Charlin Bailey
Professor Barbara Gleason
ENGL C0865 2TU Adult Learners of Language & Literacy
May 20th, 2014
Review: Lives on the
Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s
Educationally Underprepared
Rose, Mike. Lives on the
Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s
Educationally Underprepared. New York: Penguin Books, 1989. Print.
In Lives
on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of
America’s Educationally Underprepared (1989) by Mike Rose. Rose uses the genre of memoir to present his
argument that the educational system fails to prepare students for the world.
Rose believes that the education system should be blamed for students being
unable to function in their current educational system. Rose suggests that much
of the conflict that exists between educational institutes and society is due
to a lack of diversity in the education system. In the first half of the book,
Rose presents a memoir of his life and recounts his personal challenges as a
child in school. He presents the struggles he faced after being “written off”,
as he states in his 1998 interview with Bill Moyer about his book, Lives on the
Boundary. In the interview, as well as in his book, Rose reflects on his
personal struggle within a curriculum that to him seemed to be designed to
prevent him from academic success. In the second half of the book, Rose looks
at the educational system from the viewpoints of a tutor and an educator. He
recounts his journey through the educational system and its impact on his
students. He reflects on the lives of the students he met on his journey to
becoming an educator, as well as the lessons he learned during this process.
Mike Rose is from a working-class family of Italian immigrants. He was raised in
a poor neighborhood in South Las Angeles. He attended schools that had low expectations of his success. He was lost within
the educational system and labeled as ‘remedial’ because of a mix up of test
scores of another student. This blunder allowed him to be placed in a
vocational classroom. Rose became part of the underprivileged students, within
the education system. It was not until
he was rescued from this system that he was able to overcome the limitations
set upon him by education. His teachers allowed him to have “liberal education”
(58), He was finally able to see himself as being able to succeed. He was
taught to critically think.
Throughout
the book, the key problem of the education system that Rose acknowledges is
that students are underprepared. One of the main reasons that he mentions for
this lack of student preparation, is that education is not open to all. In his
interview with Bill Moyer, Rose mentions the “power of invitation” within the
educational system (YouTube). Rose believes that it is the teachers’ duty to
invite student into education by engaging them in the world of new ideas. In the chapter “Reclaiming the Classroom,” he looks at the
struggles of veteran students trying to excel within the remedial classroom. In
this chapter he looks at the content and curriculum of the class as being one
of the key reasons as to why the students were not excelling, as well as the
stigma that goes with the title, remedial, and its effect on the students’ labeled.
Rose viewed the process of teaching the students through the traditional way of
grammar drills to be outdated and ineffective for producing critical literacy. He believes that instructors need to “think critically about the crucial transition
into college, what it is that students need to meet the intellectual demands
the freshman year makes of them” (165). This
allows these students to think critically of their purpose within the classroom
and promotes success. In the classroom of the Veteran students rose states that
“education had the power to equalize things” (137), Rose recognizes that each
student comes to the classroom for different reason and it is up to the
educator and the system to stimulate students’ interest.
He further suggests, in the chapter he titles “The
Politics of Remediation”, that along with additional
support, students need to be exposed to different types of writing and reading
early in their education. They need to cultivate skills beyond summarization
and memorization and be introduced to critical literacy. Rose suggests that students need to think
critically and gain confidence in themselves, while immerging them in reading
and writing. Rose states:
Many young People come to the
university able to summarize the events in a new story or write a personal
response to a play or a movie or give back what a teacher said straightforward
lecture. But they have considerable trouble with what has come to be called
critical literacy: framing and argument or taking someone else’s argument apart,
systematically inspecting a document, and issue, or an event, synthesizing
different points of view, applying a theory to disparate phenomena (188).
Rose
speaks out against traditional educational methodologies and recommend that educators remain constantly vigilant about the
ways in which they see class and culture and how their beliefs may restrict
their point of views.
What Mike Rose did in his memoir was
brilliant. He has managed to create a piece of work that can transcend through
different levels of understanding within the educational system. Rose has
written a manuscript of awakening within the educational system. In this book
he is able to actively speak and view all sides of education, from the point of
view of a student of a working class immigrant household, as a learning tutor,
and as a developing teacher. This work
encourages readers to rethink personal experiences within their educational
system, as well as advises future educators to consider different teaching
strategies to encourage their students. The placement of is personal experience
at the beginning of the book allows readers to have a fluid read, yet allowing
us to critically think about the meaning of what is being said. Each chapter’s
title represents a different transformation within the educational system. A
transformation that the readers are able to see as it happens. Mike Rose’s 20
plus years as an educator is apparent throughout the text. His constant growth
from chapter to chapter is evident in his analysis and change of approach for
each set of students he has. In the final chapter entitled “Crossing
Boundaries” Rose acknowledges that:
Class and culture erect boundaries that hinder our visions— blind
us to the logic of error and he evepresent stiffing of language— and encourage
the designation of otherness, difference, deficiency and the longer [he] stay
in education, the clearer it becomes to [him] that some of our basic
orientations toward the teaching and testing of literacy contribute to our
inability to see. To truly educate in America, then, to reach the full sweep of
our citizenry, we need to question received perception, shift continually from
the standard lens [he goes on to state that] the . . . stories that bring this
book to its close encourage us to sit close by as people use language and
consider, as we listen, the orientation that limit our field of vision. (205)
In his analysis Rose illustrates his
acknowledgement of the problem of why students’ are underprepared. He goes on
to suggest a solution for the problem that exist. This analysis bares reference
to the Freirian approach of problem posing education in Paulo Freire’s book the
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freirie believes that the only way to be liberated
from the banking education system is
for a learner to accept that they are being oppressed. This leads to what he
calls a “democratic proposal of problem posing education” (Freire 61). Rose’s analysis of the educational system draws
reference, through modernized interpretation, from several noted scholars, such
as, Paulo Freire. Rose’s description of the “canonical approach to
education” (237) mirrors Friere’s theory of the “banking system” (Freire 98). Rose
states,
If you’re a working-class kid in the vocational
track, the options you’ll have to deal with this will be constrained in certain
ways: You’re defined by your school as “slow”; you’re place in a curriculum
that isn’t designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you’re lucky,
train you, though the training is for work the society does not esteem” (Rose
28). His analysis references Feire’s banking system in that the student’s learning is limited to only receiving,
filing, and storing the deposits or information learned. The learners become
collectors or cataloguers of the things they store, but do not have the
opportunity to use the knowledge learned to change their situations.
In
My Opinion Mike Rose accomplished the task of informing his reader about the
failure of the educational system to prepare students to succeed. He does this
through the lenses of students’ both in his personal experience and observation
of his students; through reflection as a tutor, and as an educator. The
different lenses the Rose uses allows his reader to understand the nature of
development in literacy. He also allows educational professionals to learn
about the educational point of view of the students. Rose does not give
evidence, such as data, to support his point, but rather through anecdotal
evidence, allowing his readers to analyze and deconstruct the observations he
puts forth. Rose’s argument develops through every chapter and supports the
overall idea of a lack of readiness of students and the importance of a
solution.
Despite the
lack of actual data, such as how Deborah Brant in her book Literacy in American
Lives, using factual evidence, such as census and analysis to illustrate that
literacy skills equate resources for business.
Rose way of writing allows the book to be more widely understood. Unlike
Brant, who does give facts, but limits her audience, Rose because of the genre
he chose to write allows it to be more accessible to
students and educators. I would recommend this book to all educators and
students.
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