"Aria" by Richard Rodriguez

        "Aria" by Richard Rodriguez is about his childhood as someone who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, but was then forced to learn English for school when he and his family moved to California from Mexico. Throughout the piece he talks about trying to reconcile the two languages, but finds much difficulty in doing so. At first it is hard for him to transition to speaking English. He finds the pronunciations and sounds of the language to be awkward and rarely speaks to anyone outside his home. Finally, his teachers impress the importance of speaking English upon his parents and he is now being encouraged to speak in English when he is at home, instead of Spanish. When Rodriguez is finally comfortable speaking in English, he then has to deal with extended family members looking down on him for not speaking Spanish. Eventually, he begins to feel guilty speaking Spanish anywhere and so he doesn't use it, or rather he feels he can't use it.
        Rodriguez claims that children shouldn't be taught in their native language at school because if they are taught in their native language, they are being taught something that should be private to them in a public space; children shouldn't be using something so familial in the classroom because it doesn't belong there. Granted, I grew up speaking nothing but English, so there's no way for me to really understand how bilingual children feel about speaking one language out in public and another language in the home, but I disagree with Rodriguez's stance. I believe that if children are taught at least partly in their native language at school, it would make their transition easier. Rodriguez was forced to only speak English and it negatively effected his Spanish and maybe if he were encouraged in school to speak some Spanish, that wouldn't have happened.