Lives On The Boundary

The preface of Lives on the Boundary sets up the premise of the whole book in just two paragraphs. Mike Rose tells readers that his book challenges the long-held assumptions that standardized tests and arbitrary benchmarks are the best way to evaluate students’ aptitude and intelligence, and in fact, those measurement tools have created an education system that fails its students. He explains his goal is to examine students—both traditional and not—”who have trouble reading and writing in the schools and the workplace” with a specific focus on how their true aptitude is often “hidden by class and cultural barriers” (xi). Rose explains that as an educator who has worked with remedial learners for twenty years, his experience has helped him understand how America’s education system has created what he calls “an educational underclass” by labeling students as poor performers and ignoring the economic, political, and social factors affecting a student’s ability to learn (xi). Rose explains that he will do this with a mix of analysis and personal storytelling, especially since is he was once labeled a remedial student himself. Ultimately, Rose’s goal is to show readers how those students who get lost in the American education system are “some of our greatest unperceived riches” (xi).