Mike Rose Summary

Nicolas Simon

Mike Rose Summary

In the chapter "Hand and Brain in School," Mike Rose, the author of the Mind at Work, talks about how his education revolved around tracking. When it came to tracking, there were three types of classes: college prep, general, and vocational (Rose 167). Mike Rose, as a child, was placed in the vocational track because in society as a member of the working class, it was common for a child to be place in this track(167). He did not like being there, so he worked really hard to get into the college prep track, in which he did later on (167). He states in the beginning of the chapter, from personal experience, converting from a vocational track to a college prep track to a college prep track was very difficult to do and it did not happen very often (167). The way that schools would assess the students on deciding where they should be placed is through the IQ test (168).

After going a little bit more in depth about the IQ test, he talks about the history of the vocational education. In the chapter, it stated how in the past vocational education mostly taught manual labor (170). The women back then also had a different curriculum from the boys. The girls were taught domestic skills such as: cooking, cleaning, how to raise a family, etc (175). Also, until The Civil Rights Movement, the chapter discusses how vocational education for African Americans was slim to none.

In response to what I read in the chapter, I was surprised to see with the exception of vocational education, how similar education was. The chapter talks about different tracking, well to a certain extent. But schools today have some kind of tracking as well, where their students can learn at their own pace. I feel this is a good system to a certain point. If it is possible or if it has not been done already, I think that after the students are placed in a tracked course, they should have the option of switching to a higher or lower level class at anytime throughout their pre-collegiate education.