He recalls that in third grade he was "annoyed when he was unable to get help", on a simple mathematics assignment (546). His mother was: "a new girl to America [she] had been awarded a high school diploma by teachers to busy or careless to notice that she hardly spoke English" (552). Having lived most of their lives with little education Rodriguez's parents encouraged him to work hard at school. They knew first hand how hard it was to get by with little schooling. Rodriguez also witnessed the difficulties of his parents due to this lack of education; he describes most of their jobs as "dead-end work" (562). Coming from that type of low-income environment with difficult day-to-day living conditions and then entering a world of stability at school it is easy to see why Rodriguez or any scholarship boy would desire to reside in that type of stable educated environment.
The problem with the scholarship boy is that in attempting to advance himself and separate himself from his home environment he looses all sense of self. Rodriguez lost the connection he had with his family after going away to school he recalls how at Christmas break he and his parents were, "lacking the same words to develop our sentences and to shape our interests, what was there to say?" and that " one was almost grateful for the family crisis that there was much to discuss" (554). In becoming the scholarship boy Rodriguez had lost all connection with his family. He also did not take advantage of any of the more worldly advice that his parents had to offer, "stupidly I took for granted their enormous amount of native intelligence" (551). Parents have great amounts of wisdom and values that they can pass on to their children besides the facts and figures that children are taught in school. Parents have years more experience at life then their children, and can help children avoid the same mistakes they did.