BOOK REVIEW: Lives on the Boundary:
A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared
By Mike Rose
EDUCATION & CURRENT PROFESSION
B.A., Loyola University
M.S., University of Southern California
M.A. & PhD., University of California, LA
Currently : Prof. – UCLA, Graduate School
SUMMARY
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and
Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared. New York: Penguin
Books, 1989.
Lives on the Boundary presents the experiences of Mike Rose, a qualified educator,
who as a previously apathetic student growing up in Los Angeles, motivating his
own unprepared students, those typically left behind in American collegiate
settings.
BOOKS BY MIKE ROSE
• An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy,
Learning, and Opportunity (2006)—a collection of
essays exploring various subjects on education
• The Mind At Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the
American Worker (2004)—a study exploring the
complex thinking involved in common labor
• Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, with Ellen Cushman,
Barry Kroll, and Eugene R. Kintgen (2001)—a
collection of essays exploring the use and acquisition
of reading and writing
• Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in
America (1995)—an exploration into the problems and
potential of education in America
• Critical Strategies for Academic Thinking and Writing,
with Malcolm Kiniry (Third Edition, 1997)—a college
textbook that outlines six effective strategies for
thinking and writing
• Lives on the Boundary (1989)—a semiautobiographical account detailing the struggles and
challenges of educationally underprepared students
• Perspectives on Literacy, editor, with Eugene R.
Kintgen and Barry M. Kroll (1988)—a collection of
essays focused on writing and its larger dimensions
• When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block
and Other Composing Problems (1985)—an
examination of the social and cognitive barriers that
impede writing
• Writer’s Block: The Cognitive Dimension (1984)—
study exploring thought patterns that hinder
composition
www.mikerosebooks.com
Rose shares the practices used working with:
ESOL children in East Los Angeles
American Vietnam Veterans studying to reenter
college
Students in college preparation programs
And as a tutorial center administrator
Rose shares the practices he used while working with marginalized groups of
ESOL children in East Los Angeles, American Vietnam Veterans studying to
reenter college, students in college preparation programs and as a tutorial center
administrator.
Rose does not provide details concerning great amounts of academic methodology
in this work as he does in others , but presents significant examples demonstrating
specific, effective methods he used.
Rose advocates the type of learning suggested by Professor Erika Lindemann
asserting: “Scholars repeatedly have concluded that formal grammar instruction
doesn’t improve writing ability…Students learn to write by writing, not by
analyzing or diagramming sentences someone else has written, not by memorizing
parts of speech divorced from the context of student prose” (73).
Rose’s demonstrates how the adoption of Lindemann’s suggested habitual writing
by students on a wide variety of topics may ultimately assist students with
proficiency for developing improved writing abilities.
Rose’s account acknowledges how his teacher-mentor presented students with
fundamental concepts of literature each time they gathered, challenged them by
introducing a variety of works by prevalent philosophers and encouraged them to
elevate their thinking in all spheres with the readings.
Reflecting on the difficulty of teaching these students, Rose claims: “Ours is the
first society in history to expect so many of its people to be able to perform …very
sophisticated literacy activities…It is a charge most of them simply are not
equipped to fulfill, for our educational ideals far outstrip our economic and
political priorities” (188).
For readers seeking a pedagogical book that quickly gets to the point, Lives on the
Boundary does not fit that bill. Rose instead delves deeply into the background
information of his life and the lives of his students to share his experience with and
as one of America’s educationally underprepared.
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TEXT REVIEW: THEY SAY, I SAY
The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing
By Drs. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein-Graff
Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.
In They Say/I Say, authors, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein use practical methods and a template-heavy model to teach students ways to present their material by effectively
contrasting it with the ideas of others.
They Say/I Say successfully illustrates ways for student- learners to produce writing that is stylistic and compelling to readers.
Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr., letter is held up as an excellent way of using the “they say/I say” mode of writing.
Kenneth Burke’s analogy from Philosophy of Literary Form presents the scenario of entering a conversation, already in progress, in which the new speaker must take a stance.
For those critical of the use of templates, the authors respond, “Creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms, but in the imaginative use of them.”
Students may use the templates in their drafting process and later revise them to fit ideas they wish to convey. The templates may also begin as part of the process to inspire direction for
writing.
Dr. Cathy Birkenstein is co-director of the Writing in the Disciplines program and a lecturer in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from Loyola
University in Chicago in American literature and has published essays on writing, most recently in College English, and, with Gerald Graff, in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Academe, and College Composition and Communication.1
Dr. Gerald Graff is a Professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also served as President of Modern Languages Association in 2008. Dr. Graff
completed his BA in English from the University of Chicago, a graduate degree and PhD in English and American literature at Stanford. 2
SOURCE 1: http://www.communicationforchange.com.au/2010/05/cathy-birkenstein-and-gerald-graff/
SOURCE 2: http://tigger.uic.edu/~ggraff/Gerald_Graff,_Ph.D./biography.html
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