1. Mike Rose landed in Vocational Education by a stroke of bad luck. The kind of bad luck that affects you for the rest of your life; the question is, would he let it affect him for the worse, or for the better? For two years Rose dealt with a wide array of teachers, ranging from harsh and unfair, to absent and unauthoritative, to troubled and constantly on the verge of becoming unhinged, to flat-out brutal. Yet they all had one thing in common; they were utterly uninspiring, with seemingly no desire to see Rose or any of the other students succeed. At the very most, his teachers evoked mediocrity among the other Voc. Ed. students.
Personally, I can relate to Rose’s experience on a smaller scale. I attended an average public school for the duration of fifth grade. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Kazcheck, also taught math and history. Math was about an hour long; in that time, I was usually able to not only complete my advanced math homework, but help others complete their homework as well. One afternoon after doing these things, I settled down to read Prince and the Pauper. No more than a paragraph into my chapter, Kazcheck stood up from his desk and walked brusquely to the front of the room. Then, he began to yell. He sounded angry, and I felt remorse for the student I imagined was cowering at Kazcheck’s feet as he gave the lecture. Engrossed in my reading, the lecture had been reduced to mottled mumbles…until he spoke my name. My head snapped up and I realized he had been yelling at me. He yelled at me, in front of the entire class, for reading. And for reading Prince and the Pauper no less! Which in case you haven’t read it, is not an easy read for a fifth grader. He banned me from reading in his class ever again, and gave me the simpleton task of removing staples from the bulletin board instead. For the rest of the school year, after finishing my homework and helping others with theirs, I would spend the remaining half hour of class doing useless busy work. Talk about inspiring mediocrity. To this day, I dread math classes.
2. Each student described in Rose’s recounting of Voc. Ed. had, through the years, been reduced to being labeled as a “slow” student. And furthermore, they didn’t really seem to care too much. All of the fellow classmen Rose speaks about in his essay were the rough and tumble type. Dave Snyder, the jock of the group, was described as having a “quick wit…welcome in any clique...possessed a certain level of maturity.” Yet while Dave may have been socially inclined, he “could care less about studies.” The highbrow of the group, Ted Richard, comes off as being quite intellectually independent. Described as a “street fighter,” it is also clear that Ted didn’t run with the best of people. “And then there was Ken Harvey.” The boy who uttered the phrase “I just wanna be average”. This statement shows it all; it shows how emotionally, academically, and socially torn down he was, that he believed all he could achieve was mediocrity. Voc. Ed. took a heavy toll on each one of these boys, including Rose himself.
3. As he uttered the phrase, “I just wanna be average,” Ken Harvey was dealing with the disorienting high school scene by essentially “twisting a knife in his own grey matter.” That is to say, he was giving up. Overwhelmed by the vast variety of curriculum and careers floating around in the world, Ken had simply given up to avoid the possibility of failure. Physical violence, verbal abuse, and dependence on drugs/alcohol are also common ways high school students deal with the pressures of high school. What do these coping mechanisms have in common? They all eventually work to the student’s detriment. The pain can only be dulled for so long before it rises up to bite you in the ass.
4. College always seemed soooo unimaginably far off in the future. But at the age of 15, college is already here, happening for me right now. There is nothing distant about it. There is a drastic, albeit shocking, increase in the level of independence between traditional grade school and college. Not only is there no one to hound you to turn in your homework or get to class on time, but your choice of curriculum is entirely up to you. However, as a homeschooler, independence and self-motivation are key character traits for success, so the move to college has not been too big a shock.
5. We come from different places, different times, and difference families. But it seems the one thing we both have in common is a history of terrible teachers. And we both eventually realized that despite the discouraging start in academics, we have the ability to rise above mediocrity and surpass expectations.
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