Mike Rose's new book: Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us
I'm reading Mike Rose's new book: Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us, and wondered if some others might like to join me. I just got it last night--it wasn't even supposed to be available until early September.
A note about the book, but first about me: my astrological sign is Libra, which I don't ordinarily pay too much attention to, but I often recall that people of that sign are supposed to like books. And...Oh! Do I like books. Not just for the information or stories they contain, but books themselves, as objects. I like the feel of book that's sized just right to fit in the palms of your hands. I like book covers, book print, book pages, the whispy way you can thumb over a book's edges, even get a breeze on your face while doing so. I like the smell of books. So whether it's because of my astrological sign or not, I'm a connoisseur of books.
And I want to say that Mike Rose's new book is perfect--as an object. It's small (18 1/2 cm by 12 cm), compact, less than 200 pages. It's beautifully designed. I want to hold it the palms of my hands, tuck it in a pocket, carry it around. I love the photograph on the cover: the one-room rural schoolhouse, the grassy field by the thin dirt road, the image that's mostly blue sky.
Gosh, I could never write this for an Amazon review; it wouldn't be appropriate! You hear all the warnings about judging a book by its cover, well, I'm much worse that that. ("This book smells good...")
I've started reading it already and the ideas seem every bit as good as the book design, which in this case is really saying something.
From the preface:
"Why School? comes from a professional lifetime in classrooms, creating and running educational programs, teaching and researching, writing and thinking about education and human development. It offers a series of appeals for big-hearted social policy and an embrace of teh ideals of democratic education--from the way we define and structure opportunity to the way we respond to a child adding a column of numbers. Collectively, the chapters provide a bountiful vision of human potential, illustrated through the schoolhouse, the workplace, and the community.
We need such appeals, I think, because we have lost our way.
We live in an anxious age and seek our grounding, our assurances in ways that don't satisfy our longing--that, in fact, make things worse. We've lost hope in the public sphere and grab at private solutions, which undercut the sharing of obligation and risk and keep us scrambling for individual advantage. We've narrowed the purpose of schooling to economic competitiveness, our kids becoming economic indicators. We've reduced our definition of human development and achievement--that miraculous growth of intelligence, sensibility, and the discover of the world--to a test score. Though we pride ourselves as a nation of opportunity and a second chance, our social policies can be terribly ungenerous. we rush to embrace the new--in work, in goods, in the language we use to describe our problems--yet long for tradition, for craft, for the touch of earth, wood, another hand.
We do live in uncertain and unsettling times, but one cn imagine all sorts of responses and we have been taking--and have been led to take--those that are fear-based, inhumane, less than noble. We yearn for more and as a society deserve better. This yearning was one of the forces that drove the election of Barack Obama.
My hope is that the contents of this book in some small way contribute to a reinvigorated discussion of why we educate in America, maybe through a particular story, maybe because of information I can provide from my own teaching and research, maybe from a perspective that provides a different way to see."
Now isn't that appealing? I'll say it here: the book smells good. It's the scent of warm baked goods, freshly made but likely from an ancient recipe.
I hope that non-American as well as American Fireside members might consider reading the book even though it seems focused on American issues. Surely many of the issues are global, and clearly we benefit in our discussions from a global, diverse sharing of views and strategies for creating the best of all possible worlds in education.
What do you say? Want to get a bunch of us reading it?
A note about the book, but first about me: my astrological sign is Libra, which I don't ordinarily pay too much attention to, but I often recall that people of that sign are supposed to like books. And...Oh! Do I like books. Not just for the information or stories they contain, but books themselves, as objects. I like the feel of book that's sized just right to fit in the palms of your hands. I like book covers, book print, book pages, the whispy way you can thumb over a book's edges, even get a breeze on your face while doing so. I like the smell of books. So whether it's because of my astrological sign or not, I'm a connoisseur of books.
And I want to say that Mike Rose's new book is perfect--as an object. It's small (18 1/2 cm by 12 cm), compact, less than 200 pages. It's beautifully designed. I want to hold it the palms of my hands, tuck it in a pocket, carry it around. I love the photograph on the cover: the one-room rural schoolhouse, the grassy field by the thin dirt road, the image that's mostly blue sky.
Gosh, I could never write this for an Amazon review; it wouldn't be appropriate! You hear all the warnings about judging a book by its cover, well, I'm much worse that that. ("This book smells good...")
I've started reading it already and the ideas seem every bit as good as the book design, which in this case is really saying something.
From the preface:
"Why School? comes from a professional lifetime in classrooms, creating and running educational programs, teaching and researching, writing and thinking about education and human development. It offers a series of appeals for big-hearted social policy and an embrace of teh ideals of democratic education--from the way we define and structure opportunity to the way we respond to a child adding a column of numbers. Collectively, the chapters provide a bountiful vision of human potential, illustrated through the schoolhouse, the workplace, and the community.
We need such appeals, I think, because we have lost our way.
We live in an anxious age and seek our grounding, our assurances in ways that don't satisfy our longing--that, in fact, make things worse. We've lost hope in the public sphere and grab at private solutions, which undercut the sharing of obligation and risk and keep us scrambling for individual advantage. We've narrowed the purpose of schooling to economic competitiveness, our kids becoming economic indicators. We've reduced our definition of human development and achievement--that miraculous growth of intelligence, sensibility, and the discover of the world--to a test score. Though we pride ourselves as a nation of opportunity and a second chance, our social policies can be terribly ungenerous. we rush to embrace the new--in work, in goods, in the language we use to describe our problems--yet long for tradition, for craft, for the touch of earth, wood, another hand.
We do live in uncertain and unsettling times, but one cn imagine all sorts of responses and we have been taking--and have been led to take--those that are fear-based, inhumane, less than noble. We yearn for more and as a society deserve better. This yearning was one of the forces that drove the election of Barack Obama.
My hope is that the contents of this book in some small way contribute to a reinvigorated discussion of why we educate in America, maybe through a particular story, maybe because of information I can provide from my own teaching and research, maybe from a perspective that provides a different way to see."
Now isn't that appealing? I'll say it here: the book smells good. It's the scent of warm baked goods, freshly made but likely from an ancient recipe.
I hope that non-American as well as American Fireside members might consider reading the book even though it seems focused on American issues. Surely many of the issues are global, and clearly we benefit in our discussions from a global, diverse sharing of views and strategies for creating the best of all possible worlds in education.
What do you say? Want to get a bunch of us reading it?
Tags: mike+rose, rose, why+school
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on -
Thanks for introducing this book, Connie.
I ordered it, and when it arrives, I'll read and converse about it.
The questions asked are what drives an author's story--whether non-fiction or fiction.
Looks like Mike Rose's questions are one's close to my own. Hope his story "works" for me and others.
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Permalink Reply by Ian Carmichael on
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It's the real question, isn't it? Most of our discussions are on the what of school - taking the institution as a given. Let's not for a while, and question the institution. I'd love to see a conversation around it (I may have destroyed my book budget for the year, if so, I won't join in with knowledge, but probably 'opine'.)
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Book ordered (don't ask about the budget) let's hope the US can deliver in good time!
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on
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Hello Ian.
Long time, no contact. (Notice am still in 140-character mode used in trying to compose intelligent message on Twitter. ;)
Will try to write longer messages again here at Fireside Learning, although rigor of writing small, if not thinking small, has great effect on both thinking and writing, two sides of same coin.
Skip
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Yep - super to see your by-line, Skip. (And thanks for keeping the delicious links fresh - I've been watching!) I look forward to your participation in this venture - 140 characters and beyond!
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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on
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Good, that's three of us. I hope some more join in. And yes, Skip, it's good to hear from you--it's been a while!
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You guys let me know when you're starting the book, ok? I just read part of a chapter and decided to wait until others were ready. Mike, are you going to read it too? Anyone else?
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Got book, will read!
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Permalink Reply by Bill Pearsall on -
hello - I ran across these posts when I finally got around to logging in again - the book sounds very interesting and I just ordered it - it's amazing that as I begin to despair about where education is supposed to be leading us, I find yet another source of information looking at the same idea and with apparent optimism - I feel a little less like I am in the wilderness
thanks
Bill
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on
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I've read the "Introduction" and "Conclusion" to Mike Rose's Why School.
No thinker in history worth listening to has ever divorced schooling from public good.
The issue has always been in conservative political oligarchies to train new sons to be dictating oligarchs in the image of their fathers.
In Enlightenment republican governments, the issue is one of educating a citizenry to enter voluntarily into a contract with others to achieve self interests in the context of enhancing the common good.
Haven't read the meat of Rose's book, but his philosophical agenda as stated in the two parts I have read is clear. He advocates/agitates for reforming institutional policies to regain the makings of an authentic democratic republic that is locally pragmatic about achieving community (public) outcomes in a progressive way. He is steeped in American liberalism/pragmatism of the Jeffersonian-Dewey tradition.
My question is have we mainstreamed Americans relinquished already the right to call ourselves democratic republicans? Have our schools become the institutional tools for moneyed supremacists with a much narrower and shallow imagination for the American Experiment?
I'll be more specific about what Rose suggests we do, once I've read the meat of the book and, hopefully, Rose is specific about how to change real institutional policies and practices. I'm initially skeptical that a mainstreamed populace anxiously chasing after the advertisers' imagined "good life" have much mindspace left for considering how a much different community of freer and compassionate, yet self-reliant and creatively productive people might be attainable, if only we were educating ourselves to envision and realize it.
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Hi Skip,
Leave it to you to start things up in such an eloquent, philosophical manner. A certain cynicism shows through... Do you think it's too late?
Mike Rose has a voice similar to Deborah Meier, Herbert Kohl. He seems as if he's just stepped out of a Dewey Lab School, all idealistic and invigorated, on a crusade. Yet his crusade isn't energized from a recent immersion in "Progressive School Camp" but rather from a lifetime of studying working people, those outside the golden towers of elitism. He has wisdom, gathered from a lifetime spent interviewing people about how learning goes for them, working step by step to make things better for the individuals he encounters. He has wisdom, too, from seeing clearly his own past, and owning up to how that frames his visions.
I read the book over the weekend. It's straightforward; easy reading. I kept thinking about Daniel, our Daniel from Fireside, the work he's doing in Chicago and other places. I think the book would resonate with him. I thought about Laura and her constant endeavor to uplift her students' writing skills, her goals of helping students gain personal Voices and self-discipline in their work. I thought of Mike and his drive to make us look straight-on at issues of poverty, to not turn away.
I thought of my own class and wondered how I'm doing with establishing a culture of care in which everyone uplifts everyone's capabilities. I feel pretty good about how things are going. Then I wondered how we can "scale up" these individual models of affirmation of community within a cultural/educational climate that has grown increasingly rigid and fearful.
Much to talk about, I'd say. It's a kind of "sleeper book." When I read it the first time I thought, "Eh, nothing much new, just sensible words, good medicine, what's obvious." But the second time through, reading over my underlines, a new picture emerged. There's an urgency--and hopefulness--in what Mike Rose is saying. Let's get to the essence of his view, see how we stand on that.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Pearsall on
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Good evening - I read the book this last weekend and agree with your last paragraph - good words shining some light into a neglected area - lots of encouragement for thought - but I am very disquieted by the whole book and I am certainly not sure why - there is no disagreement - instead, it seems to leave me with the idea (feeling) I should do something; that, once uncovered, this requires my attention and that is disturbing - why school is a very large question
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