The Importance Of Education In Mike Rose's Lives On The Boundary

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Communication is a skill that is imperative for everyone to learn; it allows us to interact with those around us and to better understand this world. In the autobiography Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose discusses why it is essential for students to become critically literate. He found out throughout his life in school that becoming educated provided him a deeper understanding of what American society is truly like, a country filled with potential, scholarly, hard-working students. Unfortunately, schools in this country sometimes think that students that do not meet up to today’s competitive standards should be thrown off to remedial classrooms, where little to no learning is achieved. On the surface, remedial classroom placement’s purpose is to teach children the fundamentals of writing correct sentences. This results in students only working on trivial things like grammar instead of reading insightful texts and passages. Although learning proper syntax is necessary to anyone’s education, Rose understands that learning inconsequential to its fullest extent will not be detrimental to one’s communication. Literacy, the …show more content…
However, students and teachers should be mindful of what they are reading; if a particular book, novel, or whatever they are reading is not thoroughly challenging or compelling to the reader, then they will be just wasting time reading things they do not want to. For example, if Rose’s students or himself were to read a book about who is stronger, Superman or Batman, would that spark any intelligent debate? It would not; at most, students would develop certain points as to which of their favorite hero is better than the other. However, if Rose student’s were to tackle something extremely difficult to read such as Shakespeare, it would allow for his students and even Rose to develop critical analysis