"Aria" by Richard Rodriguez

In his article "Aria," Richard Rodriguez maintains that bilingual children should speak English as a public language, for schooling purposes, but that they also need to speak their family's language. In this case, Spanish. When he was younger, Rodriguez struggled in school learning English, and was so afraid of it that he refused to speak in the classroom. He states on page 34, "I'd mumble, not really meaning to answer. The nun would persist, 'Richard, stand up. Don't look at the floor...Speak to the entire class, not just to me!' But I couldn't believe that the English language was mine to use...I resisted the teacher's demands...Silent, waiting for the bell to sound, I remained dazed, diffident, afraid." The teachers, or should I say the nuns were getting so irritated about young Rodriguez not speaking English in class that they went to talk with his parents, to encourage him and his siblings to practise English at home. And they were successful in their endeavors to have Rodriguez speak the public language. So the whole family started communicating in English at home, and Rodriguez seemed to deplore this situation. Because as he put it, speaking Spanish brought a "special feeling of closeness in the family." Now that English was spoken at home, there was no desire for the writer and his siblings to go home after school. He says on page 36, "Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home... We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed... Neither my older brother nor sister rushed home after school anymore. Nor did I." There was not enough communication between the parents and the children anymore.
So not speaking enough Spanish at home had a negative impact not only on Rodriguez and his siblings but also on his parents, especially his mother. The author says on page 37, "She grew restless, seemed troubled and anxious at the scarcity of words exchanged in the house. It was she who would question me about my day when I came home from school." About his father he states " Though his English improved somewhat, he retired into silence."
In order to show how important Spanish is to him, Rodriguez says that every time he heard it spoken in public, he would remember the "golden age of my yuth...Hearing a Spanish- speaking family walking behind me, I turned to look. I smiled for an instant," etc."
Rodriguez blames educators who think that, assimilation into public society is a bad thing for bilingual children. For him, assimilation is, on the contrary, beneficial for those children in the sense that it confers them dual 'individuality': private and public.