Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared, has worked for twenty years "with children and adults deemed slow or remedial or underprepared" (xi). What makes the book so effective is not only the author's involvement with his "underprepared" students, but his account of his own very personal experiences with discouragement and even despair in his education. Rose helps direct the Writing Programs at UCLA, has written various books on education, language and literacy, and is the recipient of a number of awards honoring his work in education.
The thesis of this study is that the success of Rose's book rests not on the factual analysis of his subject, but instead on his personal involvement with the students, an involvement which to an important degree is based on his own experience as an "underprepared" student.
If any change is to be brought about with respect to the educational opportunities of such students, it is necessary first that the nation's people become not only aware of such students but that they empathize emotionally with them. We are in an era of conservative fiscal policy in which every disadvantaged group must compete for dwindling public and private funding. Without some sort of profound identification with the subjects of any study such as Rose's, the meaningful, practical impact will be minor if anything at all. Rose is able to lead the reader into a state of empathy with these students because Rose himself was the victim of the same sort of destructive labeling process.
For Rose, the antidote to the despair of these students'
situations is hope: "This is why the current perception of educational need is so limited: It substitutes terror for awe. But it is not terror that fosters learning, it is hope, everyday heroics, the power of the common play of the human mind" (242).
But it is not a hope without roots in action and tangible results. After ...