage it altogether. Reading has come to be seen as an enjoyable, relaxing activity—a healthy escape—while writing is remembered as a chore to accomplish, such as doing the bills or keeping business records.
Brandt ends her essay by arguing that the cultural disassociations shown through these interviews reveal the need for “a broadening of the scope by which we study literacy practices and the need to understand school-based writing in terms of larger cultural, historical, and economic currents.” Brandt explains that to better understand the situations in which people have come to learn to read and write will serve to help scholars to grasp “what literacy instruction represents to students in the future and how it sometimes, inexplicably, to go awry” (477).
While I find Brandt’s essay very interesting and entertaining, as many of the anecdotes remind me of my own early reading and writing experiences, the passion with which she argues the understanding of these experiences eludes me. I agree with her on the immense importance of these activities, but I feel like researching such a concept would be so tedious and seemingly ineffective that I fail to see the point of this essay aside from entertaining the reader with a vast and sentimental array of childhood experiences.