Rose, Mike

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ROSE, Mike

PERSONAL: Born in Altoona, PA. Education: Graduated from Loyola University and University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of California, Los Angeles, School of Education and Information Studies, GSE and IS Building, Box 951520, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520; fax: 310-206-6293. Agent—John Wright, 1133 Broadway, Ste. 1124, New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Author, educator, and expert on language and literacy. University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, professor of social research methodology, and former associate director of writing programs.

WRITINGS:

Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension, foreword by Marilyn S. Sternglass, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1984.

(Editor) When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing-Process Problems, Guilford Press (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor, with Eugene R. Kintgen and Barry M. Kroll) Perspectives on Literacy, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1988.

Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared, Free Press (New York, NY), 1989, published as Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Under-prepared, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Malcolm Kiniry) Critical Strategies for Academic Writing: Cases, Assignments, and Readings, Bedford Books (Boston, MA), 1990, 3rd edition published as Critical Strategies for Academic Thinking and Writing: A Text with Readings, 1998.

Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.

(Editor, with Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, and Barry Kroll) Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, Bedford Books (Boston, MA), 2001.

The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals and journals such as Academic Medicine, Educational Researcher, College Composition and Communication, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, College English, Education Week, Teacher, Chronicle of Higher Education, Los Angeles Times, Nation, First of the Month, and Salon.com.

SIDELIGHTS: Mike Rose is a professor at the School of Education and Information Studies of the University of California, Los Angeles. "I am generally interested in thinking and learning and the various methods we use to study, foster, and write about them," Rose stated in a biography posted on the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Web site. Within that framework, Rose studies a number of related topics, including factors that "enhance or limit people's engagement with written language"; development of teaching methods and materials that improve critical reading and writing skills; the use of writing in social research; effective teaching; and what he termed "the study of cognition involved in various kinds of work, especially the skilled trades."

Rose offers a detailed analysis of that last topic in The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, an exploration of the formal cognition, thinking processes, and informal logic used by skilled workers in trades such as plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, mechanics, waitressing, and styling hair. Rose argues that blue-collar and service workers in America, typically thought of as requiring a strong body over a sharp mind, are "undervalued not only for their hard work but also for the sublime 'mindfulness' they often bring to their tasks," commented Booklist reviewer Alan Moores. Rose cites the skill at prioritizing, ability to move efficiently, and quick calculation ability demonstrated by the waitress; the on-the-spot decision-making skills, technical ability, and mindfulness of electricians, plumbers, and carpenters; and the aesthetic skill of the hairdresser. "Well written and perceptive, but never dogmatic, Rose's book puts an important and generally poorly covered piece of the U.S.'s sociological puzzle in bold relief," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

In Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America Rose chronicles a four-year project in which he personally visited schools throughout the United States, looking at teaching methods and identifying what makes outstanding classrooms unique. Possible Lives "provides a rich contextual construct for examining what comprises good teaching," commented LaRuth Gray in School Administrator. Rose "has selected success stories, and feelingly writes of the commitment of teachers, principals, parents, and communities working in difficult circumstances," remarked Philip G. Altbach in Commonweal. The "vivid portraits of creative, committed, inspiring teachers and curious, insightful, involved-with-learning students" emerge from classrooms in Los Angeles, New York, Tucson, Chicago, rural Kentucky, small-town Montana, the California border with Mexico, and the Hopi Nation, noted Mary Carroll in Booklist. According to Sara Mosle in the New Republic, what Rose provides in Possible Lives is "a sense of the enormous variety and range" of educational styles and learning needs in America, Mosle stated, as well as a clear illustration that education reform cannot take a uniform approach to all schools across all populations in all areas of the country.

Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared describes Rose's own struggle to break out of an educational system that classified him and slotted him on a mistaken vocational track without consideration of his abilities and aptitudes. Rose himself was one of the underprivileged students that he writes about in Lives on the Boundary, coming from an impoverished background in south Los Angeles. Switched from a vocational education to a college prep curriculum after it was discovered that his entrance exams had been mixed up with those of another student, Rose embarks on the track that will take him out of a preconceived category and into the upper levels of higher education. Along the way, he is mentored by English teacher Jack MacFarland and other caring educators. Throughout the book, Rose emphasizes the critical role of such teachers "in the lives of students who live on the boundaries between class and cultures," remarked Herbert Kohl in Nation. "These teachers must watch out for students who try to cross over without losing self-respect or becoming alienated from their own families and culture." Interspersed with his own autobiographical essays are stories of Rose's own teaching experiences with students on the boundary, and how they found the necessary strength and skills to cross into different cultural and intellectual worlds when necessary. "I have never read a book that portrays as beautifully the seamless and complex relationship between teacher as learner and teacher as giver," Kohl stated. "For those who wonder about today's youth and especially for those who have taught those who fail, this is, indeed, a hopeful book," commented Joane W. McKay in National Forum. Rose, McKay concluded, "has written an important book for all who teach and for every underprepared child who sees in a teacher hope for the future."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, September 1, 1995, Mary Carroll, review of Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America, p. 9; August, 2004, Alan Moores, review of The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, p. 1883.

Commonweal, April 5, 1996, Philip G. Altbach, review of Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America, p. 33.

Denver Post, September 5, 2004, Steve Weinberg, review of The Mind at Work, p. F13.

Houston Chronicle, November 28, 2004, Marvin Hoffman, review of The Mind at Work.

Library Journal, August, 2004, Janice Dunham, review of The Mind at Work, p. 104.

Nation, April 16, 1990, Herbert Kohl, review of Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared, p. 531; October 28, 1996, Deborah W. Meier, review of Possible Lives, p. 32.

National Forum, fall, 1993, Joane W. McKay, review of Lives on the Boundary, p. 46.

New Republic, June 17, 1996, Sara Mosle, review of Possible Lives, p. 27.

Psychology Today, July-August, 2004, review of The Mind at Work, p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, July 24, 1995, review of Possible Lives, p. 54; May 17, 2004, review of The Mind at Work, p. 40.

School Administrator, May, 1996, LaRuth Gray, review of Possible Lives, p. 61.