Argument Aria by Richard Rodriguez

The author, Richard Rodriguez, argues that bilingual educators believe children miss a great deal when they are not educated using their native language but that bilingual educators do not understand the importance of Spanish-speaking children becoming comfortable in speaking what the author refers to as the “public language”. The article tells the story of the author’s time as a young Hispanic boy who is trying to learn English. He writes about how he did not believe he could achieve his goal of speaking English, a language he thought to be a public language, different from the Spanish language of his family that felt so personal and private to him. When his teachers asked his family to speak English at home, he felt everything change as he listened to his family struggle to speak this language. He felt sad, yet this was the moment he resolved to learn English. As time went on and he became more fluent in English, he grew more confident and came to believe what was true all along, that he was an American citizen and that he belonged. But with this new confidence in the public world, the dynamics of the family changed.There was a certain closeness his family shared when the home language was Spanish and he felt this intimacy become different as the English language became their language of choice. His father never became comfortable with speaking English as his primary language and he became quiet, letting his wife talk for both of them and become the public voice of the family. Yet when the author observed his father with a group of Spanish speaking friends, he saw his father’s personality come alive with Spanish words and sounds. He saw his father as confident in a way that was never apparent when he father spoke English. Rodriguez acknowledged the loss of intimacy and privacy his family suffered by trying to assimilate into public society, but felt the loss of “private individuality” makes “public individuality” possible and that this two pronged individuation is necessary for success in the public world.