A recent study released by Pearson that questioned over 400,000 students in grades 6-12 shows that only “48% of students think their teachers care about them…and only 45% of students think teachers care if they are absent from school” (Hare, 2015). This shocking statistic demonstrates what American students think about their teachers. Most students are under the impression that their teachers don’t care about them. When teachers don’t care about their students and allow them to fail, many students with unrealized potential give up on education.
Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” describes his journey through high school on the vocational track after the results of his “tests got confused with those of another student named Rose” (Rose, 1989, p. 2). He spent two years of high school with teachers who smacked and paddled their students in a feeble effort to control them. The students he was surrounded by enjoyed partying, dealing drugs, and getting into fights. Rose didn’t fit in, but stayed enrolled in the vocational classes. One day in his religion class, his classmate Ken Harvey remarked “I just wanna be
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In his article “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Rose makes the statement: “students will float to the mark you set” (Rose, 1989, p. 3). This remark is one of the truest I have ever read. When teachers have high expectations, students tend to rise up and meet those expectations. Students want to please their teachers and be praised by them. Rose describes: “I loved getting good grades from MacFarland…I had made something of value” (Rose, 1989, p. 9). He had met his teacher’s expectation and that made him feel accomplished. On the other hand, if a teacher expects very little from their students, the students will slack on their assignments and tests and become lazy, knowing they will not be
The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How It Hurts Kids, and What It Will Take to Change It by Robert L. Fried is a great tool for identifying challenges in school systems and planning school reform. This book explains in great depth the problems faced by students and educators in schools today and ends with a call to action for solving these problems. Some major concepts that arise frequently throughout the book are time being wasted, students feeling powerless and the prioritization of test scores over authentic learning. Time is wasted by everyone in school and is wasted in various ways, for example students are given busy work and teachers rush through a curriculum while students learn nothing. Students, while they are the most important stakeholders, feel as though they have no control over their education.
Response to “I Just Wanna Be Average" by Mike Rose Had Rose and her mother been educated enough, they could have a voice to raise concerns about Rose’s marks. The author seems to suggest that the teachers were responsible for his underperformance. The author feels that parental and teacher responsibility on his part could have helped understanding what discipline is before going to college. However, it is also possible that he did not try hard enough to be disciplined. Nonetheless, Rose is right that environment plays a bigger role in what an individual eventually becomes in adult life (Munns et all, 2013).
In “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose explains the experience being part of a school system that had no prior knowledge to have educators to teach students. Rose supports his claims by describing the different situations he had to encounter with the lack of the school system, the hopelessness of the teachers and his peers, that lead those students with no support to lead them in a direction of success. Rose purpose is to point out that; all that it was needed was a teacher that cared enough to teach and to influence those students to succeed and to never hinder the student’s learning experience because anything is possible with an little of an encouragement. In the 8th paragraph in “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Rose describes what it felt like
An important point I learned after reading Holler if You Can Hear Me by Gregory Michie is that teachers should care about their students because students will learn more if they know you care and then they will care to learn . Mr. Mitchie believes his students don’t care enough to learn about sexism, but the truth was that they were tired of spending 2 weeks on the same lesson. Mr. Mitchie will then get angry at his class and tell them that if they didn’t care to learn then he wouldn’t make them. In another instant a teacher named Miss. Reilly was tired of her class not listening to her that she threatened to quit, but a student named Samuel wrote her a letter and told her not quit.
In “Want To Get Into College? Learn to fail” (2012), Angel B. Pérez ,Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at Pitzer College, argues that students are not okay with failing and are pressured to only show their success, Perez believes that this problem exist because teachers and parents taught them to only show their success and not to show their flaws. Perez supports his argument with his own personal experience .Perez supports his argument with “I wish I could tell you this is an uncommon story, but kids all over the world admit they are under tremendous pressure to be perfect,” (pg. 1 )
In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.
The Grading System: Completely Necessary Grades are an important part of the school system. Grades set the extraordinary students apart from the ordinary ones. In Jerry Farber’s essay, “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System,” he argues that grades are the only motivation students have in school. Farber even calls it “phony motivation.” He argues that students do not actually learn anything.
In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).
In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.
Mike Rose shares his personal story to the public in “I just wanna be average”, as he reveals the many flaws within the educational system of a high school in an economically depressed neighborhood in Los Angeles. He effectively directs his arguments towards both educators and parents by utilizing emotional and logical appeals. By convincing the audience to fear that children placed on remedial tracks are being hindered rather than assisted, the author causes both awareness and a feeling of duty to change the way we handle teaching children. Rose presents his argument by aiding the reader through the eyes of his younger self as he retells the story of his years in high school.
Rhetorical Analysis of Mike Rose Emotional, ethical, and logical appeals are all methods used in writing to perused you one way or another on various topics. Mike Rose used all of these techniques in this essay, to show how student who are pushed aside, distracted, or fall behind and fail. In this essay Rose describes that students who have teachers who are unprepared, or incompetent majorly contribute to student failure. He is trying to show that many children have potential that is overlooked or sometimes even ignored, by authority.
The essay “In Praise of the ‘F’ Word” by Mary Sherry explains some flaws Sherry has noticed in our education system. These observations are from her teaching perspective, and from her son’s own experience in high school. Sherry claims that some students that have earned a high school degree should not have because they are “semi literate.” She starts out her essay by stating this bluntly, but further explains herself as it goes on. Sherry is an adult literacy grammar teacher, and often faces students that wish they could have had a more beneficial experience in high school.
What this essay is saying about students and education is there is no student who doesn’t want to learn or what’s to get an education. Everybody is capable of learning, but the problem is sometimes the education are given by people who don’t care if you are learning or not. In this essay, we learned that the author was put in classes where the teachers didn’t care too much about their students and because of this he become a mediocre student. Not because he didn’t like school or he was lazy, but because there was no inspiration in learning. Luckily, Mike Rose the author of I Just Wanna Be Average found someone that wants him to start learning someone that make him change his mind.
He directly speaks about past teachers and experiences with education he's had, and his hopes for future teachers. Since this speech went viral and got positive feedback from many, it is effective in reaching the intended audience, and has potential to create a true change in how teachers treat their students and the education system. Livingston presents a call to action for teachers and future teachers to help their students reach their full potential, help them with their obstacles, and foster equality in the classroom.
Education is a huge issue that not only affects kids and their parents, but their community as well. Schools teach young kids to become the next generation of engineers, technicians, and political leaders, working towards creating a better future for their country and their community. Teachers have the unique job of creating the future leaders of the world, and preparing them for both college and life beyond, by putting a special push towards math and science, the so-called “foundation” of our society. The hard truth is, no one can be anything they want to be. Some people are simply not cut out to be engineers, doctors, or psychologists.