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When the Light Goes on: The Life-Changing Wonder of Learning in an Age of Metrics, Screens, and Diminished Human Connection
The final work from one of the most beloved voices in American education explores stories and lessons of transformative experiences in education
For more than a generation, American education has been structured as though it was built of and for concepts, not people. This has transformed education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a sales platform for high-tech entrepreneurs; and a fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt.
In When the Light Goes On, educator Mike Rose features the stories of people of all ages and backgrounds to illuminate how education has added meaning to their lives. The inspiring stories include:
-A supermarket checker whose job wore away his soul takes a remedial math class that starts him on a path to
architecture school
-A young man badly injured in a motorcycle accident finds both rehabilitation and a career in a welding program.
-A transgender youth's odyssey to self-definition extends though courses in social sciences and campus advocacy groups.
-A Native American athlete finds graduate study as a way to use her celebrity to articulate the needs of her people.
When the Light Goes On helps us dig through the discord and fragmentation of school politics and policy to reclaim the mind and heart of education. Through various students' stories and his own, Rose provides an urgent reminder of the core purpose of education: to learn about ourselves and the world around us, to spark new interests, and to experience with guidance both the fulfillment and the uncertainty of exploring our limits--all in the service of creating a meaningful life.
For more than a generation, American education has been structured as though it was built of and for concepts, not people. This has transformed education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a sales platform for high-tech entrepreneurs; and a fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt.
In When the Light Goes On, educator Mike Rose features the stories of people of all ages and backgrounds to illuminate how education has added meaning to their lives. The inspiring stories include:
-A supermarket checker whose job wore away his soul takes a remedial math class that starts him on a path to
architecture school
-A young man badly injured in a motorcycle accident finds both rehabilitation and a career in a welding program.
-A transgender youth's odyssey to self-definition extends though courses in social sciences and campus advocacy groups.
-A Native American athlete finds graduate study as a way to use her celebrity to articulate the needs of her people.
When the Light Goes On helps us dig through the discord and fragmentation of school politics and policy to reclaim the mind and heart of education. Through various students' stories and his own, Rose provides an urgent reminder of the core purpose of education: to learn about ourselves and the world around us, to spark new interests, and to experience with guidance both the fulfillment and the uncertainty of exploring our limits--all in the service of creating a meaningful life.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published February 28, 2023
5 people are currently reading
1761 people want to read
About the author
Mike Rose
59 books26 followersMike 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 15, 2023
I have always appreciated all of Mike Rose's work, and I'm so sorry he's gone.
"Education is human work with human beings. . . . We have been converting education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a laboratory for magic-bullet reforms; a platform for high-tech utopians and entrepreneurs; an da fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt and frenzy." (xi). Preach, brother.
He connects with something David Graeber says in Utopia of Rules, that the language of bureacracy (Rose's "concepts of high technology, economics, and schools of management" has permeated everything (3). "Can you remember a time when federal policy makers, let alone local school boards, championed the cognitive and emotional pleasures of discovery -- what tools enable us to do, awhat ideas enable us to see -- or the value of students exploring their limits, taking intellectual risks, learning to tolerate uncertainty; or the improtanceof imaginign the good life and the good society and how to work toward them?" (3)
(Though all of Rose's work is so ethnographic and grounded and nuanced and perceptive, it does bug me that he doesn't discuss the intense and coordinated effort to destroy public schools that has been in its most recent phase in the past 50 years.)
Tells the story of Dorie, who felt alone and as though her friends didn't know her, and also from the practice of reflection in English class "started thinking 'what the hell's going on with _my_ life?" (34).
About my own predilection to have my own copies of books important to me: "Great Books champion Mortimer Adler advocates marking a book as the best way to make it "part of yourself."
"Books for Jack offer a life of continual discovery and renewal: 'It's new knowledge sitting on the horizon that keeps me alive and thriving.'" (43).
"In every story, knowledge is not only valued and used but also affects people's sense of who they are, from the young writers gaining a fuller appreciation of themselves _as writers_ to the student nurse reflecting on her teacher's judgment that 'I was meant to do this.'" (77).
"The affirmation of another person's ability is one of the beautiful and mysterious things we can do for each other" (88).
"We want our lives to matter, even if we say or do things that suggest otherwise." (96).
On the dangers of separating social/emotional learning from content: "the motives that drive learning, the subject matter they pursue and their feelings about it, the qualities of their character, and the identities they shape are all of a piece - and from their development emerges not only a defining self but social and political commitments as well" (113). "notable how frequently in people's early recollections that emotional well-being and a sense of self-worth are connected to an activity with significant cognitive content: helping other children with math or reading, or translating for new arrivals, or receiving public acknowledgement for work on a difficult task . . . the importance of children witnessing their own emerging competence as they take on a challenging activity -- realizing that, as she puts it, 'I'm doing something big in my world.'" (198).
Carl's college course, in which he read _The Invisible Man_ "changed the way I thought about what it means to be Black and to have social consciousness" . . . to be immersed in Black literature and history, to be urged and guided to think critically and creatively about it, to be, in fact, participating in this tradition yourself - well, this is intellectually and existentially liberating and broadens your understanding of what education can do. 'I realized I can actually use what I'm learning to make things change.'" (119)
Of the books Rose read in the course in which the light went on for him, taught by a young teacher fresh from a classics education at an upper-crust university: "There was no implication that these books were not for people like us -- or that reading them would make us better human beings. He didn't lay on us any messages of cultural uplift. Here are the books, he seemed to say. They're important. And hard. And full of ideas for us to discuss." (190).
themes:
-- experience of learning and the effects learning has on the quality of their lives "We get reports on the psychometric and economics of learning but not what could be called the biography of learning -- how learning is lived" (192).
"We all want to feel valued and respected, and adolescence, developmental psychologists tell us, is a time of especially strong need for acknowledgement and peer approval - and for involvement in a larger purpose" (202).
Israel Scheffler, potential is "not simply a fixed entity or quality that some people have and some don't. Potential can be generated in particular kinds of resource-rich settings and through nurturing and guiding interactions. We have seen, for example, the growth-fostering power of a valued person believing in us, the effect that belief has on our assessment of ourselves and on our imagining of a self that is yet to be. 'Potential . . . is our projection of something into the future." (216).
"Education is human work with human beings. . . . We have been converting education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a laboratory for magic-bullet reforms; a platform for high-tech utopians and entrepreneurs; an da fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt and frenzy." (xi). Preach, brother.
He connects with something David Graeber says in Utopia of Rules, that the language of bureacracy (Rose's "concepts of high technology, economics, and schools of management" has permeated everything (3). "Can you remember a time when federal policy makers, let alone local school boards, championed the cognitive and emotional pleasures of discovery -- what tools enable us to do, awhat ideas enable us to see -- or the value of students exploring their limits, taking intellectual risks, learning to tolerate uncertainty; or the improtanceof imaginign the good life and the good society and how to work toward them?" (3)
(Though all of Rose's work is so ethnographic and grounded and nuanced and perceptive, it does bug me that he doesn't discuss the intense and coordinated effort to destroy public schools that has been in its most recent phase in the past 50 years.)
Tells the story of Dorie, who felt alone and as though her friends didn't know her, and also from the practice of reflection in English class "started thinking 'what the hell's going on with _my_ life?" (34).
About my own predilection to have my own copies of books important to me: "Great Books champion Mortimer Adler advocates marking a book as the best way to make it "part of yourself."
"Books for Jack offer a life of continual discovery and renewal: 'It's new knowledge sitting on the horizon that keeps me alive and thriving.'" (43).
"In every story, knowledge is not only valued and used but also affects people's sense of who they are, from the young writers gaining a fuller appreciation of themselves _as writers_ to the student nurse reflecting on her teacher's judgment that 'I was meant to do this.'" (77).
"The affirmation of another person's ability is one of the beautiful and mysterious things we can do for each other" (88).
"We want our lives to matter, even if we say or do things that suggest otherwise." (96).
On the dangers of separating social/emotional learning from content: "the motives that drive learning, the subject matter they pursue and their feelings about it, the qualities of their character, and the identities they shape are all of a piece - and from their development emerges not only a defining self but social and political commitments as well" (113). "notable how frequently in people's early recollections that emotional well-being and a sense of self-worth are connected to an activity with significant cognitive content: helping other children with math or reading, or translating for new arrivals, or receiving public acknowledgement for work on a difficult task . . . the importance of children witnessing their own emerging competence as they take on a challenging activity -- realizing that, as she puts it, 'I'm doing something big in my world.'" (198).
Carl's college course, in which he read _The Invisible Man_ "changed the way I thought about what it means to be Black and to have social consciousness" . . . to be immersed in Black literature and history, to be urged and guided to think critically and creatively about it, to be, in fact, participating in this tradition yourself - well, this is intellectually and existentially liberating and broadens your understanding of what education can do. 'I realized I can actually use what I'm learning to make things change.'" (119)
Of the books Rose read in the course in which the light went on for him, taught by a young teacher fresh from a classics education at an upper-crust university: "There was no implication that these books were not for people like us -- or that reading them would make us better human beings. He didn't lay on us any messages of cultural uplift. Here are the books, he seemed to say. They're important. And hard. And full of ideas for us to discuss." (190).
themes:
-- experience of learning and the effects learning has on the quality of their lives "We get reports on the psychometric and economics of learning but not what could be called the biography of learning -- how learning is lived" (192).
"We all want to feel valued and respected, and adolescence, developmental psychologists tell us, is a time of especially strong need for acknowledgement and peer approval - and for involvement in a larger purpose" (202).
Israel Scheffler, potential is "not simply a fixed entity or quality that some people have and some don't. Potential can be generated in particular kinds of resource-rich settings and through nurturing and guiding interactions. We have seen, for example, the growth-fostering power of a valued person believing in us, the effect that belief has on our assessment of ourselves and on our imagining of a self that is yet to be. 'Potential . . . is our projection of something into the future." (216).
August 20, 2023
This man's life's work has inspired me in so many ways. This book reminds me of the importance of seeing and listening to each of my students, and focusing on helping them discover what education can do for them.
April 25, 2023
WONDERFUL BOOK!! Mike Rose’s last, which was all but finished before his sudden death in 2021. In the first chapter, Rose describes an extended conversation with Jack McFarland, his old high school senior English teacher. Now retired, McFarland and Rose reread the entire year-long book list and studied Rose’s old notes and papers. AMAZING!! Perhaps better than LIVES ON THE BOUNDARY-or at least should be read together. The rest of LIGHT is drawn from extensive interviews with people whose lives were changed by education, people much like Rose. It’s a magical and moving contribution to American education and philosophy. We are so lucky to have LIGHT and to have had Mike Rose in our midst.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews