Mike Rose "I Just Wanna Be Average" Questions

1. Mike Rose had a difficult and cumbersome life in Vocational Ed. Juggling work,home, and a sub par school life was a recipe for failure. He had to take two buses to school where he spent most of the morning with his friends. Going to school it was a constant battle to get help from the teachers to fit their educational needs. It was an inner city's assembly line of failure to put all the lower performing kids in one place to almost quarantined them away from the rest of the children. I've had some teachers whose passion made of never been there but nothing comes close the experiences that Rose went through.

2.Rose talked a lot about the mild ignorance that was put upon him and his classmates to even being beaten by gym teachers. This instilled a very deep divide between the students and the teachers where they would face each day in survival mode. To just survive one lousy class after the other. The teachers had no way of catching their imagination and kept using the same plan that failed them in regular school. Rose couldn't learn the traditional ways and had to come up with his own way to do algebra equations. He states his mind was "bungled up" and he would treat studies like "playing with your food."

3. High school can be disorienting for students like Ken Harvey for a lot of reasons. High school takes place in the gray area of growing to an adult and you're struggling to keep up with your peers. It's all too much to juggle and can be confusing at times. At times he just completely shut it out by trying to be normal and average. His rebellion was to be completely middle of the line and he refused to shape an identity or create any ambition.

4. I think college can be disorienting for some because our whole lives we're taught to follow a line. From toddlers we are raised to follow our parents' instructions and throughout grade school we had to do what the board of education wanted us to do. Every detail mandated by someone older than you. After all 18 years for most of us the rug gets ripped right in front us. All of sudden you're an adult and you should know what to do by yourself. I think college people can't cope with their own decisions. The first chance they get of freedom they can't make the right decision because growing up nobody bothered teaching us ways to be decisive and to make plans. It was a big follow the leader to the edge and than see how far you can jump. The best way is to learn all the real world problem solving on your own.  I find it welcoming. I went straight into the workforce at 18 with six years of real world experience under my belt college it's a breathe of fresh air. I'm in a place solely for learning anything I want. I have a chance to find and define my own profession.If I did this while I was younger I wouldn't have the discipline to see it through.

5. My history of education greatly contrasts . I had the typical suburban public school pipeline with cookie cutter teachers and curriculum to match, but I had a lot of great teachers that tried to go away from the book and let us think and debate together. Even though most days it seemed it was a battle between trying to give us innovation but still trying to implement the army of palpable standardized testings upon us. You could tell they were trying to teach us something more greater.