Mike Rose's Why School

Education means something different for everyone. According to Mike Rose, “a good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it” (33). The truth to this is that education affects us in every aspect of our lives. Rose emphasizes the value in the experience of education beyond the value of education for the purpose of custom or intelligence; he explores the purpose of going to school in terms of how he defines himself and his personal growth in the stages of his academic career. In Rose’s exploration of the purpose of school, he also reflects on his personal experiences and how those experiences gave him tools that are applicable for his daily life. Mike Rose’s Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us persuades his audience of the importance of education beyond the classroom, emphasizing how those experiences become crucial to one’s personal growth and potential.

As both the standards of school work and stress levels of student’s rise, the American school system remains unaltered, unchanged, and unaffected for over a hundred years. School is an institution that can serve as a massive gate in life granting you access to a job, stability, and a future or it can become a giant pillar in the way of everything you wish to achieve. While we recognize that a student’s own motivation, study habits, and will to learn, are cardinal in any schooling system, we must also understand the issues with an institution that is fundamentally unsound from the ground up. In today’s world, students are shoved with the hands of docility, and amenability as they render themselves in a system that has inadvertently failed them, by neglecting to celebrate their differences, and varying learning patterns. Conformity in the education system has shown to damage the personalization and

This audience is typically heads of household that would have children in schools and would generally relate to the high school experiences discussed throughout this article. As Botstein pointed out, “Often the high school outsider becomes the more successful and admired adult.” These successful adults can see the viewpoint of the author through their own lenses and also realize that their success was not directly tied to the learning they gained in school but to the harsh realities they faced once they moved into adulthood. Although Botstein highlights the various problems faced by students in high school but to effect change he needs to gain the support of the parents, in addition to wealth. The only way to effect change in the American school system is to be driven by both the student’s parents and the individuals that can influence the school board.

“School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers.  School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently” (Gatto 670).  In the present day school system, students are becoming more of products of an institutionalized school system

Education means something different for everyone. According to Mike Rose, “a good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it” (33). The truth to this is that education affects us in every aspect of our lives. Rose emphasizes the value in the experience of education beyond the value of education for the purpose of custom or intelligence; he explores the purpose of going to school in terms of how he defines himself and his personal growth in the stages of his academic career. In Rose’s exploration of the purpose of school, he also reflects on his personal experiences and how those experiences gave him tools that are applicable to his daily life. Mike Rose’s Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us persuades his audience of the importance of education beyond the classroom, emphasizing how those experiences become crucial to one’s personal growth and potential.

Many are quick to disregard education’s role outside of the classroom. According to Mike Rose, “a good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it” (Rose 33). Rose emphasizes the value in the experience of education beyond the value of education for the purpose of custom or intelligence; he explores the purpose of going to school in terms of how he defines himself and his personal growth in the stages of his academic career. By reflecting on his personal experiences and how those gave him the tools applicable to his daily life, he emphasizes why education should never be overlooked. Rose’s use of referencing relatable experiences in a logical manner makes his argument persuasive to the readers and he succeeds in making the readers reconsider why education matters to them. Mike Rose’s Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us effectively persuades his audience of the importance of education beyond the classroom, which proves true in our everyday lives because the essential aspect of education is what we do with it and how it helps develop one’s personal growth.

Many are quick to disregard education’s role outside of the classroom. According to Mike Rose, “a good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it” (Rose 33). Rose emphasizes the value in the experience of education beyond the value of education for the purpose of custom or intelligence; he explores the purpose of going to school in terms of how he defines himself and his personal growth in the stages of his academic career. By reflecting on his personal experiences and how those gave him the tools applicable to his daily life, he emphasizes why education should never be overlooked. Rose’s referencing relatable experiences in a logical manner makes his argument persuasive to the readers and he succeeds in making the readers reconsider why education matters to them. In his book Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us, Mike Rose effectively persuades his audience of the importance of education beyond the classroom, emphasizing how those experiences become crucial to one’s personal growth and potential in our everyday lives.

Education gives common people the means to turning dreams into reality. Education allows common people to open up their minds to various possibilities, that will arise from becoming educated. But, yet there are times where our education systems do not uphold student/learners to a high norm. Although, problems with education systems rarely occur, inadequate performance in school can be feasible if there are issues within the child’s household. Nonetheless, students who face inconsistent dilemmas, fail since they attempt to solve both problems.

At the start of 2016’s new school year, approximately 60.4 million children will attend public elementary and secondary schools in America (National Centre for Education Statistics, 26 July 2007. Web). With so many children going through compulsory education every year, it is important to ask questions about the purpose, structure and success of the education system, so people can be made aware of areas that may need improvement. John Gatto is a teacher and author in America who argues that the education system here is not designed to educate its students like most people assume, but instead, to keep them in line and maintain the current social hierarchy. He begins his article, ‘Against School’, by recounting his time as a school teacher in Manhattan, explaining that the students and teachers always seem to be bored. He asserts that boredom is a symptom of childishness and that the reason students act this way is because schools are designed to prevent children from maturing and growing up. Schools do this to make sure students grow into predictable and easy to manipulate adults. It is clear from the amount of supporting evidence John Gatto is correct; the school system exists to create a conformist obedient population and it does so by reducing creativity, over medicating children, and dividing students in order to maintain class hierarchy.

In this selection from Why School, Mike Rose expresses his belief that the economic and competitive aspects of the modern education system limits true intellectual growth and development. Rose acknowledges that economics have always been a driving force for the brevity and efficiency of the education system, essentially forcing in as much material as possible into the developing minds of children. To mass distribute the most valuable knowledge, a system has been created, like most economic systems, to gain the most return from the least amount of resources expended. He notes that some students cannot keep up with the fast and focused pace of learning, and fall through the cracks of the system, creating intellectual borders, only leaving those who are able to learn in the way the material is presented to be successful. Although the streamlined orientation of American education is undoubtedly efficient, Rose believes that this draws focus away from the more important aspects of a youth's education, primarily creativity. It removes individual perspectives from the pool of students and promotes similar thinking, which minimizes the variety of ideas.

School systems sometimes make promises they have no intention of keeping. Other times, they can deliver a world of opportunities to our neediest children. They may or may not want to listen to parents or even teachers, but school systems always attend to the demands of the most powerful individuals and institutions in their communities. (Koonce, 2016, p. 204).

Economics is the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. In the readings Why College Shower Their Students with As, Staples and The Sanctuary of Schools, Barry we learn how economics influence educational environments. Staples argue the inflation of grades and how they will affect the value of diplomas. Barry’s argument is based on the lack of finance given to public schools. Barry states that the “people who live in this country believe that cutting the budgets for public schools is necessary.” Giving teacher poor salaries is all that is manageable, and that all fine art programs should be cut when times are lean. Along with the cancelation of before and after school programs, public schools

Educational development is a very important step in life; it seems that people are judged everyday especially on their education. Parents seem to go through extensive procedures to get their children through the best education possible, just to help them succeed in life. “It’s no surprise that schools in wealthy

The two stories for this week appear to share a common theme in their makeup and presentation. Both of these stories make a solid case on how established educational institutions, at any given level, have the capability to impact the mind to a great degree. The contrasting experiences from each narrative serves to highlight the potential effects of schools on its students based on experiences and influences outside of the classroom.

Education is an important structure in society that shapes the most important years of your life, and therefore many theorists have ideas about what is wrong with education, what is right, and what needs to change or develop. Education is confined a lot by social control and social reproduction. Social control is a concept that refers to how social systems control the way we feel, think, behave, and even how we should present ourselves. These can appear openly, shown as rules and laws, or they could be not openly acknowledged and just appear as the “common” thing to do. Social reproduction is the reproduction of inequalities throughout generation-to-generation, one way education does this is how it supplies “wealthy” schools more and “poor” schools less. Michael Apple and Maxine Greene both define Social reproductions and Social Control. Throughout this text, I will explain the theories of Greene and Apple, as well as comparing and contrasting them against one another while applying some of my own experiences of education.