Rodriguez’s chapter “The Achievement to Desire” is basically a reflection of his past through a critical standpoint. Rodriguez was able to make his essay extremely able to be related to, and ultimately forced me to look at my past education history through critical eyes. Basically, Rodriguez is trying to show just how much he moved away from his primary discourse. He learned the English language and rarely spoke Spanish, he did not follow the cultural norms of a Hispanic family (the close-knit family), and he expressed the embarrassment that he had for his parents because they were not educated like his teachers, the people he looked up to. Education successfully moved Rodriguez away from his primary discourse into new secondary ones, those that required much reading and studying. These secondary discourses seemed to teach him that imitation was the key to a successful life (mushfaking). In his primary education, Rodriguez realized that he really had not achieved anything because his thinking skills had never grown from the point of looking past “what the book says.” In short, Rodriguez was saying that “primary education is imitation” (448).

In order to receive what Gee called meta-knowledge, one must keep in touch with his primary discourse and those values, beliefs, and culture that were taught at a young age while somewhat challenging them with what is learned in school. In Rodriguez’s case, his parents almost seemed to want him to give up his culture (and Discourse) in order to become a better individual, one that is educated. However, while trying to move into his secondary discourse, Rodriguez feels as though he is alone, he only hears silence in his new world filled with reading, studying, and learning. The complex relationship and loss of ties that Rodriguez experiences with his parents shows just how hard it is to grow up and expand out from the primary discourse to new secondary ones. As Rodriguez proved, after the secondary discourse is fully achieved, one reflects back on their past with a sense of longing, mainly because that primary discourse was much easier to fit into than those new ones trying to be taken on.