The Achievement Of Desire

The Achievement Of Desire describes Rodriguez's educational upbringing as a "scholarship boy," and the emotional toll that comes with playing such a role. He sees his educational success as coming with a heavy burden: the need to constantly be achieving and improving seemingly for the sole sake of continuing on as a scholarship boy, without deriving any real personal pleasure from academic success. He also describes the disconnect between his learning self and his home self, and begins to feel embarrassed and ashamed that his less-educated parents aren't more like the teachers he comes to revere.

I can identify with Rodriguez in some aspects of his intellectual experience, while I do feel there was a point where I surpassed my parents educationally, it was never something I was made to feel ashamed or guilty about. I revered my own teachers, insomuch as I had a burning desire to make them like me, which was part of the reason I strove to be such a good student, but that never detracted from my feelings of love and admiration for my parents. I think a large part of this is the cultural factor, there was nothing as evident as a language barrier to evidence that I had intellectually outgrown my parents, I never felt like my home life changed drastically because of my desire to learn, and I harbor no real nostalgia for my life before schooling.

However, I feel sorry for Rodriguez when he discusses his early experiences with reading. As a child I had some of the same compulsive tendencies when it came to reading “the right book” and would compile lists of books I thought I should read to be a more “well-educated” person. However, unlike young Richard, I hardly even made it through half of these lists. I was incapable of reading just for information, I had to become completely engrossed in a book. For me, reading was an experience to be lost in, to the point where you forget where you are, outside of the fictional world. If the characters, drama and plot weren’t holding my attention, it was onto the next book. I tried (and failed) three times to read Atlas Shrugged before realizing that perhaps some “classics” weren’t for everyone.

After reading this article and looking closer at my own relationship with my parents as well as those of my friends and relatives, I have to wonder what the ideal parent-child dynamic is in regards to education, or if one even exists. In a society that pushes us to always be better, smarter, and more successful than those who came before, it is only natural that there would be some educational disconnect between generations. I have witnessed many vastly different examples of this generation gap, and have yet to see one I would describe as “ideal,” making me wonder if there is such a thing, and if so, what it looks like.