"Aria" by Richard Ridriguez

Argument:


Rodriguez argues in this piece that English is the dominant language in the classroom and any other language is private but this in turn causes english to become the main language in the home to prepare children for the classroom.


Rodriguez went through elementary school afraid of speaking English in the classroom. Then when the nuns came and talked to his parents, they encouraged them to encourage English in the home more than Spanish to "help" their children adapt to the "public language". This in turn created a language barrier between the Spanish speaking parents and their children for whom English became their primary language. I agree with Rodriguez in the end of his article that bilingual children now a days lose a sense of their individuality. Private individuality and public individuality are very different. In order to gain one the other gets a bit lost. When conforming to society and gaining a sense of public individuality, the private individuality gets lost in the darkness.