The book Lives on the Boundaries by Mike Rose has been influential. He talks about his experiences and the multiple steps that were taken to get him where is currently. Through chapters one through three he describes his early life. He discusses traumatic events that ultimately helped him mature. Chapter four and five did not stray form this realm. “Why did Rose leave UCLA?” The reason Rose left UCLA was similar to the reason he left Loyola, he felt that he wasn’t moving on with his career. He stated on page 82-83 “I was coming to realize over the last few months that I had been skirting around a harsh truth: Though my introduction to social science was not without its moments, graduate work in academic psychology wouldn’t satisfy whatever …show more content…
He professes: “We set out to determine what a child knows in order to tailor instruction, but we frequently slot rather than shape, categorize rather than foster. And the poorer the kids are- the less power their parents have- the more likely are their chances of being, as Lillian put it, hurt about their intelligence.” This portion of the passage really stuck out to me for many reasons. In this part of the passage I am brought back to the beginning of the book when Rose, himself, was put on the remedial track because his file was misplaced with another individuals file; Rose’s parents had minimal education themselves, didn’t know what to say or do in the situation. If the test would have been used to tailor and shape, the teachers would have known that he wasn’t supposed to be on the vocational track. Also, this reminded me of the ACT and SAT testing, a common standardized test that is used for college acceptance. The American education system relies on the test to show the intelligence of a person when all the test accomplishes is how well a person can …show more content…
He took the initiative to get acquainted with his students the way that his professors got acquainted with him. He would make house visits and spend extra time with the children whom he thought needed more assistance, especially with a child named Harold. Mike Rose read Harold’s academic file two times to investigate how other teachers evaluated Harold and their time spent with him. All of the teachers kept referring to Harold to have slow progression through school and not having much of an attention span. Rose took it upon himself to figure out how to help him and get him to open up and progress through his literary tasks. On page 114 Roses says: “… the conflict between two visions: one of individual possibility and one of environmental limits and determination” Although Rose was not directly talking about Harold in this statement, I believe that this is a great sentence to reflect on. This statement means a tremendous amount throughout this chapter. This sentence, to me, proclaims the vision on what your actual possibilities are, are greatly affected by what others foresee your possibilities can/ should be. For example, in this text we are talking about Harold. Harold isn’t a dumb child, he can read and write, maybe not well, be he is able to perform those tasks. The test show that Harold is not capable to perform the tasks to the grade level approval, so he is dropped
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
I think people who didn’t get much schooling didn’t mean they are not intelligence. Intelligence can’t use to measure a person schooling. In the old generation, parents don’t have much money to support all their child’s go to college because of the tuition fee and they had a lot things need to support. For example, my parents didn’t go to school, doesn’t mean they are not intelligence or not smart, their family can’t give them that much tuition fee and not much money to let them go to college, however now they still have a job to work on and keeping it. However people don’t go to college doesn’t mean they can’t get a job or can’t survive. So I agree with the author, intelligence can’t use to measure a person schooling. Also I believe that can’t go to college doesn’t mean you can’t get success in other way. The god is fair for you close a door at the same time will open another door for you but you need to be confident.
The essay Blue-Collar Brilliance discuses the topic that even blue-collar jobs require intelligence. Rose says that it is an intelligence of both body and mind. This doesn't mean that they are book smart genius’ but rather they have their own form of smarts. In the essay Rose talks about a woman, who I assume is his mother, who was a waitress at a restaurant. He talked about the special skills she had and her ability to do her job as great as she did. He talks about the knowledge and intuition about the ways
This plummet’s Rose even further into a slump and deters him from his goals and makes him lose ambition or what ambition he did have. The story takes a big turn for the better on 165, Rose meets the teacher that saves him and turns his live around Jack Macfarland. This teacher unlike any other teacher he has had in vocational education. Macfarland follows a different set of principles. The teacher likes to encouraging his student instead of disciplining them and always strives for them to be better. On page 167, Macfarland even helps Rose get into college. This brought Rose back from the dark side because the grades in the last three years of high school didn’t reflect well for him. Macfarland helped him anyways and saw the potential Rose had and what he could to and that reflects on what Rose is doing today. This emotional appeal is different in tone, but similar in style to the story
In “ Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose argues that intelligences can’t be measured by the education we received in school but how we learn them in our everyday lives. He talks about his life growing up and watching his mother waitressing at a restaurant. He described her orders perfectly by who got what, how long each dish takes to make, and how she could read her customers. He also talks about his uncles working at the General Motors factory and showed the amount of intelligence that was need to work at the factory. Rose goes on talking about the different types of blue-collar and how he came up with the idea that a person has skills that takes a lot of mind power to achieve.
Standardized tests have been used to see how much a child has learned over a certain period of time. These tests have been a highly debated issue with many parents and just people in general. In the article “Opting out of standardized tests? Wrong answer,” the author Michelle Rhee argues that people should not be trying to opt out of standardized tests because it allows the country to see how much a child has learned and the things they need to improve. On the other hand, in the article “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong,” the author Kristina Rizga argues that standardized tests are not an efficient way to measure a student’s intelligence. Rizga better proves her thesis through the use of solid argumentation. Rizga is more
Sidewalk is a book written by Mitchell Duneier, an American sociology professor at Princeton University, in 1999; where the book has gained a lot of favorable reviews, leading its winning the Los Angeles Times Book prize and C. Wright Mills Award. Similarly, the book had become a classic in urban studies, especially due to the interesting methodology, which was used by Duneier while he was conducting his research. The book is based on observations, participant observation and interviews, which gave the author the ability to live and interact with the book and magazine vendors on daily bases. Although, this gave him an insight into the life of the sidewalk, many methodological issues have concerned scholars and students of sociology since the day this book was published. Duneier had admitted during the book that he couldn’t be completely subjective while conducting his research and writing his book due to his involvement and personal relationship with people who work and live at the sidewalk, which raise the question, whether the research is still relevant if the researcher is only giving us an objective outcome?
After describing his multi-talented and skilled uncle, Joe, Rose strives to provide generalised argumentation about how blue-collars apply knowledge, skills, and efficiency to their workspace. Mathematical and Verbal skills, Rose suggests, is applied regularly by blue-collars. In addition, Rose describes the academic education of his family over generations; remarking that only he finished high school and went to university. Later, he became a faculty member in a school of education after completing his graduate degree in education and cognitive psychology. Rose claims, “we also often ignore the experience of everyday work in administrative deliberations and policymaking”
“: You hungry, Gabe? I was just fixing to cook Troy his breakfast,” (Wilson, 14). Rose understands her role in society as a woman. Rose also have another special talent as a woman, that many don’t have which is being powerful. Rose understands that some things she can’t change so she just maneuver herself to where she is comfortable so she won’t have to change her lifestyle. Many women today do not know how to be strong sp they just move on or stay in a place where they are stuck and unable to live their own life. “: I done tried to be everything a wife should be. Everything a wife could be. Been married eighteen years and I got to live to see the day you tell me you been seeing another woman and done fathered a child by her,”(Wilson, 33). The author wants us to understand the many things women at the time had to deal with whether it was racial or it was personal issues. Rose portrays the powerful women who won’t just stand for the
In Rose 's essay he gives personal examples of his own life, in this case it’s his mother who works in a diner. “I couldn 't put into words when I was growing up, but what I
Blue-collar jobs are incredibly diverse; his examples of a waitress, factory assembly line worker, hairdresser, plumber, and carpenter do not accurately represent this class of workers holistically. Rose emphasizes his mother’s and uncle’s work life for much of the article. His observations portray a biased insight of the manual labor his family members would endure. If Rose were to observe and judge non-family members, then their circumstances would permit a separate outcome. If Rose discussed a wider variety of situation with the same prominence as his mother and uncle, this could have been avoided. He just makes the argument for accrediting blue-collars for being more intellectual than the misconception, but if Rose wanted to place the worth of these workers on the same level as professionals of the white and pink collar workers, he does not make the cut in my opinion with the finite extent of information. Rose suggests this when slightly compares his mother, Rosie, to a psychologist, Rose states: “No wonder, then, that Rosie was intrigued by psychology. The restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems of her regular customers and refining her ability to deal with people in a difficult world” (281). This appears to be a ludicrous endeavor to make a common demand of a blue-collar job
putting Rose in vocational classes where he is forced to learn things at a slower pace. The theme
The ability for all children from varying walks of life to receive a well-rounded education in America has become nothing more than a myth. In excerpt “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch argues the government’s fanatical obsession with data based on test scores has ruined the education system across the country (107). In their eyes, students have faded from their eyes as individual hopefully, creative and full of spirit, and have become statistics on a data sheet, percentages on a pie chart, and numbers calculated to show the intelligence they have from filling out bubbles in a booklet. In order for schools to be able to provide a liberal education, they need the proper funding, which comes from the testing.
She explains how her son was just pushed through school. “Our youngest, a world-class charmer, did litter to develop his intellectual talent but always got by” (559). He got through school by being a good kid, he was quiet and didn’t get in trouble. This was how he made it to his senior year until Mrs. Stifter’s English class. Her son sat in the back of the room talking to his friends; and when Mary told her to just move him “believing the embarrassment would get him to settle down” (559) Mrs. Stifter just told her “I don’t move seniors I flunk them” (559). This opened Mary’s eyes that her son would have to actually apply himself to pass. He wouldn’t be handed a passing grade. After the meeting with her son teacher, she told her son if you don’t try you will fail, making him actually apply himself. This made Mary understand that Failure is a form of positive teaching tool. Only because her son had to work for it and, now he actually came out of high school with a form of
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?