Teaching and Learning as Shown in Three American Works by Alvarez, Houston and Rodriguez

Examples of teaching and learning are widespread throughout American literature, and these three works show different views on the subject. From the informal lessons of Alvarez' How I Learned to Sweep and Pam Houston's How to Talk to a Hunter, to the formal education or Richard Rodriguez' Aria, we have seen that education takes many forms, and, more often than not, the most important lessons are those learned outside the classroom.

In regard to patterns in teaching and learning, the only true consistency in these stories is that ultimately a lesson is learned, but the nature of the lesson, and both the method, and the identity, of the teacher vary widely from story to story; as is the case in much of life, though, many of these lessons are passed on from adults to children.

Factors such as race, social class, and gender play a very large part in these lessons, as both the methods of the teachers, and the attitudes of the students, vary with one's place in society. For example, compare How I Learned to Sweep with Bambara's The Lesson, and both with Rodriguez' Aria; Alvarez' lesson, taught by her mother, concerns a state of mind, Bambara's, taught by a neighborhood woman, is one of economic and social reality, and Rodriguez learns a very important cultural lesson through both his parents and his school. All of these lessons are different, but they share the common thread of a very important lesson learned, and one not forgotten.

Richard Rodriguez' Aria describes teaching and learning on two levels, that of an actual classroom education, and also of an education, or assimilation, into a new culture. Rodriguez sees his education as foreign, taught to him by people he doesn't understand, and generally dislikes. "The accent of los gringos was never pleasing nor was it hard to hear…I would be forced to edge away from the chirping chatter above me." (755), is one way he describes his early boyhood experiences with the English language and those who speak it.

Rodriguez' anxiety is crippling to his education, because he simply cannot, nor does he want to, understand this foreign tongue; Rodriguez' language is that of his family, and, as many young children do, he feels uncomfortable in the unfamiliar surroundings of the foreign, American speech. Describing a typical school experience, Rodriguez would, "mumble, not really meaning to answer. The nun would persist, 'Richard, stand up. Don't look at the floor. Speak up. Speak to the entire class, not just to me!' But I couldn't believe that the English language was mine to use." (757). Young Richard's education suffers greatly due to his dislike of this foreign, public language. "Silent, waiting for the bell to sound, I remained dazed, diffident, afraid." (758).

Rodriguez' formal education is suffering because of his lack of a cultural one. He has no real experience with American culture or the English language, and he views both as "outside" things, the realm of others, and not of his parents, who are Mexican immigrants. Rodriguez' parents' difficulties with English, and sparing use of it, only serve to strengthen his feeling that Spanish is his language, and English is that of the outside world. "My parents would say something to me and I would feel embraced by the sounds of their words", he recollects, "Those sounds said: I am speaking with ease in Spanish…I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one outside.

You belong with us. In the family." (756). Impressions like these affect children very deeply, as is evident in this story. Rodriguez' real education begins as his parents are persuaded to speak English around Richard and his siblings, who are also suffering from poor performance in school. As his English improves, so does his performance and his confidence, and the result is his emergence from the familial cocoon of Espagnol into the outside world of English. Richard Rodriguez' education is one that many children go through, though they may speak the public language from birth; "the day I raised my hand in class and spoke loudly to an entire roomful of faces, my childhood started to end." (762)

Julia Alvarez' poem How I Learned to Sweep describes a much different lesson, as her mother teaches her how to deal with the often painful outside world. "My mother never taught me sweeping" (639), she begins, telling us that her education was not one of rigid imitation or wrote memorization, but one of habits observed throughout life. The literal sweeping of the room, though she does a very good job of it, is not the important lesson here, but it functions quite well as a metaphor to describe the more figurative sweeping, or cleansing, that comes later.

Her initial sweeping finished, Alvarez waits for her mother's return while watching coverage of the Vietnam war on television, and begins what she really means by "sweeping". "I got up and swept again/as they fell out of the sky./I swept all the harder when/I watched a dozen of them die…" (640). The sweeping here is a way of ignoring what is going on around her, sweeping away the horrible images of war by putting her mind on something concrete and harmless- sweeping the living room. This is an excellent example of the informal teachings of parents, as they are often how we learn how to deal with the realities of the world around us.

Her lesson is complete as her mother returns to inspect her work, "She came back and turned the dial;/the screen went dark. That's beautiful,/she said, and ran her clean hand through/my hair, and on, over the window" (640). Alvarez learns to deal with outside concerns by essentially ignoring them, sweeping them away just as one would do with dirt on a floor; evidently, her mother is pleased that she has learned to perform this kind of sweeping, as she praises her in the last line, "That's beautiful, she said, impressed,/she hadn't found a speck of death." (640).