Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose is an educational life story. The book begins with his early childhood and tracks him up to his mature days. Mike was born to an immigrant family from Italy. He spent his early childhood days in the mid-west before moving to East Los Angeles with his parents. Mike Rose did not come from a high class nor a well educated background. Both of Mike’s parents had never even stepped into a high school. Certainly no one in his family had ever gone to college. This book portrays the background, setting, and characteristics of Mike’s personal struggle within the American educational system.
Throughout Lives on the Boundary, the author emphasizes three main themes: the significance of Mike Rose’s educational mentor, the social prejudice in America, and the methods which Mike uses to reach the children in the boundary. This paper will define and defend the value of literacy for the entire society by exploring Rose’s major ideas from his book. This paper will be the restatement of Rose’s ideas.
The central argument in this book concerns itself with demonstrating how life can be hard for remedial students. He argues that they poorly perform in class not because they lack skills or intelligence but because they have inadequate opportunities and do not yet have a clear understanding of the subject. Based on my perspective, I agree with Rose. As history shows, American society tends to undermine the efforts of immigrants who come here seeking greener pastures; foreigners are often denied equal rights and opportunities just as Rose was at first denied certain academic privileges simply because of a mix-up in names.
It can be seen from the story of Rose’s life that both economical and social forces play a huge role in influencing the performance of students. Rose views the methods used to teach literacy skills to struggling students as inefficient, in his opinion, literacy skills can effectively be acquired by children if the tutors use a more involving, precise, and interesting curriculum. Rose takes the wisdom that he obtained from his best teacher and implements it as he assists his students’ in emerging from educational poverty.
A person can easily develop a negative attitude towards education if he or she does not get off to a good educational start when he or she is very young. Despite this Rose was, remarkably, able to change his attitude after meeting a teacher in high school who inspired him and encouraged him to join college. Initially, Rose had thought that he would just be able to make it to high school, maybe even make it through high school. If it were not for this special high school teacher, Rose would have dropped out of school after reaching high school. This shows just how much mentors can influence someone’s life for good.
His time as a teacher in Los Angeles, and then as a director at UCLA in the tutoring centre, reveals how he dealt with the special challenges faced by college students. Rose was not only a tutor but also a mentor. While at UACLA as a tutor, he demonstrated the importance of mentoring an individual towards achieving his or her educational success.
Lives on the Boundary shows how bureaucracy discourages poorly performing students through presuming that academically weak students are non-teachable due to their life situations and poverty. This is a false assumption as Rose proved, since he – a young man from the underprivileged class – was able to accomplish his goals through the inspiration and encouragement he received from a mentor. Teachers are obliged to encourage their weak students rather than criticize them; they should help students achieve more than what they think they can achieve. If the teacher is not caring enough, many students will end up being school dropouts, which will then create a decline in human resources. Rose disagrees with the behavior of teachers when they neglect unprepared students and leave them to struggle on their own.
Rose in his book shows how weak students feel threatened and frightened by the extensive academic goals that they are required to achieve. Nevertheless, this attitude can be changed. The only thing they need is a sensitive and wise teacher to guide them. Through a helpful teacher, remedial students can be transformed into high achievers.
It is recommended for teachers to develop good relationships with their students, especially those who are academically poor. Thus will help the weak students feel appreciated, hence making them improve their academic performance. Rose expresses this when he speaks of the “healing possibilities of the teacher student relationship” (Rose, 2005, p.123)
Additionally, he encourages teachers to stop the use of poor and inefficient methods of teaching. Teachers are responsible for reassessing their teaching methods periodically in order ascertain whether or not their main aim of enriching students academically is being achieved. Rose was familiar with his students’ weaknesses. This allowed him to formulate appropriate plans that would let him help each individual student achieve his or her academic goals. Since he had been a victim of the same academically impoverished background, Rose was familiar with the challenges his students were going through and knew how to help them overcome their difficulties. Rose had a way of responding to each student’s situation individually and appropriately. Just like Rose, all teachers should act as mentors and offer individually tailored guidelines to his or her students.
There exist a number of barriers in the American public school system as the life of Rose shows. Nevertheless, these barriers have been incredibly reduced over the past years. He shows how students that do not come from academically stimulating backgrounds go through hardships. The difficulties that Rose faced as he grew up show how students from a poor school system suffer from neglect. In such school systems, poor students are branded as failures even before their abilities are adequately assessed. This is a common problem even today: some teachers in this 21st century still ignore their students. This behavior needs to be eradicated from the school systems.
Rose used his reasoning skills and the social skills he gained from his life experiences to enrich and encourage the weak and unprepared students he worked with. His book shows how he used encouragement to help many students to transit to college, something they had never thought could have happened. Teachers should learn from Rose’s example about the power that disenfranchisement psychology holds over students. They should also learn about the best teaching practices in order to help students to overcome their behavior and negative attitudes.
In conclusion, teachers should adopt a better and more efficient curriculum that will help students improve on their weaknesses. Weak students can still make it in life even if they are economically poor or come from an educationally impoverished background. All they need is a little encouragement as well as some instructions to guide them in achieving their academic goals.
Works Cited
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of
America's Educational Underclass. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 2005. Print.
