Lives On The Boundary

These chapters of Lives on the Boundary are long and dense, and although they remain autobiographical and tell Rose’s story, they begin to focus more strongly on the central problems of the American education system. Ultimately, what these chapters show is that vocational/remedial students come in all shapes and sizes, from diverse backgrounds, and are all ages. Despite these differences, they have three things in common: they are left behind at a young age, they carry the stigma of remediation, and they suffer from educational inequality.

Rose spends quite a bit of time sharing the story of Harold Morton, a young boy from El Monte who ends up in his remedial writing class. Harold has been labeled special needs by the school system, but when Rose digs into Harold’s records, he finds a more complicated story. Harold’s first-grade test scores put him in the “high average” category for literacy skills, which “predicted a good chance of success in learning to read” (121). This shocks Rose, given Harold’s current struggles with reading and writing. He soon finds the problem—his first-grade teacher identifies Harold as “unpredictable” and in need of “medical help,” even as she says he has “real ability” (121).

These assessments follow Harold, and when he is tested again in second grade, he is reading only slightly below grade level. And yet, the teacher’s commentary remains the same: she says he has progressed little despite becoming more verbal, and his referral for diagnostic testing emphasizes Harold’s negative behavior. Rose realizes that these reports “might have been necessary to get action,” but they also “pretty convincingly defined Harold as a marginal child” (122). Harold starts falling through the cracks as early as first grade, which becomes the through-line for all of Rose’s El Monte students. But it is also the case for Rose’s adult learners, too. The veterans Rose teaches have academic histories “like the kids in El Monte and the guys in Voc. Ed” (134). Just like Rose, who only caught up through intervention from his professors, when remedial students fall behind, they stay behind. The struggle continues well into adulthood, where adult students try to rally “for one last go” at an education (134). All of Rose’s students are people who slipped through the cracks at a young age, and their educational deficiencies continue to compound unless they receive quality help along the way.

Additionally, all of Rose’s students share the stigma of being labeled “remedial” or “slow learners.” Rose’s adult learners struggle with these distinctions. For instance, Jon Davis, one of the students in the Veteran’s Program, only joined the program to get a reprieve from military life. He entered Rose’s classroom as someone who struggled through school, and he never saw himself “as an intellectual” (153). It takes Rose’s help for him to realize he wants to write, but only because Rose works to change the way Davis thinks of himself. Readers see this in Tranquilino, one of Rose’s adult English as a Second Language students from El Monte. Although his English improves significantly, he still apologizes for the “poor way” he expresses himself (131).

The labels these adults carry—that tell them they are remedial, that they are slow, that they are somehow less—are not limited to the classroom. They internalize them and start thinking of themselves in these negative terms. Rose explains that this is “how South Vermont kept hold of its errant children,” and he goes on to say that “the diminished sense of what you can be continues to shape your identity. You live with decayed images of the possible” (105). In other words, when a person begins to think of himself as incapable and dumb, it shapes his identity in a way that limits his opportunities.

Finally, Rose argues that all of these things contribute to a larger system of educational inequality, one which affects each of his students, regardless of age, race, or class. Rose tells readers that most students who end up in vocational education are there as a consequence of outside factors beyond their control. For example, all of his El Monte students come from poverty, and many of them suffer from much worse. Rose says that his student, Ray, “lived with battling alcoholic parents,” and he sits outside the school building hours before the classes begin (112). Terry’s mother is a member of a white supremacist motorcycle gang and is “likely a prostitute,” and Rosemary is one of ten children and suffers from old-fashioned parental neglect (112). The El Monte students have little to no support at home, which manifests as poor performance or acting out in the classroom.

Through Rose’s narrative, readers discover these students are far from stupid; instead, readers start to see them as victims. And this is where Rose believes that the school system fails: instead of finding a way to address students’ needs inside and outside the classroom, the “various remedial procedures” of the American school system ignore students’ circumstances and instead “wreak profound harm on our children, usually […] those who are already behind the economic and political eight ball” (127). Rose takes this idea one step further and argues that students are often remediated because of these socioeconomic factors, and vocational-education programs become a convenient way to brush aside those who need the most help. Finally, Rose sums up his argument with one critical question: “can we really say that kids like those I taught have equal access to America’s educational resources?” (128). While Rose does not provide readers with a direct answer, the proof he lays out speaks for itself—Rose’s remedial students do not have the same educational opportunities as their peers.