The hero in this success story is Mike Rose: author, educator, teacher of writing, and a disadvantaged student from the Los Angeles ghetto. Mike barely made it, but a young, new English teacher intervened in his high school, equipping Mike with the intellectual tools that enabled him to enter and succeed in college his "pivotal...freshman year" (165). Mike Rose's career has largely consisted of culling and applying the social and intellectual tools, the habits of mind that empower underprepared students on the margins of society, helping them transition into college. He knows the psychology of disenfranchisement, and also the defunct English curriculum that plagues many schools. But like many Americans, our hero believes in education, and at the center of education, according to Rose, are community, language and strategies of thinking.
"This is a hopeful book about those who fail" (xi), Rose begins, and the hope he communicates lies in his ability to teach teachers to empower their students with academic literacy. His book models his teaching, and so a reasonable review will evaluate how well Mike Rose's book fulfills his didactic design and practical hope. I evaluate Lives on the Boundary, therefore, according to how well it engages his audience, the usefulness of its educational doctrines, and how well it inspires hope, confidence and a passion for teaching. From the outset, I cannot hold back how well I think Mike Rose accomplishes his task. I highly recommend his book to new composition teachers with the hope that we may reach our students and not fail them.
Does Rose engage his audience, an audience of educators and writing teachers? His book reads quickly and fluidly, and this is a strategic and effective part of Rose's educational engagement. He could have written a thin, systematic treatise on how to teach "'bonehead' English" (2), but he leaves the process of education in its social context-an engagement of relationships, struggles, discoveries and transitions. The social context is exciting because Rose leads the reader through his intellectual discoveries as he develops his literacy and pedagogy. He lets the reader travel with him, back and forth from ghetto to academy, reflecting deeply together on the cross-boundary teaching-learning process. He believes in the "healing possibilities of the teacher-student relationship" (123), and his writing style is powerful, making readers into disciples.
What are Rose's educational doctrines? Rose communicates three practical principles that guide his pedagogy: literacy is social, the academy is a community, and pedagogy is strategic. These three principles engage students at different stages in their intellectual development. However, Rose observes that much English education fails to engage students because it is focused not on the social and strategic, but towards the subskills of grammatical analysis and the "dry dismembering of language" (110).
First, Rose argues that writing and reading are fundamentally social: "We hear stories read by others and we like to tell others about the stories we read; we learn to write from others and we write for others to read us" (109). He confesses, "My first enthusiasm about writing came because I wanted a teacher to like me" (102).
Second, he stresses that the academy is a community with its own language, and one must be let in as well as learn to enter and succeed. A high school teacher opened the door for him when he "gave me the right books to read" (34). In his own enculturation at Loyola University, he says, "I was encountering a new language" (54). Professors gave him "a directory of key names and notions" (49). Further, Rose dismisses what he calls "so many platitudes about motivation and self-reliance and individualism" (47); but he insists that the humanities must be truly human. Learning takes place in community, providing guidance, support and role models so that students may grow into confidence and inclusion.
Third, Rose persists that pedagogy must be strategic, teaching the intellectual strategies that undergraduates need. He lists four crucial, powerful skills: summarizing, classifying, comparing and analyzing (138). Further, he recommends probing the assumptions beneath an analysis or explanation. Following a remarkable dictum from Jerome Bruner: "'Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development'" (142), Rose emphasizes choosing accessible readings and materials, and gradually increasing the difficulty.
Does Rose inspire hope, confidence and a passion for teaching? His clear doctrines and vision for teaching inspire a know-how, can-do confidence. He provides an inside view of how he learned and how he teaches. However, Rose's hope and passion for reaching students comes from his deep ideas of anthropology, a tension that forms two visions and two futures for people. This hope or tragedy, he says, lies in "the basic human conflict-that we are simultaneously heroes and prisoners" (115), both "gods and worms" (34), and this doctrine forms two visions: "one of individual possibility and one of environmental limits and determiners" (114). Knowing both outcomes, Rose imparts a passion to reach students, especially the underprepared and disenfranchised, providing them with the cognitive skills for entering the academic community. Mike Rose believes in American education as the enabling key that unlocks a vibrant future and meaningful vocation.
As I was reading Lives on the Boundary, a certain principle kept coming to mind, and it highlights Mike Rose's feeling of responsibility for teaching underprepared students. One teacher put the principle this way: For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? (Matt. 5: 46-47) The reward comes from reaching lives on the boundary. Mike Rose asserts a similar challenge when he says, "More often than we admit, a failed education is social more than intellectual in origin" (225). These challenges ask us to consider the breath of our attitude and to choose to join a community which fosters literacy rather than establishes dominance.
An excellent best book for teachers and parents for how to engage young and old students, teaching them to write and think.
