The article “I Just Wanna be Average,” is hard for me to connect with, not only because of the decades this is set in, but because of the cultural and class differences. This is closer to my mother’s time, she might understand the slacker, the unmotivated though intelligent rebel. No one had a need to stand out in Mike’s vocational classes. This is something I can’t understand, though it comes back to parents. My parents always pushed education and emphasized that a good education gets you places in life. (Which I don’t think is necessarily true; I think education is a choice. As an aspiring Author a college education isn’t exactly required, but personally I think it will help.) However, Mike’s parents didn’t know, didn’t realize that education was the key. America was a promised land, a place of wealth, but no one told them how to even begin to access this wealth.
Despite my disconnect with the time, place, and mindset of what Mike is writing about, he does so in a way that draws you in. I think this is as much a piece about educational reform as it is about what the fifties were like in Cali for an Italian immigrant.
One of the parts that really struck me was on page 17 when he wrote “I cannot recall a young person who was crazy in love or lost in work or one old person who was passionate about a cause or an idea.” This seems like a very dark life to me. It’s a surprise he didn’t fall into drugs or depression. Without passion, what is life? That sentence shows what life in the lower class is truly like, in my opinion. Because how can they be passionate about anything outside themselves when the struggle for money and life takes their passion, the jobs are soul crushing. I have worked in a factory and you merely get used to the drudgery, and I’m sure the regulations and work environment in the fifties was much worse than where I worked.
A piece like this shows just how important education and vital teachers are, it is a call to educational institutions to up their standards; to expect more from their poorer students.
What would have happened if Mike Rose had never been taught by Mr. MacFarland?
The Ruins of Thornfield Hall 