Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us

by Mike Rose

Why School? is a little book driven by big questions. What does it mean to be educated? What is intelligence? How should we think about intelligence, education, and opportunity in an open society? Drawing on forty years of teaching and research and "a profound understanding of the opportunities, both intellectual and economic, that come from education" (Booklist), award-winning author Mike Rose reflects on these and other questions related to public schooling in America. He answers them in beautifully written chapters that are both rich in detail and informed by an extensive knowledge of history, the psychology of learning, and the politics of education.

This paperback edition includes three new chapters showing how cognitive science actually narrows our understanding of learning, how to increase college graduation rates, and how to value the teaching of basic skills. An updated introduction by Rose, who has been hailed as "a superb writer and an even better storyteller" (TLN Teachers Network), reflects on recent developments in school reform. Lauded as "a beautifully written work of literary nonfiction" (The Christian Science Monitor) and called "stunning" by the New Educator Journal, Why School? offers an eloquent call for a bountiful democratic vision of the purpose of schooling.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, Philosophy, Professional Development, Essays, Theory

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Mike Rose spent his career in public service, first as a city planner and eventually as a town manager. Mike’s fertile imagination and desire to be a writer started at an early age. Being from a family with an Irish Catholic background, Mike had his share of funny stories and wonderful characters. Add to that nearly 40 years of dealing with the public and elected officials, well, books practically write themselves.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Mike Rose, but this is not his finest work. He outlines his philosophy in what feels like a series of paper abstracts, punctuated with occasional anecdotes but little in the way of detailed evidence. Compared to POSSIBLE LIVES, the Rose book that inspired me long ago to get into teaching, WHY SCHOOL seems like a quick dip in the pond as opposed to a serious exploration of philosophy and policy. The ideas it raises, by Rose's own admission, deserve public attention and debate. I agree with nearly everything he says about the need to examine what we feel the purpose of school should be, what definitions of intelligence will we embrace, how will we reform schools from a holistic, class-conscious point of view not addressed in the narrow language of accountability and testing...but if Rose isn't going to give full due to these ideas himself, how can he expect the rest of us to? A good "get them thinking" book for Edschool students, perhaps. Stick with Jonathan Kozol or Alfie Cohn or Paulo Freire if you want these same ideas handled in more depth.

[ayanami · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is comprised of many short chapters, each tackling an issue related to American education. It covers some great topics, all quite relevant to the current educational landscape but the chapters are so short that the author isn't able to go into very much detail. Many of the chapters feel like introductions to much longer essays, but before you can get to the meat of the issue, the chapter ends, and you're confronted with the next topic. This isn't so much a book as it is a collection of short introductions to education-related concerns. I think it's adequate as a starting point to think about how we conceive of and approach school and learning, but I would have liked to read about some of the topics in more detail.

I did enjoy the chapter concerning intelligence-- Rose brings up a very good point about how we tend to categorize people, their work and their intelligence in terms of dichotomies-- industrial work (hand) vs. creative work (brain), manual labour vs. intellectual work, university education(theoretical/academic) vs. vocational education (practical), etc. Just because someone does industrial work doesn't mean they are any less intelligent than a white-collar employee. A factory worker, to use his example, needs a rich knowledge of the materials and tools used in his work, needs problem solving skills, be efficient, etc.

[Art · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Rose's writing style. It is deceptively simple and extremely honest. In a baker's dozen essays he lays out the framework for a new type of conversation about education in America. Instead of shouting slogans, we need to discuss what we consider education to be, what outcomes (besides higher test scores) we really want, how we really want our children to be taught and to learn.

Instead of the YOYO (your on your own) paradigm his philosophy falls more along WITT-y (we're all in this together) principles. He reminds us that for a long time in America education was used as a means to help insure equality. Is this a principle to be relegated to the past or is it a principle we still need to strive for? If education is not used as a means to help all Americans reach some level of equality, what is it to be used for?

I hope that people in high places (Duncan? Obama?) read this book and start asking these kinds of questions. Even more, I hope they start questioning whether or not the policies they are perpetuating and extending are the way we want to change education in this country.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some nice passages and chapters that went into some really important issues in education, including the high stakes testing regime and what a "healthy" school-business relationship might look like. But ultimately these were treated in small vignette-like form, and I thus often found the analysis lacking the depth I was looking for.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Rose has been one of my favorite education writers since I read his Lives on the Boundary back in the early '90s. A product of a working class school system who was turned on to literature by a high school English teacher and went on to achieve not only a college-degree but also a Ph.D, Rose has devoted his working life to helping under-prepared and marginalized students make it to and through college, focusing on developmental--often called "remedial" English classes. In short, he's devoted to students like mine. Here he argues for a revolution in American discourse about education--what it means and who it is for: "Public discourse, heard frequently enough and over time, affects the way we think, vote, and lead our lives. I worry that the dominant vocabulary about schooling limits our shared respect for the extraordinary nature of thinking and learning, and lessens our sense of social obligation. So it becomes possible for us to affirm that the most meaningful evidence of learning is a score on a standardized test, or to reframe the public good in favor of fierce and unequal competition for a particular kind of academic honor. Education is reduced to a cognitive horse race" (29). In contrast to this status quo, Rose uses his experience visiting schools and communities across the country to suggest how we might reframe our society's perspective on education and re-invigorate a notion of the common good that has been lost in many circles in recent decades. Part of this means recognizing the impact that poverty has on educational attainment: "Calculating, writing, solving a problem, or recalling information take place someplace with its economics and politics--which can have a profound effect on what goes on in a classroom. Poverty does not necessarily diminish the power of one's mind, but it certainly draws attention to the competing demands of safety and survival: the day-to-day assaults of the neighborhood, just the tense navigation from home to school. The threats to family stability: illness or job loss--tough for any family--can unmoor a poor household. . . . We need public talk that links education to a more decent, thoughtful, open society. Talk that raises in us as a people the appreciation for deliberation and reflection, or for taking intellectual risks and thinking widely--for the sheer power and pleasure of using our minds, alone or in concert with others" (28-9). Rose presents an unabashed, unapologetic liberal view that education is about more than only preparing for jobs, more than just success at narrow skills assessments; rather it is about expanding the mind and experience of all who would like to embark on the journey--and providing the available means for all to do so.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superb writer, taking the responsibility society has towards education seriously and suggesting a different vocabulary to use in dialogue about it. Here is a sample from page 151 -
"... I also heard talk of safety and respect. Commitment to create a safe environment and a respectful regard for the backgrounds and capabilities of the people in it. I saw the effect of high expectations: teachers taking students seriously as intellectual and social beings. I saw what happens when teachers distribute responsibility through a classroom, create opportunities for students to venture opinion, follow a hunch, make something new. I saw the power of bringing students together around common problems and projects - the intellectual and social energy that results, generating vital public space."

I am glad we have thinkers like Mike Rose promoting education, for an ignorant populace will not be able to stand up against the unhealthy social and political policies that will drive us towards fascism.

[Jonathan Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In less than 200 smallish pages (literally - the book could fit easily into a pretty tight front jeans pocket), Rose articulates the causes of many of the problems bedeviling American education in the early 21st century. The biggest of which is our movement away from an education philosophy which balanced preparation for work with preparation for citizenship and preparation for living a life well led. Our 21st century public values are corporatist, work fetishizing and imbalanced - Rose makes that case gently and well. Well worth reading.

[Caroline Lampinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to rate this 3/5, but as a former teacher I didn't find any of the information groundbreaking and likely wouldn't have finished it if it wasn't required for a seminar. I love the style, I love the optimism, and I love how gentle Mike Rose is in his language, while still having a clear message. It's a nice change from the hellfire and extreme pessimism in most non-fiction books about education... and I found the later chapters more productive... but overall it was slow and extremely generalized.

[Kara Poe Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, quick, and insightful read on the purposes of schooling in America and how those purposes have shifted over time. Explores the cost of this shift to producing workers and questions some of our assumptions about opportunity, intelligence, and schooling. Excellent! My students enjoyed it as well.

[Jed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential big-picture thinking for anyone interested in education.

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mike Rose last updated his wide-reaching reflections on public education in 2014, so in certain ways it feels dated with its focus on No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and the fact that it is missing the more recent attacks on teachers as groomers and indoctrinators. But his words remain relevant because he’s so adept at teasing out the problematic trends that underlie these issues, and these problematic trends are very much still with us.

Education is still “dominated by a language of test scores and economic competitiveness,” often at the expense of intellectual, civic, and moral concerns. Business types and neoliberal strategists are still pushing for cost-cutting measures. One of the most notable examples of this is the outsourcing of an involved classroom education to a one-size-fits-all approach (Rose talks about Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, while the more recent iteration of this would be to have one person “teach” a multitude of students via Zoom). And, of course, the assumption that teaching is easy enough for anyone to do is still with us.

So much of Rose’s philosophy of education is built upon the veneration of democracy, how for a democracy to flourish it needs citizens who believe in free inquiry and the building of knowledge and different perspectives. Only then will they become active participants in government proceedings and empowered in their own lives. And yet so many of the muscles necessary for people to be engaged in thoughtful public discourse have become desiccated.

On multiple occasions, Rose discusses the dichotomy between academic skills and vocational ones. It is a split he rightly decries, citing developmental psychologists like Howard Gardner who have shown the sundry ways people can be intelligent. But his focus is on praising the intelligence required to do most vocational work, something I think many people have come to embrace. We had a carpenter come in to help us with a recent high school play production, and I was in awe of the imagination he had for creating some of our major set pieces. Rose says little, however, about the importance of traditional academic intelligence, the components of which should be the ones to help people engage in democracy, and in my experience, these are the ones that need support, as there always seems to be increasing pressure to give students the concrete job skills they need and bypass anything more abstract that can’t be quickly commodified.

I’m well aware that there are factors in play that go well beyond the school space itself. It’s hard to think and consider things like the humanities that seem at such a distance at first when economic and cultural factors like indigence and endless entertainment obscure greater possibilities. But while broader poverty explains parts of the achievement gap, it doesn’t explain why even more affluent students still care little for genuine thought.

Rose touches on this problem of low achievement and disengagement when he discusses the business community’s “helpful” contributions to education. In an essay that is insightful–if not softened by too many qualifications–he argues that when businesses partner up with public schools, they may, on the surface, provide assistance, but there are always strings attached. And those same businesses often lobby for policies–lower wages, less unionization, etc.–that actively harm families and their kids’ educational outcomes.

Beyond this, it may be that the commercial ethos has won out in the larger culture, and these dominant forces of society trickle down into education. Students more and more, in my experience, do very little because it might empower them or expand their horizons. Instead, they do the least they can that still might benefit them. They scrape by with grades just decent enough to look good on a resume or college application and, thus, present the veneer of hard work and knowledge fought for and won without the time and effort it actually takes to do this. Their actions might as well be an analogue to an employer who minimizes costs to maximize profits.

I could recount many examples to illustrate this phenomenon, but I will stick with a recent one. I was chatting with a student and his parents at conferences. The student’s mom wanted him to earn some additional credentials by getting more class credits than he needed, and he was on track to do this. However, this was the same student who had recently been caught plagiarizing with ChatGPT, who spent almost every class period messing around with his soccer buddies and all his after school hours focusing on sports and girls (and cheating on his girlfriend as well) rather than on anything academic. I know laziness and apathy have long been endemic to the teenage world, but it almost feels like even parents are only concerned with how things look on paper.

At one point, Rose asks how people nowadays would define intelligence. Unfortunately, I think many of them would define it as being able to make money, no matter what the cost to the climate, to the lives of others, even to democracy.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goated - awakened a sleeper cell in me

[Jeremy Paden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why School? Is good. It’s not as good as Lives on the Boundaries or The Mind at Work, the two other Rose books I’ve read. But it is a different kind of book. It’s more policy driven than story driven. But it’s policy driven for a general audience. Yet, it seems that those who will resonate most with it are those already engaged in thinking deeply about education. Thus, there are some insights, but the book as a whole seems like a loser collection of essays.

The Afterward is great and I will probably assign it in my introductory writing classes (paired with a chapter or three from one of his other books) as the advice he gives on writing is widely applicable.

[Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having come out towards the tail end of the Obama administration and right before they geared up for the Every Student Succeeds Act, one would think the material here is dated. Not so. Mike Rose is a pedagogue in the best sense, and before the term “social justice warrior” was coined and hijacked by the right in the contemptuous sense that it wears today, Rose was quietly amassing a case against the school-as-business, standards-are-all, devil-take-the-hindmost mantra we’re all but swimming in these days. Among the many points worth revisiting: Rose wants to reclaim vocational education from the dichotomy it currently occupies with “academic curriculum” since manual labor requires no small amount of cognitive skills, and he thinks that there is much to reform in education, but until we acknowledge the “porous” walls of our public schools and address some extraneous factors as well, we’re not going to get the results we want. He echoes much in here that anyone who cares about education will doubtless be familiar with. I took some issue with his criticism of Professor X’s “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” (Rose responded to the book in “a separate blog post)—X’s main grievance was how to prepare adult college students unready for college with the limited time, faculties and energy he had available after working a full day, while Rose’s response seems to be simply “Appeal to the student directly,” but then, Rose would probably find fault with many worthy teaching styles that adhere to a standard without acknowledging the student’s individualism. Hard to square that circle these days and stay employed, or at least well-evaluated. Rose always comes out in favor of the student. He cares. He makes you care more. He’s well worth reading.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

As other reviewers have stated this is a little book that does ask big questions and they are not easily answered. What Rose does well, and with gusto, is to humanize these questions by providing us with not just statistics which are often used, but with people - complex examples that humanize the need for a response to these questions. Whether he is recalling his own experience in education as a student misplaced in the tracking system or recalling Josie or Anthony to illustrate the role education plays in diverse and complicated lives, Rose never loses sight of the fact that education may be backed by psychology, economy, science, or some other fields at different times in history - but that it is always a human experience. The root of education is based on our innate, deep, and meaningful views of humanity.

The book is well served to many types of readers - educators will nod along in agreement with some of the struggles, but people in other fields will realize that the innate struggle of education is one of human value and thus is a struggle worth having. Rose has created a work that would benefit all politicians or social crusaders wishing to discuss or impact education because the statistics are not enough - statistics do not replace all elements in any human endeavor.

To close the review I will say this, I thought enough about the work to make it part of a course I teach on "Education and the American Culture" - and anytime I am willing to teach from a book, one can take that as a sign of high recommendation.

[Eli Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Why School? and countless other articles by Mike Rose during my time in college, I am convinced that Rose is the most democratic thinker and writer, and I hope for a future that sheds light on his ideas in public discourse on education, public policy, and life at-large.

As a whole, Why School? paints an image of school as a mechanism for social good, illustrating throughout 13 vignettes, anecdotes, and opinion pieces how school should be and should function so it is both meaningful for students and sustainable for teachers. Beyond that, Rose cuts through all of the "technocratic" reforms on education, problematizing how a unidimensional gaze on standards and STEM could have deleterious effects on achieving a well-rounded education that ensures teachers are being treated as experts in their fields, not just curriculum followers.

Though utopic at times, Why School? validated and gave language to many of the feelings I have about being a public school teacher in today's social and political climate. We need more people like Rose at the helm of all big social institutions.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I like that a fellow parent at my daughter's school organized a discussion around this book, and that discussion was fruitful, I didn't think the book itself fulfilled its potential. It seemed a bit disjointed -- like several essays that had been published elsewhere and cobbled together -- and sure enough, that's what it is. I wonder if other blogs turned into books read like this. It probably takes a darned good editor to overcome that.

That said, Rose is certainly preaching to the choir with this reader. In order to convince others, I think he would benefit from fewer one-on-one and navel-gazing examples and more classroom snapshots. I do like that he includes essays on business in education and re-mediating remediation at the college level.

Even if his editing was off, he does say that he means for the book to reinvigorate discussion about why we educate, and the book did serve its purpose at one Baltimore public school. That is saying something!

[Sean Blevins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Public education is about more than "reading 'riting and 'rithmatic." It's about community and being part of a group. It's about a shared sense of being, where individuals come together for the common good.

This is lost in the focus on standards-based testing. There are goods that cannot be quantified. Those goods are neglected in our current discourse about education.

The question that is absent from almost all talk about education is also the most important question: "What is the purpose of education?" The only answer we seem to have to that nowadays is "job preparation." Ok. There is a legitimate economic end served by education. But is that it? Rose - and I - would argue there's more. There are also cultural, democratic, and humanistic ends served by education. These, however, do not hold the sway they once did. And for this, education, and the public that depends upon it, suffers.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impassioned defense of the ideals behind the American experiment with public education.

[Robert Justice · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a series of short essays, education veteran Mike Rose gives us a little insight into the true importance of educating the young people of America.
In a modern school culture that values the grade over everything else, Rose reminds us that the most important aspect of education isn't in the letter or the test score but in the character that was molded along the way.
School finds its true value in its ability to bring people out of seemingly hopeless situations and give them hope to achieve great things in the public square.
Touching on such topics as the No Child Left Behind Act and the integration of Common Core into every orifice of public school life, Rose reminds us that the true object of a teacher's career is the student. If educators lose sight of this fact, then everything else that may be done in education becomes vanity.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is less of a book and more of a treatise on education reform. I'm a sucker for that; rote memorization and the endless slog of drills and math problems killed much of my enthusiasm for structured learning. But I love learning! I can't stop reading, yet school, in its current state, is so numb to application, interest, and nuance that any motivation besides "do work get grade" is squashed.

I wish this was a longer book with more concrete examples of success, failure, and ideas for involvement. As it stands, it's a solid argument that something must be done, though it's unclear what that something is.

[Brenda Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be required reading for everyone: not just educators, or the politicians making decisions about public education, but every single person should read this book. We are all invested in public education, even those in denial about its importance, and this book analyzes the issues and raises the questions that are imperative to understanding the value of public education, its purposes, and what it should be composed of. Rose combines anecdotal stories with research and his wealth of education and experience to make the topic understandable to anyone. I just can't recommend this book enough.

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful and thought-provoking collection of essays. Mike Rose reflects on the multiple purposes we've sought to fulfill in this country through public schooling, worrying that we've begun to focus less on schooling for citizenship and more on schooling for shaping the future contributors to the economy. Rose is especially critical of standards/accountability and the corporate reform movements for compromising the democratic ideals that form the basis of our public school system (and our country). He maintains a nice blog, too, where he covers similar issues.

[Principal Klemburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short but sweet collection of essays probes the "why" behind schooling in our country, exploring remedial programs, the challenges for students with "weak" preparation for college-level work, the dichotomy between our discourse of "hand vs. mind" knowledge and the inherent values we place on the application of knowledge rather than the practical use of knowledge.

I found the book to be inspiring in its questioning of why we have the school system we have, but it did not offer much in the realm of prescriptive remedies or even to sway existing mindsets; it was without teeth.

[Karime · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads a lot like an opinion piece; I thought that the lack of references would not bother me, but it did because his claims were not backed up by anything at all, the book is good at introducing vague notions of important issues but fails to really put forward the WHY of their importance. Like another review said, we can read instead something by Alfie Kohn, Paulo Freire, or Noam Chomski, for deeper, and concise conversations about the vague points Mike Rose kind of alludes to. I would add to the list the researchers Naomi Klein, and Diane Ravitch.

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to the philosophy of education. Rose reflects on some of the most important questions we still face: What is school for? What does it mean to be educated? How should educational opportunities be distributed? What is the place of remedial education? How should education be assessed? What are the benefits and dangers of the close association of business with education? How does the political polarization of public discourse harm the educational enterprise?

[R.H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good series of Op-Ed pieces about educational philosophy, classism and the myth of meritocracy in America. Plus, in this age of electronic everything, the book is very pleasant to hold and look at. A very nice size for toting around, a well composed photo on the cover and chapters that are short enough to read in whatever scraps of time your busy schedule as a working-class intellectual affords you.

[Alexander Carver · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a collection of essays on what we value and how that reflects how we operate our institutions of education, it is very successful. Mr. Rose made a great deal of points that resonated me with me, a former teacher. Many of his examples perfectly illustrate the reasons I left the profession, and highlight the tenacity and spirit of those who still do their best to educate our youth despite being dealt a bad hand.

[Tori Hook · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, if a little dry at times. Rose brilliantly lays out the problems inherent in the U.S. educational system from the language we use (reminiscent of business and economy) to the ways we measure it (the pros and cons of standardization). Throughout, Rose fights for the inherent good of education and the ability of each person to learn. I found it very important to read as an educator.

[ThienVinh]

FYI: I'm the last person thanked in the acknowledgments. Pretty sweet. Mike thinks deeply about the philosophy of education -- he dares to ask big questions and provide answers to how we need to reclaim education. I've just started reading this book and it's incredibly moving. I also love his writing style.