Education In Mike Rose's 'I Just Wanna Be Average'

In his narrative “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Mike Rose writes, “Students float to the mark you set.” (1989, p.2) This is an injustice to students who are viewed as “slow”. How would education be different if instead of lowering learning standards, educators raised their expectations of what “slow” students are capable of? Not all students are guided towards success in education, it really reflects on the attitudes of primary literacy sponsors. All students deserve educators who are invested in their success. Inequality based on academic merit translates to vocational students feeling a loss in identity, while college prep students have literacy sponsors propelling them to high achievements. The “true job skills” are not trade work, but “to

Once this becomes the norm for teachers they tend to become uninteresting, and students are the ones reaping the consequences. Rose acknowledged this cycle of learning apathy, writing, “But mostly the teachers had no idea of how to engage the imaginations of us kids who were scuttling along at the bottom of the pond”(1989, p.2).

This disconnect is largely responsible for the typical disinterest/indifference seen among students in vocational tracks. When literacy sponsors have negative impacts on students learning this often plays out in a functional type of literacy. The danger in functional literacy resides in its ability to protect the status quo or protect minimal standards. When literacy sponsors “recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy” or only provide a minimal standard, students suffer in their education, economic opportunities, and view themselves pessimistically and unfavorably as able students.

Unfortunately many students have limited their academic achievements because frequently literacy sponsors keep low learning standards. In Rose’s narrative he

Knoblauch argues that there are many definitions of literacy that impact people’s lives. Although he argues there are many definitions, he focused on four types of literacy that are most common in society. Knoblauch labels them as functional, cultural, personal-growth/liberal, and critical literacy. He defines functional literacy as a level of literacy that is “readying people for the necessities of daily life—writing checks, reading sets of instructions”(1990, p. 3) and other basic reading and writing skills. However, he also warns that there are hidden agendas in these types of defined literacies. Ill prepared teachers who do not connect to and challenge their students result in no critical literacy and very little