From Kendra!

There were many parts in this text that resonated with me. The idea of opportunity was one of the main points that stuck out to me. Mike Rose says, “These definitions seem pretty disembodied to me, devoid of the particulars that compose an opportunity” (8) when talking about the basic dictionary definitions of opportunity. I agree with what he is saying because there are many factors that contribute to not only that opportunities rarely fall out of the sky, but what factors influence on whether or not people will actually take advantage of their opportunities. If you’re entire life you are praised and told you can do anything you put your mind to then you are much more likely to take advantage of every opportunity you manage to find. On the other hand if you are constantly looked down upon by society, your family, your friends, your teachers, or the media, then chances are you won’t want to take the risk in fear of failing. In speaking of individual effort in achievement and personal motivation, Rose says, “Where the confusion sets in is when we generalize from this fact to an overall model of human development and achievement” (9). It’s like saying every person can grow up to be whatever they want. Who knows. This may be true to some extent. When a child is born healthy, they may at this point have the potential to do, or be, anything, but what happens when the baby is taken home from the hospital? They suddenly have to face the reality of whatever family setting, race, gender, community, society, world they are to grow up in.
(Side note/venting/questioning: How can people judge other people… ever? They don’t know their whole life story. They don’t know what they’ve been through. They don’t know anything about what has made them who they are. Yet we judge people every day. Is that because of society? Is it because of the way we were raised? But taking that into consideration…who am I to judge those who judge? It really is a vicious circle.)

At one point Rose states, “Think of what we don’t read and hear” (27). There is so much to these eight simple words. The world has so much in it. Everything has a story; something to teach us. For example, I went for a run this morning. I ran about 6 miles. I am on the cross country team, so there were 9 other people running with me. Some of them went further than me others went a little bit of a shorter distance, but we were all on the same path. While I was running I started looking at the houses that I passed by. I noticed that the houses were painted different colors, had different plants in the yards, different cars in the driveways, some had fences in front, others didn’t. After I noticed all these things, I began to think. I wonder who lives in these houses. I wonder what their families are like. I wonder if they have kids. I wonder what their kids will grow up to be. I wonder if they’re happy. The minute I thought this a car pulled out of the driveway I was running passed. She almost hit me. I jumped. She waved an apology and drove away. I thought. I wonder where she’s going. I wonder if she has kids in bed. I wonder what would have happened if she has hit me. How would that have changed her day? How would it have changed my day or the rest of my life? There is so much in the world. We only see a fraction of a fraction of everything that’s thrown at us every single day.

I wonder what the world would be like if people actually took advantage of the opportunities we have to simply think.

Why School

Annissa Byrd

8/31/11

Why School?

Mike Rose does a great job at giving the reader his creditability and showing the problems with our public education program. Ever since we were young we were told that school was fun and we can learn, think and form our own opinions. The first chapter shows how those ideas have been taken away from our education system because everything has to be standardized. This idea of equality of learning throughout the vast country is hard to compute. How can we teach a student living in Compton the same thing as a student in Beverly Hills the same way? They will not be able to relate and or process the topics. This idea of standardization will crush an education system because the students will not learn how to think but only how to do.

Mike Rose talks of the idea of opportunity and that in our system there is not an equal opportunity because the schools that do better on the standardized test and have high success rates get more money. Other schools do not perform at a higher level because they do not have the recourse to teach the students in an atmosphere where the stress from home can disappear. Most of the low funded schools are low funded because the areas they live have a lower economic level. This means the student have other stress like how to pay the bills, eating or if their loved ones will be ok. These stresses can cause the focus to change from school to home and survival.

The book talks of the need to produce and create a productive nation but when the students are being taught to do tasks and not to think or create there can be a since of stagnation in the business world because they are are just doers and not creators. The education system should be teaching the students to create and to think of different way to perform. The ideas of creativity are great for personality but not for business. Businesses need people to just perform the task that are at hand and if workers opinion is needed they will ask for it but not until then.

Mike Rose has set up a very interesting start to the book about the way school and economy are interacting. It leads to a different way to think about the future of public school system.

Why School?: A Look At Modern Education

Gerard Cabarse

8-30-11

Thinking for Change

Why School?

In the first four chapters of “Why School?” by Mike Rose, I learned about aspects of the modern education system and its beginnings. The reading has also brought up ideas that I have had in the past about the education system in America today.

Education is an amazing opportunity. It provides us with a better understanding of the world around it. That is why I agree with Rose when he states, “Education gave me the competence and confidence to independently seek out information and make decisions,” (Rose, 38). Education is a tool that we can use not only to think, but to act for ourselves. Normally, when education is brought up, the first thing people think of is schooling. But education is much broader than that. We can learn through personal experience. It is not just sitting in a desk and absorbing what is being taught. It is experiencing.

Originally, education was a privilege given to those who could afford it. This kept upward social mobility from the poor and allowed for those who are already in power to stay in power and hand it down to those who inherit it. Today, education is now available to the general public. People of all social standing, rich or poor, can obtain education through public or private schools, state or private universities, or even on the internet. However, education is not equal to all those who seek it. In terms of public schools, areas with more income have higher quality public schools, whereas schools in poorer locations don’t. Rose states, “The wealthiest public schools spend two to three times more on their students than the poorest,” (Rose, 28). This proves that there is still an educational divide among people in terms of what kind of education and opportunities are available to them, based on their income. Some schools are able to provide enough books, staff, and other materials to assist in the learning process while other schools barely have enough for the amount of students they have.

Not only is there an economic divide between students, there is not enough of a focus on what learning really is. We are all taught that by a certain age, we should know this much history, how to do certain math problems, and how to write at a standard set by the curriculum. I feel that learning is individualistic of the student who is being taught. Students are being ushered forth into higher grades with the expectation that they know everything from the past years and those who can’t keep up are held back or sent to remedial schooling. According to Rose, “The unfortunate thing is that there is nothing in the standard talk about schooling….that leads us to consider how school is perceived by those who attend it,” (Rose, 32). This sys tem of reaching cognitive landmarks would make sense if every student had the exact same teacher. Every student is exposed to different teachers. The quality of teaching done is completely different as well, regardless of economic status. In regards to students, not every person learns the same way or retains the same amount of information being taught. That is why it is difficult to standardize education today.

The first reading of “Why School?” has fascinated me with new questions and bringing up some old ideas that I have had in the past. It is an interesting perspective on education today and in which direction it is going.

Josie Santoyo

8/31/2011

Why School?

When reading Why School? by Mike Rose, It got my attention from the start. The book started of by telling the story about Anthony, a man who had brain damage. Anthony enrolled in school because he wanted to get an education for himself and to help his daughter. Not many parents think about themselves and want to get educated, they believe that they need to work in order to support their family. Anthony was thinking beyond that, he wanted to educate himself in order to educate his daughter. By going to school, he was taught how to read and write and was able to help his daughter with the skills he acquired. Some parent’s don’t have a high school diploma or a degree, the reason being they couldn’t afford school or they had to drop out of school in order to work and support their family. I have a family friend who doesn’t know how to read and he is not capable of helping his young daughter with her homework because of this impediment. Today in our society students have to go to school and they can’t drop out until a certain age. If this was enforced back in the past many people would at least have the basic knowledge of reading and writing.

Education is very important for everyone as well as for me. I believe that everyone should get an education because it will help them in life. Education is a key to success, I believe this is true because people who don’t have the skills needed, have a harder time understanding and getting a career. Schools try and prepare us for the future and one way is by making us study and learn for tests such as the SAT and the ACT. We as students need to get a high score in order to get into a good school. “You can prep kids for a certain kind of test, get a bump in scores, yet not be providing a very good education” (48). Teachers try to teach us to score high on tests but all they do is make us remember things for the test but at the end of the day we wont remember what we actually learned. I am one of those students, I studied hard to remember the material for the tests, but now I just remember half of what I studied. Education has helped me grow as a person and a student. I don’t think school’s should focus on scoring high on tests but actually help the student learn.

Why Not?

"...mais il faut cultiver notre jardin."
-Candide Ou L'Optimisme, Voltaire

School is a menial and dull task that was decided as, once upon a time, a right of passage. Teachers teach because they were taught, parents send their children to school because their parents sent them to school. It is a man-made part of the circle of life. It would be a fallacy to say that education is unimportant, but knowledge is not one-size-fits-all. Every brain is a garden, and the thoughts plants. One child may have trees growing in their garden, while another has flowers. So come, let us cultivate our gardens, and let us do it to our own specific needs.

If we give every child the same amount of dirt, sunlight, and water, then some will grow up big and strong and smart, and society will admire them and say "Oh, how wonderful! We have produced a functioning member of society, therefore our system is working." But there will be others whose brains will wither and imagination and motivation will die, and they will be written off, because let's face it, they were never going to make it anyway, THEY are defective, not this grand institution we have built! CLEARLY.

Mike Rose blossomed from the education he received;

"Education gave me the competence and confidence to independently seek out information and make decisions, to advocate for myself and my parents and those I taught, to probe political issues, to resist simple answers to mess social problems, to assume that I could figure things out and act on what I learned. In this sense, this was the best training I could have gotten for vocation and citizenship" (38).

So, whatever Miracle-Gro he was fed, it did the trick. He seems to feel that education empowered him, and that education is the key to enlightenment

My own chlorophyll was in hyper-drive most of my life. I was a smart kid! Tales of my education and schooling before college are long and sordid. They include thirteen different schools, two different states, two countries, a little home school, some long-lost fluency in Spanish, and even a little sprinkling of being thrown around between grades. My garden was flourishing. I was confident in my self, my opinions, my talents and skills. And then, I came to Dominican.

At Dominican the beautiful flowers of confidence were ripped out at the root and replaced with weeds of self-doubt. A drought that withheld free-thinking killed the trees of independence. I quickly learned that if i couldn't say anything that agreed with the professor, I shouldn't say anything at all.

Don't get me wrong, I can handle being told I'm wrong, or introduced to a different way of thinking, but time and time again I found myself being penalized for having an opinion that went against the grain. One such time that stands out took place in a philosophy class. We were studying Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, which was for me, the umpteenth time. And for the umpteenth time, I hated it. I found Siddhartha to be a self-righteous ass. The final assignment for Siddhartha was a one page reflection on what we learned from the book. This was not an issue for me, and I knew it would take me two and a half seconds to talk about (in a slightly more eloquent manner than above) why I did not care for Siddhartha. My friend on the other hand, was pressed or time, so I offered to write hers for her. One page, not a huge deal.

The paper I wrote that I attached my name to had my point of view: Siddhartha should not be looked at as a role model of any kind. The paper I wrote my friend's name on was exactly the opposite. A few days later we were handed the essays back, and my friend and I compared grades. I noted with pride that her's not a solid A, but when I looked at my own score I saw a B-. Had I deserved the B-, I probably would not have cared a lot, but I looked for marks on the page denoting grammatical errors or other such things. There were none. Feeling confused, I stayed after to speak with the professor. She informed me that my grade was given because it didn't appear that I had given much thought to the topic, and that I had missed the point of the book. I was told that I should re-read the book, so that I might see the real message.

Uh huh.

Needless to say, that made me livid. If ONLY she had known that I wrote the other essay that was worthy of an A! Not a whole lot I could do about it though.... I HAD plagiarized after all, (Which, in a side-note, is not a condonable activity).

The point of this story was to bring to light a common malpractice in schools, that being that the teacher is always right and the student should ingest, and then regurgitate at the appropriate time the "wisdom" that is shoved down out throats.

Rose mentions early on that “It matters a great deal how we collectively talk about education, for that discussion both reflects and, in turn, effects policy decisions about what gets taught and tested, about funding, about what we expect schooling to contribute to our lives” (5).

I disagree. If this were true, stories like mine would not happen as often as they do, and believe me, they do happen. My truth is that we can sit around talking all day about whatever we want, education, peace, whether or not the moon landing was faked, but if our words do not agree with those in power, well sir, ain't nothin' gonna change.

I would love to be an idealist, living in an ideal world. And it is for that reason that I drag myself out of bed every morning after a long sleepless night. It is for that reason that I open my eyes and look for the good in all people. For that reason that I hold on hope, that I believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of humanity.

One day, I know it will all pay off. The blood sweat and tears that went into plowing the fields and planting the seeds. Watering the flowers and trimming the trees. Earth will become Eden one day. But that day is not today, and in my reality, that day is a long way off.

So why school? Because. Or... Why not. Take your pick. I won't judge.

I leave you now with a quote. A quote of beauty, hope and terrifying loneliness.

There is only your own pair of wings and the pathless sky.
Bird, O my bird, listen to me, do not close your wings.


THE END

Ryan Astudillo

8/31/11

After reading the first four chapters of Mike Rose’s Why School? I found that Rose made some pretty interesting points about education and just how important it really is to us. The book started out with revealing a bit of his past. He had a friend named Anthony whose educational level was not at the average point as most people his age. At age thirty, most citizens have a stable career. The fact that a brain injury had caused him to stumble in his early childhood years is so heartrending. It is inspiring to see someone who is so determined to educate himself and go back to school in hopes of leading a better life. Anthony commented to Rose, “I like being here. I know it can’t happen by osmosis. But this is where it’s at” (Rose, 2). This quote really touched me. As someone who could not quite get the chance to fulfill his educational requirements, he finds pleasure in staying in a library surrounded by knowledge that has been passed down through generations of our time.

Education gives us an opportunity in life. That opportunity is a chance to become something great. We have the chance to go to school. With that chance, we are able to get good grades. With good grades, we become the top of our class. At the top of the class, we can be recommended to the highest caliber of high schools and colleges. After college, we can become a researcher. As a researcher, we can find cures to the many diseases humans suffer from today. However, as Rose stated, “Except for the rare event-a winning lottery ticket, the surprise departure of someone in a coveted position-circumstances typically don’t just combine, don’t randomly fall our way” (Rose, 8). Opportunities do not just appear in front of us sometimes. We would have to work our way towards our goal through our own determination. Luck can sometimes befall us, but it is up to us to take advantage of it to shape that lucky chance into something we can use.

The story about Stephanie Terry and her class was very intriguing. The way that she taught her class was so powerful and inspiring. She brought to her class a glass case with five hermit crabs inside. Her class, filled with wandering intrigued eyes, became curious about them. Curiosity was exactly what Terry wanted her students to feel. The students asked where their natural habitat was and she responded with a demonstration. After the crabs were given warm water, they started to actively move. Her students became shocked, as I would be, while at the same time intrigued. They gave a report the next day with their own observations. This was where it all became interesting. Each of them had different interpretations about what they saw that day. Compared to just reading about hermit crab habitats, the students were able to see first-hand how they react in different temperatures of water. With that, they could deduce what kind of environment they favor. As Rose explained, “Over time, you see, you feel something: it’s the experience of democracy itself. The free play of inquiry. The affirmation of human ability” (Rose, 41). There is no better way of learning than a hands-on experiment that could the students really get involved and act for themselves. It is teachers like her that make school interesting and worthwhile to go to.

John Carlo M. Bienvenida

8-31-11

Reading the first few chapters of Why School was quite an experience because the author touched on some very interesting ideas. Moreover, I constantly found myself thinking about my own educational experience and what is important to me.

Being a twenty-something year old college student, I have had my fair share of horrid educators. In such cases, I walked away at end of the semester/year nothing to show for my efforts but a letter grade and the feeling that the teacher cared little about teaching the class or even the students in the class. This is why I enjoyed reading Rose’s recollection of his high school English class. Mr. McFarland was the teacher. Rose stated that “Mr. McFarland prefaced each assignment with instruction that guided us through it, and then provided extensive written feedback on our papers, feedback that could applied to the next assignment. All of this led toward proficiency in reading difficult material and skill in writing analytically (pg 15). Mr. McFarland appears to be a rather demanding teacher and I would assume that attaining an A in the class would be quite difficult. However, there is a reason for all of it. I imagine that Mr. McFarland is the type of educator that views the situation beyond the classroom. Students should finish a course with more than just a grade. They should leave, better prepared for the future. Mr. McFarland attempted to prepare his students by making a special effort to provide adequate feedback in the assignments so the students would understand how to think and write analytically.

Mr. McFarland’s method of teaching is not the only one. Neither can it be considered “the best”. There is a plethora of ways to provide students with a meaningful education yet the current school system tends to stick to only a handful of teaching styles. I believe that this is one of the points that the author is trying to make. To me, the method used and the route taken is not as important as the end result. As long as there is a feeling that knowledge was gained, that my education was sufficient and that I am competent enough to make it on my own, then I am fine. I think this is less likely to happen if my educators only care about my test scores. Mike Rose believes that “you can prep kids for a certain kind of test, get a bump in scores, yet not be providing a very good education” (pg 48). I have taken standardized tests ever since elementary school. All throughout high school, I was prepping myself for the SATs and ACTs in hopes of having high enough scores to convince colleges to admit me as a student. That was necessary. But that preparation was given to me in addition to a great education. It was given to me in order to compliment my education, not to consist as the bulk of it.

Beauty in the Struugle: How Government's Management of Funds is Vital in Education

Victoria Escalada
Ms. Julia van der Ryn
CLQ2142.1
30 August 2011

Although I have not read directly from Why School? by Mike Rose because I do not have the book yet, I decided to read summaries of his text online and his personal outline blog in which he exemplifies the purpose of why he decided to write Why School?. Although there are numerous valid points he states about education, one of the most intersting assertions and observations he declared that stood out to me was in the preface: "We live in an anxious age and seek our grounding, our assurances in ways that don't satisfy our longing...We've lost hope in the public sphere and grab at private solutions which undercut the sharing of obligation and risk and keep us scrambling for individual advantage" (ix-x). After reading summaries of the text online, I perceived that this assertion illuminates that the individual advantage all students strive to have unfortunately makes government believe the best way to distribute monetary funds to schools is by utilizing the test results which evaluate a student's knowledge of math, reading, writing and science--basic subjects in school. One test that exemplifies this is the STAR testing that California public high school freshmen, sophomore and junior students need to take.

There is a problem with this system, however. By being in a public school in the past, I have been able to witness this system in effect while seeing this system hurt less affluent public schools. Because the public school I attended was affluent and had students who performed well according to STAR tests, my public school was able to obtain many funds from the government that administration used to buy more updated materials and text books. Due to the lack of more up-to-date matierals for less affluent public schools, students who used more updated materials did better than students who did not; less affluent public school students did more poorly because of this which later affected the value of their homes in their area. How? The government funds public schools by evaluating students' results from the STAR tests. These results also determine how valuable the homes in the school district are--the lower the test scores, the smaller the value of the houses. Unfortunately, because the govenrment is not working changing this system, this vicious cycle of traditional education continues: richer schools are becoming richer and poorer schools are becoming poorer; students in richer schools are seen as smart and elite compared to students in poorer schools who are seen as unintelligent and even sometimes undeserving of an education. If schools taught differently other than the traditional way to teach in a classroom, maybe this vicious cycle could possibly end and students from both types of school--poor and rich--can have the same opportunity of learning. Maybe if teachers taught students through service learning instead of in traditional classrooms, the opportunity will be equal for all students, and higher education will make more students now wake up. Service learning, when promoted, encourages and endorses a different way of education, a different way of thinking, and a different type of knowledge--awareness of the world.

With awareness of the world, students will be able and are able to grasp onto social and citizenship problems that affect everyone daily. It is our duty as citizens to take the initiative to be aware of the world, but in order to do that, elite officials and the govenrment must take consideration to change the traditional way students are taught and to focus on teaching service learning outside and inside the classroom. We cannot lose hope in the "public sphere;" and hopefully, learning in the classroom goes beyond just learning about past history and traditional school subjects but ourselves. Like Mike Rose stated in his blog, "[hopefully] the reader...sit[s] close by as other human beings struggle with a problem, get the flash of insight, and push toward articulation, alone or with others...[Education] capture[s] the experience of discovery, of learning to do something you couldn't do before, and, for some, to begin to think of yourself in a new way."

Side Note: Mike Rose's personal blog website is http://mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/. His work and blogs are incredible.

Araceli Moya

30 August 2011

Why School?

The author from Why School? by Mike Rose has interesting topics about school. He is trying to reach out his points and pursue the title of his book title “Why School?” In the first chapter, he mentions a man with brain damage and his inspiration to grasp education regardless his disabilities. Mike Rose, writes about the how the government has the ambition to have the students succeed in the hard core classes for example, math, science, and english. In 2001 the act “No Child Left Behind” was established and recommended students attending school to take the test. This will provide statistics on how well the students are learning. Schools take time to teach the students on the materials that will be on the test just for them to get a high score. This process seems like if they are categorizing people in what they are good at. By the end, the result is the replication of troubling pattern in American Schooling: poor kids get an education of skills and routine…” (Rose 49) Like mentioned in class, children today are being numbed up by learning skills and are being taught how it should be done instead of learning in a broader perspective. They are given one way of learning like a routine and they don’t have options. When we are children we colored inside the lines until we were instructed to color inside the lines. At this point we were constricted to follow the idea of what is the right way to do it and have only one way to do it.

My experience in education has been an opportunity to expand my learnings. I am the first generation in my family to go to college and pursue a career. In my education career I have noticed that school does teach us the “correct” way to do things, but I also realized form the reading that we have different ways to get educated “ we are getting educated all the time, of course: by family, community, teachers, pals, bullies, and saints” (Rose 31). This concept is true, this shapes how we are and the way we think and view things.

Zehara Eckert

8/29/11

Why School?

As a result of my reading Why School? by Mike Rose, numerous points stood out to me. To begin with, his introduction was very interesting. He talked about Anthony, a man in his thirties with brain damage as a result of a childhood injury. Anthony was enrolled in a basic skills program not only because he hoped to get a better job than his current custodial job but, most importantly, because he believed his education would better prepare him to prepare his daughter. Having the skills of reading and writing could help him to read about events and to better understand his surroundings as well as his daughter. These skills could create a new life for his daughter and for himself because they could have a common ground of knowledge and a sense of who they could become together. I found this story very touching because you don’t often see this kind of aspiration and motivation for education nowadays. The meaning of education has changed; nowadays many people are not attending school because of ambition or dreams. Many youth go to school because for one, they are told by the law to stay in high school until they are 16; many more are in school because their parents make them. Those that are motivated to continue on to college sometimes only do it in order to gain the knowledge for a good paying career. Anthony’s story contrasts with these reasons. His motivation was so much more than a personal career path because he related it to his surroundings. His motivation for a better education was so that he can better contribute to the collective responsibility of the community to care for and support his daughter.

We view education as a way to advance ourselves because our society taught us that from a young age. For example, my parents had good educations and as a result they have really good careers and although I am pursuing my own career I’ve followed in their footsteps and now I am attending a university. We are also taught that education is a way to overcome social class inequalities. “But education alone is not enough to trump some social barriers like racist hiring practices or inequality in pay based on gender” (Rose, 13). In life I’ve learned that going to school is not a guarantee of success but it puts you at a greater advantage. For example, I have friends that have graduated from college–some from prestigious colleges–and what are they doing with their lives now? They are working in retail stores and security jobs, the same jobs they’ve had since high school. Is their education guaranteeing them success at this point? Not really, but I believe they look at their world differently than if they hadn’t pursued higher education. I believe their education will put them at a greater advantage when jobs become available and if they pursue something better, not only because of skills and knowledge but because of their worldview.

Rose makes the point that the most important evidence of learning in our current educational system is a score on a standardized test. His point made me question – although not for the first time–why educators think that a standardized test is a way to measure someone’s knowledge. I think that this concept hinders our definition of education. We should be educated not to pass standardized tests but most importantly to have the thirst for knowledge, to be part of and to pass on a tradition of striving to be better than the generation before us, and to be able to contribute to the greater and collective community in which we live. Just like Rose demonstrated with Stephanie Terry’s classroom example about the hermit crabs, education should be about interaction with people in the classroom, being and creating an experience of learning through observation, thinking out loud and publicly reporting our findings and creating the sense that we’ve gained knowledge. It shouldn’t be about drilling your students to spit back what they’ve been taught or to pass these standardized tests. Passing those tests does not mean you will be successful and able to function in the real world. Frankly, the real world in no way resembles a standardized test. The real world is made up of experiences, mistakes and lessons.

With the question “Why School?” Mike Rose highlighted the many assumptions a young person might have as they pursue higher education. This question made me think about the reasons why I and my family and my community are supporting this idea of my college education. As a result he triggered thoughts about the long-term purpose of my own college education, how it relates to my place in this collective community and the role I might play in it in the future. He left me lingering on the question, what is the future of an educational system that considers a score on a standardized test as an accurate indicator of achievement?

Prompt/Reflection for: Why School? preface-Ch. 4

In the preface, Rose writes, "We live in an anxious age and seek our grounding, our assurances in ways that don't satisfy our longing. . . We've lost hope in the public sphere and grab at private solutions which undercut the sharing of obligation and risk and keep us scrambling for individual advantage" (ix-x).
This is a very philosophical statement about the Western myth of the individual and the striving for an independence and autonomy which is an important metaphor but not the nature of reality. What I mean is that, yes, as human beings in a modern (democratic) world we have the wonderful "opportunity" (14) to develop in our own unique ways and create our own paths. At the same time, we are always embedded in a larger shared reality/world and we can never be truly, literally autonomous or independent. We are always interconnected with others. Although we have been conditioned to see dependence as a negative state, we are interdependent and that is also a source of joy and happiness in our lives. We thrive through our relationships and we exist and are seen as unique individuals because we are in the world with others. When we attain the material symbols of success ($ and the things [consumption that make our economy tick!]) we are often still left with a void that we try to fill with the next bigger, better thing.

Rose touches on more by-products of the myth of individualism in the intro when he writes, "There is a lot of confusion in our society about the role of individual effort in achievement." He acknowledges that although "a person's motivation. . . are hugely important" we tend to create confusion "when we generalize from this fact to an overall model of human development and achievement. This is the individualistic, self-reliant, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps way of viewing the world. According to this model, it is you alone. . . who are responsible for your success" (9-10).
As a student of mine commented last semester, what happens if you never had boots much less bootstraps to pull oneself up by? To mix my metaphors: When the playing field is so not flat that huge segments of our population are tilted right off it, how can we expect that everyone is still able to play the game?

Rose goes on to write that no one actually develops on their own, in a bubble, so to speak. We are all shaped by certain conditions that are well beyond our individual control.

I think that it is very important to start this class by acknowledging our collective responsibility to each other.
A huge catalyst for me to deepen my work with (so-called) "at-risk" youth arose out of a project that I did to gather local youth perception regarding access to higher education and other educational opportunities. What I saw was that the most marginalized youth, many of those at Marin County Community School, said, "it's up to me if I succeed or not." It struck me that they were willing to accept all the responsibility for failure but unable to acknowledge the ways in which society, their community may have failed to help them succeed or the institutions and organizations that exist to help them succeed. I realized that these youth do not feel that they belong to a larger community that is also responsible to them. This realization was a turning point for me and my commitment to the issues faced by disenfranchised youth, the organizations/schools that serve them.
So creating an expanded and more inclusive community with others is one thing that really matters to me. I wonder what this reading sparks in you about what matters to you and how your education either helps or hinders that?
Find places in the reading that speak to these questions. Make connections between the text and your experience. Ideally you can also connect to the ideas and images you are gathering for your Waking Up self-portrait. Why do you get up in the morning? What matters? How has education been a powerful awakening for you or if it hasn't why not? Support or illustrate with quotes from the book.

And/or you could take this quote and unpack it by linking to other points in the reading and in your own experience:

"Education gave me the competence and confidence to independently seek out information and make decisions, to advocate for myself and my parents and those I taught, to probe political issues, to resist simple answers to mess social problems, to assume that I could figure things out and act on what I learned. In this sense, this was the best training I could have gotten for vocation and citizenship" (38).

What does he mean by this and why do these things matter? How is he making the link between education and citizenship? Use other points in the text to explore this statement and link to your own experience.

Welcome to Fall 2011!

Each week there will be a prompt that you will respond to, posting your own text/service response.