Richard Rodriguez, Paulo Freire and Richard Miller

The critical aspects of the three

One of the aspects which I find more surprising when I look back at the three passages we have read is that although all of them are in some way related to education, the ideas raised by each author are completely different. Fist of all, Richard Rodriguez touches on education by talking about his own academic experience. He uses himself, the scholarship boy, to make a critic of the academic education he had received that made him become a mimic not a thinker. Secondly, we looked at Freire who was very concerned about making students realize that they were responsible for making their own contribution to the world. This author strongly criticizes the current education system through making a similarity between it and The Banking Concept of Education. Finally, Richard Miller looks at how reading and writing can influence someone’s life and he does it by putting forward examples of different types of people, of different types of readers.

What makes each of these passages different is the capacity these authors have to include their own opinions and perspectives to each matter they touch. This means that all of these writers are very critical. I have learned different things from each of them:

Richard Rodriguez: The uniqueness of this author relies on his capacity of putting forward his believes about a certain matter through narrating his own experiences. Apart from the writing we are doing in this course I have started to do some writing for myself and I am enjoying trying to put in practice this special technique that characterizes Richard Rodriguez.

Paulo Freire: What I mostly liked about Freire is his concern about society and education. This proves that the author cares about the world and as he is aware of the changes that have to be done to make society prosper he encourages us to make our own contribution to the world and to find our way to transform it. He disagrees with those education systems which limits student’s freedom and thus proposes an education system centered on the student. Thanks to people like Freire, who is able to realize what it is not working in the world and who then transmits it to others, society becomes more concerned about making the world a better place. This author made me be willing to make my contribution to the world and in order to do that I had to start to be critical and thoughtfull and to think for myself. As a consequence, I am working hard on that not only in my projects but in every aspect of my life.

Richard Miller: As I have mentioned before I see Miller as the most critical writer within the three. His capability of showing different perspectives about a story or about a character and then including his own one is fascinating. In the Dark Night of the Soul the author uses different stories to develop his own opinions and to transmit his concerns and thoughts to the readers. I think this way of writing makes it hard to the reader to realize the purpose of the writer because it is in some way hidden in the stories. However, through doing this Miller manages to give the reader the background required to understand what he wants to transmit to them.

To sum up, from each of the three authors I have learned something different and each of them has captivated me differently. However, from the three I have learned the power of being critical and the power of making the work personal.