Average Rose

I enjoyed reading "I Just Wanna Be Average" by Mike Rose. His style of writing is direct and entertaining to read. I couldn't help but feel slightly infuriated at the system that misplaced him into the wrong school, something that Rose himself speaks of somewhat passively. On the other hand, I suppose that being sent to that school has turned him into the writer he is today. One could speculate ad nauseum on whether or not he would have turned out differently, better or worse, had he been sent to the right school.
One thing that I found particularly interesting was on page 169 when Rose is describing the thought process of a student who is having trouble with their homework problems. The student is recognizing the fact that these problems should be easy because they know they have seen them before, know that they have learned how to solve them before. Spoiler alert: The student eventually gives up. The hopelessness within the student was heart-breaking. Rose describes that there is "embarrassment and frustration and, not surprisingly, some anger in being reminded once again of long-standing inadequacies." Any student who has ever struggled in any subject knows how this feels. The specifics may change, but the hopeless feeling of never being able to understand something wears on a person's psyche. Which is why, Rose explains and I agree, that many students come to believe that their inadequacies are "inborn, organic".
I think the lesson that I learned from this essay is that when I am a teacher I will reconsider a student whom I don't think is trying. Effort does not merely mean there is a solid, physical outcome that can be graded. Effort is in the thought-process that the student had in trying to solve the problem. Granted, this student gave up, but they tried. In the end they thought it was hopeless, which led to them giving up. I know that I don't want any of my students feeling hopeless in my class (or ever, really). Every student deserves the opportunity to have their efforts recognized and to have that which they think is hopeless become something they can feel confident of.

The end of education?

The last sentence of The Achievement of Desire by Richard Rodriguez reads: "It would require many more years of schooling (an inevitable miseducation) in which I came to trust the silence of reading and the habit of abstracting from immediate experience- moving away from a life of closeness and immediacy I remembered with my parents, growing older- before I turned unafraid to desire the past, and thereby achieved what had eluded me for so long- the end of education." Rodriguez, now comfortable and confident in his education, and accepting in his relationship with his parents, believes he has reached "the end of education." Therefore, in his mind, education is never fully attained until the self is comfortable with the knowledge it has gained and the relationships it has sacrificed. I wonder if his meaning is intended for all students, or only for "scholarship boys". I must admit that I find his "end of education" premise a rather unappealing one. Isn't education continuous- a never-ending process? To say that education has an end implies an all-knowing state of mind. Surely, I am misinterpreting this last sentence and deriving some other meaning that was not intended. However, it struck me in such a way I couldn't help but comment on it.

After reading “Inventing the University” by David Bartholomae it is rather difficult to write a response without feeling insecure. As enjoyable and witty of a read as it was, I couldn’t help but notice that he was referring directly to the position I find myself in now, and speaking somewhat negatively of it. As a writer in a college setting it seems nearly impossible to not put on certain airs, to not strive for a higher level of communication in the very way that Bartholomae stated as "though [we] are members of the academy." Now that I have to write about my own experiences as a writer in school I can't help but be hyper-aware of my own writing style and the faults within it. This blog is a warm-up of sorts before tackling the assignment as a whole. Wish me luck!