Charlin Bailey, Raquel Coy, and Margarita Kravchenko
ENGL C0856 Adult Learners of Language & Literacy
Professor Barbara Gleason
May 13, 2014
Book Club Presentation on Lives on the Boundary
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.
Overview
For our book club, we read Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared by Mike Rose. In this book, Rose uses the genre of memoir to present his argument about the education system and its failure to fully realize the potential of marginalized groups of students. He maintains that students are ill-equipped to succeed in the current education system because of rigid sorting of students by socio-economic status and perceived capability, and increasing emphasis place on standardization. By presenting his own personal experience in the American education system as both a student and an educator, he manages to uniquely illustrate the problems in the education system in ways that humanize the students he discusses. In another, typically academically formatted book, this population of student would otherwise be rendered as statistics and generalizations. Rose uses narrative to vividly paint the faces and lives of the marginalized. This almost novel-like experience makes the theories and arguments he presents extremely accessible to a broad audience. Although his primary audience may be fellow educators and policy makers, his chosen medium lends itself to a general audience of anyone interested in the problems in our education system and possible solutions of fixing it.
Mike Rose’s Early Life and Sponsors of Literacy
Mike Rose comes from a working family of Italian immigrants. Raised in a neighborhood in South L.A., Rose has experienced first-hand what it feels to be a part of the educational underclass. He was a part of that underclass for a long time but thanks to several teachers who, as he claims, gave him “the best sort of liberal education” (58), he was able to overcome his limitations. Those teachers could be considered his sponsors of literacy; they taught him the critical skills necessary to become a successful student. They also taught him, probably unknowingly, that education has to have a human face, which is something that the educational system lacks. Throughout the book, Rose makes several claims about educational system, such as:
1) students who do not do well in their classes tend to blame themselves and “attribute their difficulties to something inborn, organic” (31);
2) students need support and guidance at many points during their college studies;
3) there exists a “rigid intellectual class system” (198) where professors are interested more in doing research and publishing the results of it than in actually teaching, and the students, especially underprivileged, are struggling to keep up.
Freire’s Theory of Literacy Education Made Human
While Rose’s describes example of sponsors of literacy, the influence of Paulo Freire’s theory of literacy education is also unmistakable. The way Rose describes the education system in America is reminiscent of Freire’s banking concept of education. Although he never uses the term “banking system,” Rose describes our education system in a very Freirian manner and uses similar methods to attempt to help his students. Here are two examples.
Possible Solutions
“Education was the power to equalize things”
(Reclaiming the Classroom p. 137)
Mike Rose argues that education needs to be open to all, encouraging different contributions from all individuals. Rose questions the traditional approach to education because its nature to exclude students. Rose believes that the current education system should be blamed for students being unable to function in the higher education. Rose suggests that much of the conflict that exists between higher education institutes and society is due to a lack of inclusion of diversity in the education system. For example, 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. 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 realized that even though the structures were important, concentrating on the mechanics of grammar would defer the students from accomplishing the dreams of why they were in the program: the dream of becoming equal. In his book he suggests that one of the main ways of addressing this issue of underprepared students is for institutions and instructors 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). He further suggests 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 immersing them in reading and writing. To educators, Rose recommends remaining constantly vigilant about the ways in which we see class and culture and how our beliefs may restrict our point of views.
Some Questions for Discussion