Villasenor explores pertinent issues that characterized the American education system during the time of the memoir’s authorship. Through reviewing the author’s story, one can comprehensively understand the challenges that learners and instructors encountered under this system. The author narrates about his education course when he joined school in the 1940s (Villasenor 50). Villasenor, a child of a Mexican immigrant, struggles to adapt to the American’s system. His family has installed beliefs and values that have greatly influenced his perception towards life. He describes the life that his society expected him to live and values that he needed to adopt. For example, he explains how his father guided him on how to learn about girls. In particular, maintaining a real “Burro Macho” profile met having defined attributes that the author had to struggle to lead (Villasenor 51). Although he had successfully learned the American culture, the reality sets in when he joins the school as he hardly fits in the system. The book highlights that Villasenor had high potential especially in mathematics; however, his performance is mainly below average due to challenges that he experienced. In this respect, the teachers feel that he is of little ability and is sluggish in learning English. In contrast, this is a misinformed assumption because as the story develops, it becomes apparent that the Villasenor is a victim of dyslexia—a reading ailment (Villasenor 69). Besides, throughout the story, Villasenor remains motivated to work hard and build his life in the future.
Villasenor’s work has developed various themes that seem to affect the author’s education experiences. Initially, the theme of being non-English speaker comes out clearly in the story. The book highlights that the Villasenor experiences serious challenges under the American Education system. It attributes these problems mainly to the author’s inability to learn English-the primary instruction language. The book highlights that Villasenor is a talented student especially is challenging subjects like Mathematics; however, this is hardly reflected in his performance since he cannot comprehensively understand English (Villasenor 62). The author is forced to learn this new language, as the education system is not diverse to enable him to learn using his mother language--the Spanish. Furthermore, the instructors and other students view Villasenor as stupid since he cannot learn English. It even becomes more disturbing to know that teachers fail to understand the challenging experience that the non-English speakers are going through, and went on to mistreat them. Evidently, the story highlights various instances when the author is mocked whenever he speaks Spanish. The novel emphasize the teacher’s brutal habit by stating, “What did you say! Don’t think I don’t know your dirty spic words! And she slapped him across the face” (Villasenor 64). This has considerable effects on the author’s education experience, which includes making him demoralized and attaining a low self-esteem. For example, the novel states that the situation made him restrain from talking most of the times. Villasenor says, “the rest of us all went silent with fear, Ramon went right on talking in Spanish” (64). It is apparent that such a situation does not present as an ultimate learning environment for the narrator. This shows a great weakness of the American education system, as it disadvantages the non-English speakers. A sound system would be the one that is highly diverse to cater for various individuals. It is apparent that Villasenor would have recorded a comparatively higher performance if he studied under a system that allowed him to use his language.
Another theme of high significance in the novel includes the idea of sorting students based on their ethnic background. It comes out clearly that the narrator suffers under racist teachers, who view the students with Spanish background as stupid compared to their English-speaking counterparts. The idea of sorting out students is apparent throughout the novel as there is a clear boundary between the “sharp” and the “dull” students. The bright group comprises of students who can read and speak English while the non-English speakers are viewed as fools. This is of great significance as the teacher have a varying attitude towards these two groups. In particular, they have a negative approach towards the students who cannot read English, seeing them as individuals of low ability who can hardly learn. Teachers openly discriminate without caring about students like Villasenor—the foreigners. This becomes apparent in the incident when the narrator tells the story of a student from Boston who seem to have bad English than theirs (Mexican students). He explains that they felt happy and waited anxiously that at least someone else besides them would be slapped and hurled insults at them. However, this never happened, and when they confront the teacher about it, she says, “He ins’t a foreigner You twirps are the foreigners. He’s from Boston” (Villasenor 66). She goes further to explain that Boston was of particular historical interest, thus she took full responsibility to help the child. The narrator states that instead of castigating him as he did to them, she constantly corrected him in a polite manner and encouraged him. Discrimination/sorting of students affected the author’s education experience significantly, making him hate school. This is evident in the statement where Villasenor states, “School became a living hell” (66).
In conclusion, it is arguable that Villasenor’s book is of high contribution in understanding American schools during this era. The book provides a firsthand experience that clear highlight the situation, which characterized the education system. This includes providing a comprehensive review of the weakness of the system and their impacts on the learners. As clearly described, it is apparent that Villasenor’s education was affected by factors such as being a non-English speaker and sorting of the students that characterized the system. Besides his high ability, the school system does not empower Villasenor enough to realize his potential. In essence, the system acts against his effort of realizing his dreams by classifying him as a dull student with limited ability. From the story, one can learn that the American society of the time is self-centered and discriminative. The society is not open-minded and diverse to accommodate individuals of other backgrounds. The Americans feel that their race is superior; thus, individuals from other races had to learn their language-English. Lastly, it is clear that the schools in the book do not depict the idea of equality of opportunity as foreign students are discriminated. Teachers are seen to favor the English-speaking students over other—the foreigners. A situation where the teacher defends a child from Boston, who has poor English, provides evidence to this assertion. This contradicts the idea of equality as under such principle teachers should view, and treat all learners equally despite their background.
Works Cited
Villasenor, Victor. Burro Genius. New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2014. Print.
