Comparative Analysis of Characters Essay Example

they use this knowledge from their studies to write what they need to do. McCarthy wondered if writing in different classes was harder for students due to different teachers’ writing styles and teaching styles or was it simply harder for some students because they are in different surroundings or are writing for different genres. She follows Dave writing process through his cell biology, poetry, and composition classes. McCarthy utilized observations, interviews, and composing-aloud protocols.

Richard Rodriguez essay “The Achievement of Desire”, we follow the journey of a young boy as he reflects on his life as a Latino boy whose parents have very little education. Rodriquez describes the difficulties in trying to balance his life in the academic world and his life of the working-class family. When Rodriguez was younger, he wasn’t your typical student from a working-class non-English speaking family. Instead of spending time with his family and friends, he would be reading and taking notes.

As we follow his journey, we see how his experience or lack thereof leads him to be very willing of his teacher’s ideas and instead of coming up with his own ideas that are more specific to him, he uses the teacher’s ideas as his own. He does this for many years until, in graduate school, he realizes he was really wasn’t a good student and was just going through the motions. He ended up having to relearn his way of processing, thinking and connecting the skills he was learning to his own life in order to develop his own ideas.

A theme that is evident in both of these academic works is the theme or idea that students have a

hard time seeing the correlation in their lives to school and how it leads to difficulties or challenges in the classroom. When Rodriguez was a child, he used to think that he was distinctly different in his learning. He claims that there is a huge difference between his school life and home life which causes him to have troubles connecting to what the teachers are trying to teach and what the material he reads at school. In his essay, he compares himself to the scholarship boy who is a particular type of boy.

He is very smart, loves to dig into his work, and is compassionate and passionate as well as always successful. Even though he is success, he is not confident, but instead anxious. Rodriguez writes that “What he grasps well is that the scholarship boy must move between environments, his home and the classroom, which are at cultural extremes, opposed” (46). He expresses concerns of being under the category of students who get good grades as a result of memorizing facts rather than establishing their own opinions.

Just like a scholarship boy, Rodriguez aim at excelling academically and forgetting his past. However, he acknowledges that both education and family is important because they enhance an individual growth. He never does connect the events through his education to the events in life and this split or disconnect means he does not get the full understanding or benefit of his education.

This idea is also mentioned when Rodriguez putting all his effort into his studies as well as all his faith into his teachers. Putting all his faith into his teachers didn’t help him create his own ideas

instead he was still copying off of them. He found it easier to not think for himself and think about the other parts of life. He often refers back to his childhood and reminisces on the deeply rooted culture, family and home life.

Once he entered school, you could see an immediate difference in his home life and how it dramatically changed. When he takes home his first assignment, he realized that his parents weren’t as knowledgeable as he once thought. His parents were unable to help him. As a second-grade student, he started correcting his parents’ errors and his feelings towards them changed. Rodriguez threw himself into his studies and learning to make sure he didn’t end up like his parents.

As he states, “For both my parents, however, reading was something done out of necessity and as quickly as possible” (58). His parents just did not understand his fascination with books and would frequently make comments such as “What do you see in those books?” (62). He would lend his mom books she thought she would like and understand so they could have something in common but he often found these books on his bedside. He struggled to figure out how to be part of his family and how to make his relationship with his mom and dad better. He struggled with the disconnect between him and his parents.

This concept of division between school and home life was also present in McCarthy’s study of Dave, the college student. As McCarthy follows Dave from the variety of assignments, she sees the similarities in all the assignments, but to Dave, they are all different. He, therefore, goes

about each one of them differently. She states, “My analysis of the assignments, combined with the observation and interview data, show that the writing in the three classes was similar in many ways.” (243).

They were all information writing for the teacher as the examiner. Because of Dave’s inability to see the similarity between the three assignments, he struggles to identify what the teacher wanted. He felt like he was unable to connect what he had learned in the class to what the teacher wanted and how to be successful in one, then he would have overall success. He would have different frustrations with each assignment.

Both Rodriguez’s and Dave’s experiences or I should say lack of connecting their overall lives to their education seems to be an overall pattern. In Rodriguez’s case, he was never told by a teacher to connect his studies to his home life. He would just emulate his teachers and not learn on his own or from his parents and his family’s lives. He struggled to relate his reading and writing to his home life. Dave also had the same problem. He failed to understand that he could draw on his life and past experiences in order to be successful in all subject areas. This is very common in education most of the times the kids just write to what the teacher wants instead of digging into their experiences.

Another interesting connection between these two pieces was Rodriguez’s and Dave’s were their way of writing and social environments. McCarthy suggests that writers face many obstacles as a writer. One major obstacle that Dave struggled with was “Dave exhibited consistent ways of figuring out

what constituted appropriate texts in each setting, in his terms, of “figuring out what the teacher wanted.” (243). He struggled to identify the content and wanted to write just to what the teacher wanted.

He also struggled with his social environment. Dave was first in his family to go to college, he worked thirteen hours days as well as had a thirty-minute commute to college. As with many writers, he didn’t like to write but knew he had to write. Another obstacle faced by Dave as with many writers is figuring out the purpose was for each writing assignment. Dave was concerned on how to interpret all three writing tasks differently. She also found from her interview and data that Dave viewed the writing tasks he was given in his three classes “as being totally different from each other and totally different from anything he had ever done before” (240).

A writer has to focus fully on the particular new ways of thinking and writing in each setting. Not only did the students or writers have obstacles, but so did the professors. Professors obstacles are how do I get the material across to the students, the terminology across to them as well as convey accurately what I want from my students. In McCarthy’s findings, Dave’s concerns matched the teachers’ concerns.

When Richard would write his papers, he thought there was only one way to write it and would seek it out instead of relying on his knowledge and background. He struggled to identify that there wasn’t a “right way” to write. He would use writing to piece together everything that he read and would draw conclusions. Richard finds

this deep passion for writing because it means a lot to him.

Richard also struggled with the social aspect and applying that to his writing and reading. Richard wanted to be part of a particular community and he saw reading and writing as a way to do so. Dave wanted to join a similar community back not to the extent as Richard. Both of the men lack social interaction which could have made their success harder to achieve.

Richard alienated himself from his mom and dad as he became smarter. It was hard for him to interact with them. As he grew older, he becomes more scheduled and less interactive, Rodriguez says, “I have become bookish, puzzling to all my family. Ambition set me apart.” (45). He became so focused on his studies that it caused him not to react with his family and the outside world.

In Dave’s poetry class, he didn’t socialize with his classmates which could have been a reflection on his poor grade. Students seldom talked to each other about their studies. They never talked about their assignments. In his biology class and composition class, students were required to interact, have discussions, and talk about the content, course materials, and writing assignments. The socialization allows students to share their knowledge, ideas, and work. It allows them to figure out together the best way to go about learning.

It is evident that both pieces have similarities and how those affected their studies and success. Both struggled in their learning and journeys to achieve success. They had a difficult time using their past and the importance of their past to help them with their education and learning.

In order to have success, one needs to relate to their ideas to their reading and writing and their past.

We say how Rodriguez was unable to connect what he was reading to his life and therefore unable to come up with his own ideas instead he would emulate his teacher’s ideas. McCarthy shows us that Dave did not use his prior knowledge and past to help aid him in his classes. He didn’t rely on his fundamentals of writing to aid in his success.

The socialization and that interaction with others proved to not only hinder their learning but also didn’t allow them to produce their best work. This also applied to Rodriguez’s family, because of his lack of interaction with them, he ended up alienating himself from them. Students need to have a chance to interact and learn from each other.

Otherwise, they alienate themselves from their families and others. They need to be able to collaborate, bounce ideas off of each other and be an outlet for each other. This also applied to Rodriguez’s family, because of his lack of interaction with them, he ended up alienating himself from them.