We Don't Need No Education

"School". For some, the word conjures up visions of uniformed students, pristine hallways, friends, and the hope of a better oneself for a brighter future. Yet for others, school is likened more to a cell. These people are usually those who have been left behind because they are "social outcasts" or that the school ignores because they "don't test well". For both Tomas Rivera and Richard Rodriguez, school was a place filled with strife. As seen in both And the Earth did not Devour Him... and Aria (by Rivera and Rodriguez respectively), school for Chicano children was not an institution that served to better themselves but as an instrument of isolation and degradation.

For Rivera, school was a daily reminder of his race and his status as a "second class person". In the vignette "It's that It Hurts", Rivera recalls another student informing him "Hey Mex...I don't like Mexicans because they steal. You hear me?" The boy repeats this twice more, each time Rivera's only response being "yeah". Yet the racism did not stop between students. After getting in a fight at school, Rivera is sent to the principal's office, where he hears the principal on the phone with who can be assumed to be another white male. While on the phone the principal refers to the white kids in the fight as "our boys" and Rivera is known only as "The Mexican Kid". At school, Rivera has no name, no identity. Instead he is reduced simply to his race and nothing more. Despite this, Rivera has a deep desire to continue his schooling. As a first generation Mexican-American, Rivera's parents want him to go to school since it will provide a better life than working in the fields as a laborer could ever provide. Rivera feels that since he was kicked out of school and will never become a telephone operator, the dream that his father has for him and would require mastery of English, Rivera has let down his entire family and not just himself.

Rodriguez' Aria also hits on this dream of learning English, albeit in a much different vein. Attending a bilingual school, there was a heavy emphasis on learning English. However, Rodriguez felt distanced from English, describing the words fitting in his mouth awkwardly, unable to produce a string of words to form a sentence. And then the contrast of "Spanish. Espanol: my family's language", a language that Rodriguez stemmed most of his identity from. However, the pressure to learn English pressed down on him, and Rodriguez eventually learned how to form his mouth in new ways, producing unknown and strange sounding phonemes. Yet as Rodriguez continued to learn English, his knowledge of Spanish fell away until it became a struggle for him to put together even a basic statement.

In the end, both authors lose part of their identity to their education. Yet this is a fate that for many is far too common. As importance on standardized testing and "no child being left behind" increases, many schools have eliminated time that was once put into subjects like art and music. As a person who has always been passionate about these two subjects I feel that I two am seeing part of my identity being lost in education. What about you? Where do you see the greatest failures in our education system? Should educators be focusing on the more "concrete" sciences and math? Does our system need a serious overhaul?