Mike Rose Chapter Summary

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Brief Summary

In this selection, author Mike Rose explains his experiences following his mistaken placement in a bottom tier classes. Through this mistake, Rose begins to realize the different attitudes that accompany this bottom level stigma. Rose observes that his teachers are indifferent and are not concerned with him learning the material in any way. He continues by describing his fellow peers. Rose notes several applaudable qualities about his fellow students, despite them always being lumped together as less intelligent. He wonders if their lacking want for learning is what is keeping them from excelling in school. This mindset is the one he keeps with him when his erroneous placement is corrected. Suddenly, he is expected to achieve and go beyond, something that he was completely unfamiliar with due to his time in lower level studies.
Rose questions the reasons why the two worlds are so different. During his school and after a traumatic moment in life at the death of his father, a new teacher, Mr. MacFarland begins teaching him. Through Roses lessons with Mr. MacFarland, Rose learns how to want to learn and to want to go achieve more. With this new …show more content…

Through his eyes, he has experienced two very different worlds which are to be much alike in expectations and attitudes. However, this being not the case, it leads me to question how much the psychological and social effects of being in a remedial class weight on the minds of the adolescent. It is interesting to me that the expectations were so vastly different in a world where we teach our young minds that anyone can achieve with enough effort. Effort itself, was not pressed in the lower classes (or at least not expected, let alone strived for), and thus, students suffered from the psychological effects of being placed in a class in which they felt intellectually inferior to those who were in a higher stratum of

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