one of the reasons he was a successful student was that he had to be able to separate his home environment with that of the classroom. Rodriguez's parents became his first authority and influenced him to pursue an independent education. Rodriguez was not proud of his parents when he says, "I was embarrassed by their lack of education" (Rodriguez, 658), but he ironically claims that they made his success possible by encouraging education and working full time to send him to the best available parochial schools. Rodriguez could not afford to admire his parents for advancement in his studies because he saw that they had not changed as much as he had with the education that he had received. Instead a new authoritative figure emerged for Rodriguez in the form of education. Rodriguez concentrated on all of the benefits that an education had
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