Lives On The Boundary

Rose’s final chapter focuses on the ways in which society misunderstands struggle as intellectual deficiency, and he pushes for educational reforms that embrace struggling students, instead of pushing them to the margins. Rose starts by challenging the idea of remediation in its most basic form. He explains that “remedial” used to be a medical term, and that it was appropriated by the educational system to label students with serious mental disabilities. But that also brought a medical lens to education, and works like William S. Gray’s Remedial Cases in Reading: Their Diagnosis and Treatment further categorized learning issues as a sort of illness. Now the “remedial paradigm was beginning to include those who had “troubles as varied as bad eyes, second language interference, and shyness” (209). The struggle-as-illness metaphor continues into the 1930s and 1940s, where remedial sections were referred to as “sick sections” or “hospital sections” (210). While Rose concedes that the American educational system has come a long way since the early 1900s, he explains that the medical model of diagnosing students through testing continues today. The result are remediation programs where students are put “in scholastic quarantine until their disease can be diagnosed and remedied” (210).

Rose uses examples from a Bay Area literacy program to argue against using testing to gauge a student’s ability and/or determine their potential for success. The students in Rose’s classes here more closely resemble those from the Veteran’s Program; students range in age from 19 to their early sixties, have lived in poverty their whole lives, and have a host of medical complications that make their lives more difficult. It comes as no surprise, then, when these students’ literacy test scores come back incredibly low. After all, these are students who were left behind by the educational system long ago. And yet, just like the veterans, Rose’s new students also “remain hopeful, [and] have somehow held onto a deep faith in education” (215). Yet again, test scores do not reflect reality. Most of Rose’s students are literate enough to read the newspaper and pay their bills; they just do not have the training to tackle standardized tests.

If this repeatedly holds true, Rose asks, why does America insist on benchmarking students by their test scores? Rose believes the answer lies in America’s own view of itself. He argues that “we seek a certification of our national intelligence, indeed, our national virtue, in how diligently our children can display [a] central corpus of information” (233). What Rose means is this: metrics allow the country to prove its progress, to show that the American Dream continues to improve the lives of each subsequent generation.

Rose believes America’s obsession with quantification is the very thing that “blind[s] us to cognitive and linguistic possibility” (222). People focus so strongly on the deficiencies that they become blind to evidence that shows different, but no less important, ability. Rose then provides a series of examples from students whose test scores label them remedial. They are kind, hardworking, and passionate—all things that no standardized text could possibly reveal. Consequently, Rose calls for a fundamental shift in how education thinks about and treats so-called vocational learners. He argues that this new paradigm must “consider the social context in which [literacy] occurs—the political, economic, and cultural forces that encourage or inhibit it” (237). Only then can educational systems be adjusted to “honor the beliefs and stories, enthusiasm, and apprehensions that students reveal” (236). In other words, Rose believes education must shift to consider each student as an individual and address their needs both inside and outside the classroom. By doing so, education will move closer to true egalitarianisms where all students—regardless of their personal struggles, social status, or race—will be welcomed “across the boundaries” (238).

Rose’s Epilogue opens with a personal anecdote about his student, Lilia. Lilia immigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was 4. She failed first grade, was labeled remedial, and spent her elementary school years in “‘classes for slow learners’” (239). When her family realizes that she cannot read or write, they move to a new city with better schools. There, Lilia gets the help she needs. She eventually attends UCLA, and she participates in a program that sends former vocational students to local elementary schools to teach literacy in remedial classrooms.

Both Lilia and Rose grow up in South Los Angeles, and Lilia asks Rose if he has visited recently. He tells her he has and says, “‘It’s worse now […] much worse. No one comes. No one goes’” (240). But Rose’s relationship to his South Vermont neighborhood has also changed. When he first leaves Loyola, South Vermont haunts him. Rose tries to outrun his past, first to graduate school, then as a teacher. But now, Rose understands he owes his current career to South Vermont. He tells readers, “But, strange blessing, we can never really free ourselves from the mood of early neighborhoods, from our first stories, from the original tales of hope and despair” (240). Here, Rose acknowledges how his past has transformed into a valuable gift: the gift of knowledge. He offers Lilia as an example of this. She thinks poorly of herself until she changes school districts, where she is “transformed from dumb to normal” (241). That one shift shapes her whole life and allows her to embrace the opportunities offered by education, and now she can return to help others cross the boundary. Rose concludes by asking readers to question their preconceived notions about remedial students and embrace “hope, everyday heroics, [and] the power of the common play of the human mind” (242).

The Afterword for Lives on the Boundary, which Rose writes in 2005, postdates the original text, which was published in 1989. There are two major purposes to Rose’s Afterword: first, it answers some of the frequently asked questions he has received, and it comments on how education has (and has not) changed since the book’s first publication. Rose begins by commenting on why he chose to blend anecdotes, or stories, with academic analysis. He explains that memory is a powerful tool, and while it can distort some things, it is also “infused with feeling” and “central to our maintenance of our sense of who we are, our identity” (244). Rose’s writing technique infuses his book with pathos and allows readers to connect with Rose’s story and the stories of some of his students.

Rose also addresses how America’s educational policy has become more invested in standards and assessments in the previous decade, not less. The country has become obsessed with “economic readiness,” but Rose argues that focusing on the economic outcomes of education “restricts our vision of what school ought to be about […] for both individuals and for a democratic society” (245, 246). This new educational perspective emphasizes preparedness to the detriment of all students, although the consequences for low-income learners are particularly dire. The competitive nature of education means that the typical “admitted student comes in with eighteen honors” and “an astounding grade point average of 4.25” (249). These students have access to special services that low-income and remedial students do not, which widens the education gap. Shrinking education budgets, rising costs of education, competitiveness, and the rising bar for collegiate admissions have become a “perfect storm of bad conditions” for working-class students (252). Consequently, Rose worries that educational access has become more unequal than ever. Thus, he calls once again for educational reform built on a holistic view of each student and a “commitment to equal educational opportunity” (254).