In the accolades to Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, Jonathan Kozol notes that the author has boldly unconventional ideas.  As I read the book, those two words kept coming back to me as I struggled to find out where those boldly unconventional ideas of the author were taking the reader.  I am still not sure.
 Hunger of Memory is an autobiographical account of Richard Rodriguez’s childhood and experiences as a Spanish-speaker in an English-speaking school. 

     He describes his school experience in terms of language use. Richard was a first grader with a strong private or home language (Spanish) and with about 50 assorted English words when he started at a Catholic elementary school in California.  His teachers visited the family with the request that the parents use English at home in order to strengthen their children’s exposure to English, the language that they needed in order to be successful in school.  From that day forward, the parents, who were not fluent English speakers, tried to do what the teachers requested and from that day, Richard’s confusion over his identity began.

     Rodriguez distinguishes between public and private languages.  The family had a soft, quiet, private language which was not the one used outside of the home. English, the school language was a loud, public way of expressing oneself.  After the teachers’ request to use English, Richard’s home language, the language of intimacy, became lost and thus intimacy vanished also.   Through the development of English language skills, he became a public person.  He became a confident English speaker and was able to reach a high level of education and move into the middle-class. But there was a price to pay. That was, in his mind at least, the loss of intimacy because he lost the language of intimacy.

     Richard Rodriguez was an academic success. He grew up with the conditions for academic success such as strong parental support, parental appreciation and emphasis on education, a strong family work ethic and well-developed family ties. He also was imbued with a love of reading.  In opposition to these optimal conditions for education, Richard also describes his insecurity, shyness, feelings of inferiority and his embarrassment towards his poorly educated and non-English speaking, working class parents.

     Rodriguez seems to blame his academic success on his loss of Spanish, his private language, and he can’t seem to get beyond that issue.  He blames the nuns for telling his parents to encourage English in the home. He seems grounded by the impression that he had to give up one part of himself in order to become the academic that he wanted to be. 
Richard Rodriguez speaks in dichotomies.  He is an academic success and a yet feels like a personal failure.  He relates this failure to be able to feel intimacy with his Spanish roots and culture.  He became a true American and lost his Mexican-ness.  He felt that he had to make a choice of being either a Mexican or an American but he couldn’t see the way to be both.  But since he physically looked Mexican, he became very conflicted because what he felt on the inside was not the way he appeared on the outside.  He strove to show that even though he looked like a Mexican, he was an educated, assimilated, fluent English speaking American.

     Bilingual education is not a popular issue in many parts of the US.  It is loaded with political overtones and misunderstanding (Krashen, 1996).  Since 1998, propositions to eliminate bilingual education in the public school system have been passed in California, Arizona and Massachusetts.  In each state, the case against bilingualism was fueled by attitudes similar to what was expressed by the nuns who went to the Rodriguez house.  It would be better for the family to begin their assimilation into American society by adapting the language of the country.

     The teachers who requested that the parents use English at home rather than developing the home language were wrong.  Recent research on second language acquisition clearly shows that students learn a second language much more efficiently when the home language is strong and is allowed to continue to develop.  Teachers of language minority students and English language learners, should encourage the parents to not only speak the first language at home but also to read and encourage literacy and print skills with their children. They should encourage pride in the home language as well as encourage the development of English language skills.  The two languages are not mutually exclusive.  Richard made a conscious decision not to pursue his home language, the language of intimacy for him.  He realized that he was shutting off a part of himself and yet he chose not to develop that side of his identity.  As a high school student or as an adult, he could have studied Spanish or gone to Mexico to rediscover his roots.  He chose not to.  He chose to develop only the American part of his identity.
 

     As a teacher-educator in the field of second language acquisition and bilingualism, this book grabbed me because even though it was written about a life-changing incident, which happened more than 40 years ago, some teachers today would give the same advice to the parents.  Speak English in the home so that the children can get more exposure to the target language.  I heard it as recently as last month in a teacher training session with ESL teachers. 

        As educators we must make sure that we don’t give bad pedagogical advice like limiting the home language rather than strengthening it.  The research (Collier, 1998, 2002: Krashen, 1999; Cummins, 2001) on setting optimal conditions for second language acquisition agree that the most basic factor is a strong foundation in the home language which continues to develop along with the second language.  Richard’s parents were given faulty information that they followed, thinking that they were doing what was best for their children.

     As teachers and teacher-educators, we must educate the parents to the benefits of home language support and make them part of their children’s education.  We must support bilingual programs whenever possible as a way of not only learning the home language but also providing a firm base for the second language. We must encourage development of bilingual programs so that the home language is validated as a language of instruction and not only of social discourse.  And we must promote the establishment of dual language immersion programs when feasible so that children from two language backgrounds learn together in each other’s language. In a good dual language program, both languages are equal media of instruction and both languages receive respect as both private and public languages, as Richard would call them.  In that way, as the minority language is validated, the speakers of that language don’t have to feel the shame and embarrassment that Richard felt when he started school.

     Whether his personal problems in relating to others and his negative attitude towards bilingual education and affirmative action programs are directly related to his parent’s having used English in the home, Rodriguez brings up a very valuable point about valuing the language of the home.  As educators we need to promote pride in what our students bring to the classroom and validate their language and culture.  If we do, then hopefully our students will grow up being proud of everything they bring to the classroom and not only what the child views as valued by people in the classroom. Academic success should be measured by the total child and not just how well they do in academics.  Rodriguez’s boldly unconventional ideas against bilingual education should be looked at again in light of what he needlessly gave up in order to become a middle-class, assimilated American.
 
 

Collier, V. & Thomas, W. (1998). School effectiveness for language minority students.
          Alexandria, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

Collier, V & Thomas, W. (2002) A National study of school effectiveness for language 
  Minority students: long-term academic achievement.  Center for Research
  on Education, Diversity & Excellence. Retrieved June 17, 2002 from
      http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/research/llaa/1/1es.html

Cummins, J. (2001). Language, power and pedagogy. Retrieved April 15, 2002 from
  http://www.iteachildren.com/cumming/lpp.html

Krashen, S. (1996). Under attack: The case against bilingual education. Culver 
  City, CA: Language Education Associates.

Krashen, S. (1999). Bilingual Education: Arguments for and (bogus) arguments against. 
  Paper presented at the Georgetown Roundtable on Languages and 
   Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. May 1999.

      As I read the Smith and Shepard article on Kindergarten readiness, I identified with the dilemma that the teachers face at the end of the year.  I sat in on all of the retention meetings at my school this past year.  I heard the teachers voice their reluctance or their enthusiasm as the subject of retention surfaced.  I heard the philosophical objections of the teachers who tended towards the Interactionist end of the spectrum as they recommended promotion and monitoring of the child who hadn’t quite reached academic maturity expected of a Kindergartener.  And, I listened to the Nativists arguing that the young student was not ready to go on to first grade and would not be ready in September.  The Smith and Shepard article describes a qualitative study of teachers’ beliefs about retention and their use of it in the early grades.  Even though the article is almost 20 years old, the situation is relevant today.
 

      Smith and Shepard began by addressing the question: “What do kindergarten teachers regard as the proper basis for promotion through early grades?” *  What seems as a straightforward, logical question turns out to be answered through beliefs about the value of retention, philosophy of child development and school or district policies.  The authors of the article present a continuum of teacher views on retention or readiness that ranges from the Nativists who base their decisions on the innate rate of development of the child, to the Interactionists who believe that the varied types of experiential learning presented in a class can compensate for the student who seems to grasp concepts more slowly than others.   In between the Nativists and the Interactionists are the Remediationists who believe that teachers can change their teaching style or strategies can help the child who might be heading for retention, as well as the Diagnostic-Prescriptive Teachers who believe that a child’s lack of success in the classroom might be based on a physical problem and therefore the child should be tested and the problem diagnosed before considering retention.

      In the discussion of readiness and/or retention, one very important element was touched on but not given its proper due in this era of accountability and standardized testing:  school or district policies.*  District policies on retention have superceded the teacher’s recommendations for promotion.  In my district, for example, if a kindergarten student has not passed certain benchmarks by the end of the school year, retention is automatic unless the child is older than the other students or if the student has already been retained in kindergarten. Only the parent can request promotion in that situation.  A teacher’s beliefs about retention do not play a part in the reality of what happens to the child.  Donna Deylhe, in her article about testing among Navajos and Anglos, refers to testing as the gatekeeper.  This is what happens even in kindergarten when district policy says that retention must occur if the benchmarks are not met.

      Smith and Shepard spend time mentioning the rules that are learned in school.  This brings me to the subtitle of this critique:  Rules, regulations and requirements. This article brings out how children learn rules and the consequences for breaking those rules.  Smith and Shepard put it this way: “Whereas the children may have studied three or four letters or words, they will have heard more than 60 statements of rules… as well as the reprimands for breaking rules.”*  In some schools, retention is considered when a young child cannot follow the rules, as well as when the subject material has not been mastered.  

      Since my special interest is in the education of English language learners (ELLs), this article explained some of the reasons I frequently hear for retaining ELLs.  I hear about how a Spanish-speaker hasn’t mastered the material before he or she has even mastered the language of instruction.  I have had to advocate for a child who was going to be retained because he couldn’t follow classroom and school procedures.  Once the rules were translated and explained to the child, he complied and was grateful that he finally understood why everyone was so angry at him.
 To summarize the article, I must say that in this age of accountability under NCLB, teachers’ beliefs about retention or readiness will take second seat to the district requirements for retention if mastery of subject material has not been proven by a standardized test.  The beliefs that were presented in the article will not be reflected in the practice of the school.

      The Smith and Shepard article reflected many of the views found in the Deyhle article.  Both articles point out how children hear rules, regulations and consequences more than the WHY of what they are doing.  This point struck me because I had not considered the cultural implication of testing in the way Deylhe relates it to the Navajo. I think that teachers assume that testing is understood by the students.  But, in this age of highly diverse student population, ** we cannot assume cultural homogeneity.
 
      Both articles mention the parents as passing on their own values of education to their children.  For example, in the Smith and Shepard article, the authors talk about parents who cannot pass on academic skills to their children because they don’t have the skills themselves.  They also mention how parents in the upper socio-economic brackets put much more pressure on their children to succeed than the students in the lower brackets.  This pressure can be seen as the parents’ expectations for their children to succeed academically even starting in kindergarten.  These parents are looking to the future and how good study habits and good marks will help their children get into better schools as they get older.  Deyhle relates this pressure to the Anglo parents in contrast to the Navajo parents. 

      The lack of pressure can be because of the parents’ experience in their own academic careers.  For example, if an immigrant parent went through grades 1-3 before coming from El Salvador, and if when he went to school, the school was seen as a place to play because the teacher was frequently on strike or absent, then the parents might project to the child the attitude that success in school isn’t as important as attendance (because it’s a legal requirement). Economic success is not tied to academic success in many of the countries our students come from.

     Deyhle also mentions how students do not take school seriously when the culture of the home is not taken seriously.  (Richard Rodriguez would say that the students should conform to the majority culture in order to become successful in the school.) Testing for the Navajos is looked at more experiential, more like an apprenticeship in which knowledge is learned from observation and then practiced.  In our public schools, testing is a paper and pencil gatekeeper when it is not understood by the culture of those who are being tested.  The Navajo students may know the rules and regulations when they are being tested but if they do not understand WHY they are being tested in the way that they are supposed to show their understanding, then they will not be successful on the tests.  Since the tests determine academic success or failure, the lack of understanding of the reasons behind testing will cause the Navajo students to misunderstand the value of the tests.

       I have vacillated between the two articles because I find them both expounding on a similar theme:  Like the toilet in our everyday life, we accept retention and testing policies without examining the why and how of each.  The Smith and Shepard article is the first step in examining teacher beliefs about retention but it must go further to urge teachers to examine the validity of retention and then to look at district and/or school policies on retention.  Some of the policies were made without looking at the cultural background of the children who are directly affected by them.  English language learners are being retained because they haven’t mastered the standardized tests. They haven’t passed the standardized tests because they just arrived in this country and they don’t speak English, the language of the tests.  Simple logic here would dictate that school policies need to be reexamined in light of the changing demographics of our students.

      The Deyhle article brings up a very valid point that I wonder how many teachers of culturally different students have questioned:  Do the students understand why they are being tested?  Do they understand the reasons behind testing in the U.S. public school system?  I would not be surprised to find that some of our students have no clue as to why they take so many tests.  For some cultural groups, like the Navajo, the reasons behind testing and the values implicit in testing must be taught explicitly.

      We as educators need to question what we take for granted. We can start with retention and testing.  We need to look at how testing has become a gatekeeper even in kindergarten.  We also need to look at how our teaching seems to stress the rules and regulations more than the reasons behind the activity.  Why are we still promoting the school-as-factory mentality?  Even in this era of accountability in our schools, we need to look more at how we can educate children to be creative thinkers and less of rule followers.  But, according to Smith and Shepard, we have to be careful because if the child doesn’t follow the rules, regulations and requirements, they might be retained.  That is the reality, the 4th R
 
 

Collier, V. & Thomas, W. (2002). A National study of school effectiveness for language minority students:  long-term academic achievement.  Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence.  Retrieved June 17, 2002 from 
 http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/research/llaa/1/1es.html

Deyhle, D. (1986).  Success and failure: a micro-ethnographic comparison of Navajo and Anglo students perception of testing.  Curriculum Inquiry, 16(4), pp.365-389.

Smith, M.L. & Shepard, L. (1988). Kindergarten readiness and retention: a qualitative study of teachers’ beliefs and practices.  In American Educational Research Journal, 25(3), pp. 307-333.
   
 

     My pre-university education was so long ago that I thought that it would be difficult to remember specifics about it. But, as I read the Anyon article about Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, specific incidents came flooding back, especially when I read about the working-class school.  With those memories, I tried to look at my school experience in a dispassionate way like Horace Miner.  It was difficult because I discovered that I had a lot of emotion tied up with those memories. 

     I went to a small Catholic school in an all-white town of 10,000 people in the western part of New York State. The time was the mid-1950s.  I liked school for the social aspects of it and because I liked to please my teachers. I worked for praise rather than for knowledge. That realization hit me recently in the middle of the night when it struck me that my motivation in grade school was to please my teachers and parents. It didn’t have anything to do with being motivated to learn, to think creatively or to problem solve.  Why was this?  I don’t know.  It might have something to do with Catholic theology or the ‘guilt theory’ that everything bad that a child does hurts Jesus and therefore Catholic school-children have to strive to be good and moral first and foremost. I don’t remember any teacher telling me that I had to learn anything or understand anything in order to be able to think creatively or to problem-solve or that it would help me survive in the world outside of school.

    I was also a left-handed child in a right-handed school.  The nuns tried their hardest to make me see the errors of my ways when I used my left hand or led with my left foot in a procession. Everything had to be done ‘right’ because ‘left’ came from the Latin root of the word ‘sinister’.  But the reminder not to be ‘sinister’ would make me more determined to maintain my left-handedness.  I am ambidextrous and can write backwards with my left hand.  Taking notes backwards with my left hand was the strongest form of protest in my younger years.

     I remember the classes in my first 8 years of school as filled with desks facing the front blackboard, lots of copying from the board and choral reading. I do not remember any science projects or any projects at all other than book reports that had to follow a definite format.  The emphasis was on rote learning, control and discipline. 

     As I try look dispassionately and to rationalize the way I was taught, I believe that it came from the Catholic regimentation that you have to be good to go to Heaven and that if you are bad you hurt God.  Even though we followed a standard curriculum, the hidden agenda was to make the students good Catholics first and then teach them mathematics and social studies. 

     My Catholic education intensified when I was 14 because my parents sent me to an all-girl Catholic high school run entirely by nuns and connected to a convent. The not-so-hidden agenda at that school was to promote the idea of going into the convent after high school.  Again, Anyon’s article about the working class school feeds my memory of what we did in the classes.  Nothing was explained in terms of why we had to learn it other than the ever-constant, left-over expression from grade school: “because I told you to learn it”.

     There must have been a streak of independence in me even after 8 years of primary school because in my 10th grade religion class, I made a remark which contradicted something the teacher said. I questioned her explanation of a religious understanding and she took issue with it.  As punishment, I had to spend my recess time in the Religious Reading Room (I kid you not) until I recanted the sacrilegious remark.  Maybe my memory has been inflated or corrupted but I remember various nuns taking sides and telling me confidentially that they supported my stand and others telling me that with rebellious ideas such as mine, I should not be recommended for the National Honor Society.    Since my parents wanted me to get into the NHS, I recanted after a long battle and was finally accepted back into the fold of the good girls.

     That incident stands out because it was the first time that I can remember thinking something through and questioning something that didn’t make sense to me. Instead of the teacher working with me to see where I was right or wrong, she condemned me and tried to humiliate me for thinking outside the box.  My treatment served to give me a first hand experience of the Inquisition!  In retrospect, I think that she felt threatened because she had not been trained to deal with dissent. She only knew how to demand conformity and not to channel critical thinking. As a member of a religious order, she had been taught to obey blindly.  When faced with someone who dared to question, she didn’t know how to react.  I often wondered whether she remembered the incident as strongly as I still do.

     In summary, my education was full of rote learning, rule following and conformity.  I was taught not to question and not to think independently.  Maybe this was because of the working class neighborhood of the school but it was also reinforced by the Catholic philosophy of obedience to rules and to authority.  I was taught not to look beyond what I had in terms of material things because envy was a sin.  Higher education was not stressed because it was expected that girls would graduate from high school and get married or if they chose a profession, it would be secretarial, nursing or teaching. And parents who were really blessed would have their girl decide to go into the convent and devote her life to God. I felt the pressure all through my education but knew that the convent and I would not be a good match.

     It took me until I was in college (a state university close to my hometown) before I realized that there was a world out there with people who were not like me. In college I met African-American students and African students.  I met kids my age who were learning English and who had radically different backgrounds from me. I started looking at my life through different lenses.  In my Junior year I studied in Costa Rica and that began my love of travel and questioning everything that didn’t make sense. The eye-opening experience of travel along with the consciousness raising issues that confronted students in the 1960s and early 1970s changed my educational eye from looking inward at a small town and its working class values to a global view which questioned injustices and tried to make a difference.  

Part 2

I taught a course on language acquisition and bilingualism for George Mason University this summer and I hope to teach it again.  My goal with my students is to open their eyes not only to what the research says about second language acquisition and bilingualism but how to read and question the research that they read.  I feel that my need to teach my students to be critical consumers of educational research comes directly from my background that stifled criticism and reflection. 

     I  encourage self-reflection. I tell my students that the assignments that they are responsible for are for them.  I will read and grade them but what I want is for them to learn from them.  My comments are meant as a guide for further reflection rather than as a sheet of mistakes for them to correct. I do this so that they will think about their beliefs rather than write something just to please me.

     Another influence that I see from my educational background is my interest in cross-cultural understanding. Where I grew up, diversity applied to bird species.  People all looked and spoke the same. The only acknowledged difference was religion. I have felt that it is an integral part of my career as a teacher-educator to incorporate cultural awareness in everything I teach.  

     So, the site for my field study is my classroom. I looked at it with a critical eye at the same time for 3 days in a row this week.  What I saw were small groups of teachers debating or critiquing research articles on bilingualism and bilingual education.  I used cooperative learning groups and pairs for the discussion.  After the whole group discussion they had a chance for a quiet self-reflection time where they wrote about how the information we had critiqued applied to their teaching/learning situation.  One day we watched a video by Deborah Tannen, a socio-linguist from Georgetown University talk about conversational styles and how they can either facilitate or impede communication. And then we broke into small groups to talk about personal application of what they had heard about conversational pausing, interrupting and personal space.  Then we applied it to the classroom and then to their personal lives.

     Each student has a buddy to discuss ideas with before presenting them to the class. I also have a time designated for consultations where the student tells me his or her class goals and we discuss progress towards those goals.   I want to lower inhibitions about speaking in class and give the students the experience of collaborating and sharing with professional colleagues. I encourage critical thinking and analysis of research and of texts.  That comes from my having been discouraged from thinking independently.   I encourage debate and the posing of opposing opinions.  I bring in controversial videos or speakers to stimulate the students to form their own views and to be able to defend them in a safe environment. I want my students to feel that they can and they must develop and defend their own opinions on the issues that confront us as educators. That was a talent that I did not develop until recently. So firmly engrained in me was my desire to please from those elementary days, that I would support other opinions but rarely voice my own. I am still learning.

     In the area of linkage or extension, I have offered to go back to my high school and to talk to the teachers about my experiences. I am in the process of writing a set of outlines of staff development workshops that I am going to propose for the teachers at my old high school. (This summer I visited it for the first time since I graduated 35 years ago and discussed my ideas with the principal.)  First I am doing a needs assessment to see how much the teachers have changed and whether the provincial attitudes still hold.  From what I find out in the needs assessment, I would try to broaden their thinking about how to contextualize what they teach to encourage linkage to a broader world concept and then help them to design materials which encourage critical thinking in their students. 

     That would bring me full circle from where I was criticized for thinking outside the box to taking the lid off the box for the teachers so that they can encourage their young ladies to become critical thinkers, problem solvers and members of a global society and not just Hamburg, New York.