Van Horn, Stephanie

Oregon Writing Project

Summer 2001

Book Report 2

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin, 1989.

Published in 1989, Mike Rose's autobiography and discussion of education raises questions that still resonate twenty-one years later, especially for me in the context of the community college. Of necessity, much of my teaching time and energy must focus on students who need questions answered about their education. What am I really doing here, in this classroom, on this campus, at this time in my life? What do I think I need to learn? What does my teacher think I need to learn? What have I learned already? How valuable is it? What will happen to me if I change, if I learn what this teacher in this classroom at this time in my life tells me is necessary?

Rose's vision through the telescope of memory focuses on the teachers and experiences which supported his progress. I expect to think for some time about how he is a mirror to my students. Why did he succeed? I define his life as a success although he left behind a UCLA fellowship to work in various underpaid teaching positions and then took a position at UCLA that is not valued by the academic establishment. He succeeds in giving back what he was given and in contributing to the debate about literacy a challenging voice.

I appreciate especially his challenge to the pious fictive nostalgia which seems to inform American political thinking. I come from a rural background and know its realities. Again and again I hear political voices calling for a simpler, more agrarian past, evading the realities of whether any such return is possible, failing to see the complexities of nineteenth century rural and urban interrelationships. In education I hear the same simplification. Yes, many of my students lack the literacy I had entering college. But I remember (accurately, I hope) how many of my Southern California suburban classmates lacked that same intellectual posture. I also remember being my high school's English star and failing my first college paper, an explication of an Elizabethan sonnet. I see myself in my freshman classes; I also see my high school classmates. I also believe politicians speaking of education simplify the changes in American society. I began teaching in urban settings which seem far more dangerous and troubled than Washington, D. C. or LA did in the early 1970's, but the problems now were there then and were as limiting to my students then as now. And I think that's the point I come to after reading Rose ( and reading a recent Jonathan Kozol book). I find it discouraging that educators are still fighting, whether in the 70's, 80's, or a new century, the same tendencies to resist the impact of the larger culture on education, to fail to train or pay teachers adequately, and to simplify and attempt to quantify learning rather than to respect the diversity and complexity of the individual in an educational setting.

Quotable quotes from Rose:

1) He comments that the violence of his childhood setting did not impact him as much as something different: "What finally affected me was subtler, but mor pervasive: I cannot recall a young person who was crazy in love or lost in work or one old person who was passionate about a cause or idea." After teaching in the inner city, working with delinquents and now teaching in an economically depressed community, Rose's experience corroborates my own perception of the tone of communities of poverty.

2) "Students will float to the mark you set." I need to remind myself of this again and again. When I become frustrated with students who can't reach that mark, I forget the many students who do reach the mark and the others, who even if at this time the mark is unattainable, value that I believed their ascent possible.

3) What students who fail to fit into the educational system did: "withdraw or faked it or cheated or got stoned or stayed home or blew up." I don't believe I can solve the problems of all of these students, but I appreciate the community college as large enough container for me to experiment with ways to connect so that the lives of these students change.

4) "How much we don't see when we look only for deficiency, when we tally up all that people can't do?" Again, the beauty of the community college, where my classes are small and my students come to see me and I can remind myself what they can do so I can remind them to build on their strengths as they attempt to reach my mark.