I Just Wanna Be Average

I Just Wanna Be Average

Mike Rose

In I Just Wanna Be Average, by Mike Rose, discusses how leading students on the vocational track can have negative impacts on their future. Like Rose, states in his introduction you learn dead end-skills from teachers who are often unprepared or incompetent. I had special stake in the reading because I wasn't necessarily in a vocational education setting, but at my high school I was definitely placed in classes other then my peers. It was if I was being separated from my peer group and felt ashamed and stupid that I wasn't equal to my classmates.

A quote in the essay states the feelings I had being placed in the "lower track" as opposed to the "higher track" my classmates were in. "The vocational track, (lower track) however, is most often a place for those who are just not making it, a dumping ground for the disaffected" (page 166, I Just Wanna Be Average, Rose). I felt like my high school was basically giving up on me because I didn't meet up to their standards. Instead of figuring out the best way to teach someone "different" they just said "we'll stick him here, and whatever happens, happens." All to often the educational system cares more about meeting requirements then helping students.

One key term that appears often throughout the essay is "vocational track" (page 163, I Just Wanna Be Average, Rose). The educational system just lumps together the students of "lower tracks" into one classroom and provides a watered down curriculum. By having less requirements to be meant then the "higher tracked" students I felt complacent and lazy. All I had to do was be average, because that's all that everyone excepted of me. I figured why go out of my way to be better when doing so was going to do nothing but keep me on the same path I was on.

By reading the essay it gave me a better understanding of how high school felt about me. I was an object that never met up to their standards. Instead, of trying to figure out the problem and remedying the situation they basically made it more difficult for me to become something then just average. I felt as though I was stuck in the same "low track" and was never going to stack up against my classmates.

For to often school systems fail many students just like me. Schools lump all these students together, give them unqualified teachers, easy curriculum, and a "make do with it" attitude. After, being one of these students myself I can understand students feelings every time they go to school. It isn't until you come across a teacher who, completely changes your outlook about things. Like Mr. MacFarland was for Mike Rose, Ms. Miller was for Andrew Hart. To this day I am forever grateful, since she saw nothing of an "average, low track" student.