num_pages: 255
description: Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient — these are the stigmas that brand Mike Rose's students and define the educational underclass to which he too once belonged. In this moving account of teaching America's "underprepared" and of Rose's personal journey from a Los Angeles ghetto to a major research university, he brings new hope and a vital challenge to those who must shape America's educational agenda.For the past twenty years Mike Rose has worked with children and adults labeled slow or inadequate. The rich, real-life stories of those he's worked with are interwoven with his own fascinating story of breaking out of a self-perpetuating cycle of despair and defeat. He introduces the reader not only to his own boyhood and the teacher who changed the direction of his life, but also to a Vietnam veteran/ex-con fighting a lifetime of failure to become an A student, a shy grammar school child erroneously diagnosed as neurologically impaired, a young inner-city coed facing dismissal for plagiarism without knowing where she erred, participants in an adult literacy program who are "seeking a dream."Lives on the Boundary allows those who allegedly make us "a nation at risk" to have their say. Their stories tell us that the ways we have come to define literacy and intelligence, excellence and failure, keep us from seeing and tapping the rich potential of those who fail in our schools.Rose's focus in this wonderfully written exploration of becoming literature in America is on making the humanities truly more accessible and, particularly, reforming the liberal arts curriculum in our schools and colleges. He contends that creative literacy instruction can awaken the hidden capacities of both children and adults, take them across the education boundary from "slow learner" to eager student, and make higher education and social advancement a genuine option in their lives.By fully capturing the challenges and rewards of initiating "problem" students into the world of language, literature, and expression, this master teacher demonstrates is successful methods for battling illiteracy — the dangerous pervasive problem facing the U.S. today — and inspires educators to examine their assumptions about the capacities of students and the curriculum provided by today's all too often "underprepared" schools. Rose offers us a vision sorely needed — one that challenges many current reports on education — a truly democratic vision of learning and achievement.
language: English
title: Lives on the Boundary
titlecomplete: Lives on the Boundary
genres: Memoir, Textbooks, Education, Writing, Teaching, Grad School, Nonfiction, School, Academic, Social Justice
ratings_count: 1216
publisher: The Free Press