Student Response: Mike Rose’s Flawed Alternative

Matt Morrison

            There is little doubt that some students in American schools would benefit from an English curriculum more closely tailored to their own special needs.  In “The Politics of Remediation” Mike Rose is clear that certain young students – including the vision impaired, those who speak English as a second language, and those from broken homes - ought to be offered an alternative to the standard early English education.  Grammatical analysis is the core principle behind the current system, one which has been in place for a very long time.  Not surprisingly, there is a good reason why this is the case.  Grammatical analysis is the foundation upon which young people learn to write.  Although perfect grammar is not necessarily the sole means of getting a point across, no one can write clearly, at any length, without a firm command of the language in which they are writing.  Rose’s motives are noble, and he gets results, but they are fleeting, at best.  In the long term his students will not succeed without the standard grammatical foundation other students pick up as they progress.  Rose’s method is effective, to an extent, with some of his students because they trust him enough to express themselves openly.  His evaluation of the traditional curriculum is flawed, however, because his willingness to allow certain students to reject grammatical analysis as a focus leaves his pupil’s work crude and unreadable.

            Mike Rose has certainly seen his share of success.  He is able to get his students to write paragraphs based on words that many adults would struggle to define.  Certainly, a “limited” child with “significant problems” elicits surprise at an understanding of the word “misanthrope” (Rose 8).  How, one wonders, was Rose able to draw such inspired work out of students who struggle in other classes?  Part of the answer lies in his technique.  By offering a slew of uncommon words and adding appropriate pictures, Rose enabled the mind of the child to make associations between the words and pictures.  The pictures offered a sort of bridge on which the child navigated a rather complicated task.  The other part of the answer lies in the student’s trust of their teacher.  When Casey quipped “You are a kool guy” he clearly meant to tell Rose that he was someone Casey could trust (Rose 5).  Indeed, even Casey’s use of his teacher’s first name suggests an uncommon familiarity.  That Rose got on so well with his students is admirable, but was his method really preparing them for the kind of writing they would have to do as they prepared for college?

            After all, according to Rose they were already further ahead of the game than his peers gave them credit.  He points out that “cognitive growth does not proceed in miraculous leaps;” therefore, their minds had already developed, but were a bit raw, unorganized.  Danny knew what a misanthrope was, but he could not articulate the idea until he was given a picture to go along with the word in his head.  The compelling question becomes, it is enough that he knows it in his mind, and can describe it, but only in flawed English?  “They look mean.  They kill.  And most of all, they are dumb” (Rose 3).  OK, but use the actual word in a full sentence.  Without the grammatical background that other students are already employing, Danny is going to struggle to put together a coherent sentence with “misanthrope” as the subject, and if he does put together something he can articulate, it may not come out right on paper.

            Rose asserts that the writing produced by his sample “belied the schools’ assessments of these students’ literacy” (Rose 12).  It is easy for Rose to find quality where there is none because he, too, rejected the curriculum that had been set in stone for so many years.  What belies his own assessment, however, is his solid command of the language.  He could make his point using the same choppy dialogue as his students, but who would read it?  Indeed, an article so long would undoubtedly yield confusing passages if the punctuation, capitalization, and spelling were not spot-on.  His kids are smart, like him, but like him as a child they are at a disadvantage.  They have the potential to learn language the right way.  There is a great temptation to set them on a separate path, putting off the fundamentals, but it is wrong.  For Rose’s slow starters, the path just needs a little lengthening.  Keep them back, send them to special classes, but do not ask them to write before they know where to put the letters.

            Mike Rose is correct when he says that students whose aptitude test scores are low cannot be counted out as failures.  Some are brilliant people with more going on in their lives than the test data expose.  Special programs can, and should, be set up for these students, although there is no doubt that programs of this nature would be costly and could require a complicated logistical scheme for many schools.  It must be kept in mind that a school is only as strong as its resources.  One cannot, despite the need to find a child’s niche, allow him or her to stray from the tested path because they fail to pick up on the essentials.  An essay void of literary merit may be charming, may elicit a reaction, but it will not find its way into serious academia.  This may not be the way the child wants to go.  In fact, very few children can appreciate the importance of a well-crafted essay.  Fortunately for the children, educators do not exist to tailor literary exercises toward ends that leave their work confusing to the educated reader.