The Achievement of Desire

In the text, “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez, the reader is told about the extraordinary educational experience he endures. Rodriguez tackles a psychological battle between education and family. Rodriguez relates what he must undergo to that of a “scholarship boy”, which is explained in the book The Uses of Literacy, by Richard Hoggart. The term “scholarship boy” consists of a hybrid student who must be fully capable of learning in the classroom as …

…of formulating fervent assertions. Rodriguez is knowledgeable of this error and expresses it when he claims, “I seemed unable to dare a passionate statement. I felt drawn by professionalism to the edge of sterility, capable of no more than pedantic, lifeless, unassailable prose” (669). Therefore the reader questions if Rodriguez was aware of the problems of being a “scholarship boy” would he have chosen a more even balance between school and home earlier in his life.