Richard Rodriguez's Theory Of Education Analysis

Unlike Freire’s conclusion of education as liberation and exploring one’s historical background, Rodriguez’s conclusion involves removing oneself from ones historical background. Rodriguez believes in complete alienation from home, childhood, and family in order to develop new ways of thinking. He believes this process to be a loss, but a necessary sacrifice to achieve academic success. He states that the student “must move between environments, his home and the classroom, which are at cultural extremes, opposed” (Rodriguez 547). He believes that the two environments cannot coincide until the student has gone through many years of education to finally “achieve desire” and look back on his or her life to reconnect with the person they were before

education. He believes that the student must immerse themselves into school rather than home, they should relate to the teacher better than the parents in order to grasp the concepts of education without involving family. He describes these characteristics in his own story, referring to his schoolteacher; “She understood exactly what--my parents never seemed to appraise so well--all my achievements entailed”(Rodriguez 549). He feels as if, at least in his own story, that a child cannot be fully appreciated by their parents throughout education because they are not aware of all of the happenings in the classroom, whereas the teachers are. Therefore, in Rodriguez’s opinion, students must alienate themselves from their home life in order to be successful in the academic world.
A major contrast in the views of Freire and Rodriguez in the development of the student’s adult life is the concept that Freire refers to as “banking.” This is a concept in which “the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filling, and restoring the deposits” (244), alludes to how the students are impersonal, inanimate objects who store information without applying it to the world.

Rodriguez spent many years of education fulfilling the “banking” concept, and although he later recognizes the loss it entailed, he primarily believes that imitation plays an important role in the process of education for one must do this to succeed. Here, Freire would argue that the educational system is currently oppressive towards the students, and that there is a sense of necrophily behind it all, that being the love of death. This love of death, he explains, is the technique of teaching based on memory. Rodriguez would contradict this explanation of education, relaying that “banking” plays a large role in the success of the student. He explains rightfully that, “They must develop the skill of memory long before they become critical thinkers” (Rodriguez 560). Rodriguez may agree with Freire that the point of education is to become a critical thinker who questions, learns, and advances, but unlike Freire’s idea of this taking place during education, Rodriguez believes it cannot be reached until education has come to a conclusion, what Rodriguez refers to as

“the end of education.”
Their conclusions become very dissimilar when it comes to the concept of alienation from a student’s historical situation.

Freire takes the stance that education too often alienates students from their historical situation, whereas Rodriguez finds it necessary for the student to alienate oneself from one’s original situation in order to achieve individual thinking. This necrophilic technique of education dominates students and is only alienating them from Freire’s proposed version of education “Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Freire 249). What Freire means by this is that students cannot have a liberated view of themselves and their relations with the world if they are taught with the banking concept of education. They are alienated from what is the most important historical aspect of their lives, their relationship with the world, and therefore Freire’s conclusion opposes

Rodriguez’s. 
Education is a complicated subject when it comes to Paulo Freire and Richard Rodriguez, for they have contradictory views, both concerning completely different educational concepts. Paulo Freire discusses the negativities of present education and explains how it should be reformed, whereas Rodriguez illustrates his own life in education, and how it led him to be the person he is today. The two authors have opposing views on the ideas of imitation, alienation, and power, Freire for the most part believing all of these concepts need to be removed or reformed, and Rodriguez believing that they are important aspects for academic success. Freire believes rather than the banking concept of education, in that of “probem posing education” which consists of an alive, dynamic change in students, allowing them to become humanized with a relationship with the world around them. Rodriguez goes through many years of education without experiencing this, but comes to this conclusion when he reflects on his life from the revelation of the “scholarship boy.” It is then possible to say that although they have differing opinions on the ideal education, they both believe that the main goal is for students to develop a relationship