Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose - Admission/Application Essay Example

?English: Critical Reflection. The book Lives on the Boundary (Rose, 1989) has become an important influence in my life because it has put into wordsmany of the feelings and experiences that I have had in my life until now. It is a factual book and it deals with the complex subject of learning difficulties and what happens to students who find themselves out of step with their classmates and falling behind in their schoolwork. Most people have some experience of this, but for some people, including myself, living on the boundary of “normal” school life can become a daily reality. Before I read this book I used to blame myself for the failings that I had, but since reading this book I am able to see things from other perspectives, and understand that there are many different factors involved in learning disabilities. Mike Rose points out also that there are many different ways to tackle these issues and I will always be grateful for the opportunity to think about these things in a new way and apply them to my own life experiences. One of the things that caused me a lot of pain was the way that teachers and other people used negative labels to refer to students who were not achieving the best grades. Mike Rose explains, for example, how harmful words like “remedial” can be, because of the bad connotations that they have: “The designation remedial has powerful implications in education – to be remedial is to be substandard, inadequate” (Rose, 1989, p. 209). This is linked to mental defectiveness, and there is an implication that some sort of harsh treatment is needed to correct whatever it is that is wrong with the person. I can recall very clearly the day when I was called out of my class, in third grade, and taken to the principal’s office. The way this was done made me look like a student who had done something terribly wrong, and had to be called in to see the principal and to receive some kind of punishment. My name was called out over the loudspeaker, and so everybody knew that something was up. At the time I was too scared to realize what was happening and I just listened quietly to the news that I had a learning disability, but now that I am older, I can see that this initial process was both cruel and damaging to me. The learning difficulty was itself a big problem for me, but the stigma and feeling of failure that came along with it was even more of an issue, because it took away my confidence and gave me a negative image of myself. I think my mother was disappointed in me because she always wanted her son to be successful in school, and she tried to encourage me and tell me not to worry. I know that she loved me just the same, regardless of my school performance, but still I felt inadequate because I did not think I could live up to her hopes. The worst reaction came from my own classmates. Boys can be very cruel to each other and at first I tried to hide what was happening. The negative names that they called me like “dumb” and “stupid” were extremely hurtful and I learned a very important lesson at this stage in my young life: some people who call themselves friends are actually not friends at all. They turn their back on you when you do not fit their image of a cool friend. It became obvious to me that I would not be able to hang out with the same group as before, because they rejected me. When I read about the boy Harold in the book, it reminded me of what it felt like to be so lonely. The boy Harold wrote some creative writing in his English class, which expressed his isolation: “I am lost in the woods. I cannot find my way out. I yell and yell. No one answered me. I climbed a tree then I fell out of the tree and broke my arm.” (Rose 1989, p. 119). Some teachers would read this as just a story but Mike Rose understood the deeper meaning that was in Harold’s story: he needed someone to take time with him, and listen to his fears. He needed friends, and he was very afraid of what might happen to him. This fear and despair is what a child feels when he is placed on the boundary, outside the main group and having to fend for himself emotionally and intellectually. The system that was in place to help Harold was no use to him, because all of his distress was interpreted as a physical illness, or a mental deficiency. The real problem was that a lot of his ability was locked up by the pain of being a rejected and lonely child. My situation was not as bad as Harold’s situation, because my family and some of my teachers were very sensitive and caring towards me. I recognize his emotions and behavior, however, and when I think back on my school days I can see that were some children who were labelled and dismissed for all kinds of reasons. Not all of them came through the experience well, and I can imagine that they will have difficult lives later if they have not managed to come to terms with the particular issues they grew up with. In American schools there is a whole system in place which swings into motion when a child is diagnosed as having a learning disability. I suppose it is a good thing that support is available, and looking back, I can see that the people who are involved in these processes usually have good intentions. At the time when it happened to me, however, I just felt a complete loss of control over my own destiny. It was as if I had been taken out of my usual life and planted into a special place where I was being watched and controlled all the time. There is something very worrying about the way that school board members and psychologists make notes about a person, writing down conclusions about them that stay on their record for ever. I often wish that I could go back and erase the words that have been written about me, but of course this is impossible. I do not worry about it so much now, and instead of regretting the past I have made up my mind to focus on the future. I want to prove those people wrong and show that their labels and their negative analysis were not correct. I wonder how many children never get past the harmful and negative picture that educators and other professionals have painted of them. One of the things that I have longed for in my life is a sense of belonging to the group that takes its success for granted, Mike Rose puts this desire into words very well when he writes “Nothing is more exclusive than the academic club: it language is highbrow, it has fancy badges, and it worships tradition,” (Rose, 1989, p. 58) When I listened to the written work of some of my classmates in school, I realized that they often used more difficult vocabulary than the words that I used. Sometimes I did not follow the exact meaning of what was said, but one of our teachers used to pick out key words and write them out so that everybody could take a note of them. I liked this approach because people in class were free to note them down or just look at them and memorize their meaning. This teacher also gave us tips on how to make our work better, for example, rewriting our work after we had read the comments from the teacher. She explained that all great sportsmen keep trying again and again until they master a particular technique, and that it takes considerable determination and hard work to become expert in their chosen sport. I had not seen corrections in this way before, because they always made me think of punishment and this did not encourage me to do better. By looking at these tasks in terms of training, this helped to change my attitude and over time I did eliminate some of my most common errors using this technique. An important part of the book for me was the focus all the way through on hope for the future and approaching things with a positive attitude. When I was younger, I had very little idea about the future, and I thought that I would continue all my school career at the bottom of the class, until I would leave and get some deadbeat job. I thought that literacy was just a school thing, and I actually looked forward to the time when I could leave school and forget all about it. Studying the 100A course has taught me that in fact literacy is a fundamental skill that affects all areas of life. Creative writing is something that I used to be afraid of, because I was conscious of my grammar mistakes. Spelling used to worry me so much that I would stick to only the words that I knew well. This made my work look childish and boring, but I needed the security of knowing that it would be mostly correct. In college I am finding that the example of the different instructors is more inspiring. I can see that they have different writing and presentation styles, such as for example some of them using computers more than others, and some of them being business like and distant, while others tend to be more friendly. It is useful for me to see the freedom that exists for developing my own way of communicating. Now that I have more confidence in my literacy skills I use the internet to check up on topics that interest me, and I can find there some quirky and funny uses of language as well as serious academic writing. I feel success as a writer when I see someone replying to what I have posted on various games websites. This aspect does not come through very strongly in Mike Rose’s book. The reason for this is that he wrote the book in the 1980’s, when people still did not have much experience with computers. I think nowadays the internet and social media sites like facebook are extremely important for developing literacy. Meeting people from all over the world is a great way to expand horizons, and it really motivates me to write when I want to discuss something with my virtual friends. The last section of Rose’s book deals with the difficult area of exams and tests. I think I have had a phobia about these ever since my early schooling. The example of the veterans class showed me that even much older men can share these difficulties. They had to deal with traumatic injuries, addictions and social deprivation. I think that if they can overcome their dislike for education, and can succeed in academic work, then surely I can follow in their footsteps. Mike Rose was exactly the right kind of teacher for these men. I like his humor when assessing the quality of course materials that he had to use, for example when he describes some textbooks as being “as appropriate for the veterans as a hymn at a crapshoot.” (Rose, 1989, p. 136). Some of the problems that students have are down to the choice of materials that they are forced to use, and the type of assessment that they face when they reach the end of their program. Seeing things from the perspective of a teacher such as Mike Rose as shown me that being a teacher of English is one of the most responsible jobs in the world. It can make or break the students who are in a teacher’s care. If there is one major thing that I have learned from this book, it is that a partnership of trust and hard work between student and teacher can overcome even very difficult challenges that come from poor early learning experiences. I am looking forward to building on this kind of partnership in college now, and discovering where it will lead me in the future. References Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared. New York: Penguin, 1989. Read More