Malcolm X And Mike Rose: An Analysis

Reading is something many people take for granted; in fact, it is sometimes a struggle to persuade people to read at all. In schools, there are typically a group of students that are “below-average” who have an “I don’t care” type of attitude towards learning and reading. This attitude causes them to receive poor grades in their classes and they make life strenuous on themselves. On the other spectrum are the areas where being able to read means you have great intelligence and great privilege. Reading and books aren’t as common and people aren’t gaining as much information as they could. Malcolm X and Mike Rose both communicated on the subject of the importance of reading and how it enhances peoples education and intelligence, but X spoke of how he had to teach himself how to read and how it was a …show more content…
Those students often just want entertainment or just want to seem cool. Rose understood this behavior since he fell into this category of students at one point. To them the material might be too confusing and therefore frustrating, so instead of trying to receive genuine assistance, aside from the teachers who are just there to see them pass by, they take on a "Fuck this bullshit" stance (Rose 3). Their cynical outlook harms their marks owing to the fact that it has been shown in the past that perspective affects performance. If someone goes into a test with a negative attitude they will most likely score a lower grade than if they had gone into the class with a positive attitude. Mike Rose was originally a part of the "troubled" kids at school by accident, there he developed a set of behavior that was against reading and learning as they weren't expected to do well anyways. There he sank into the undisciplined mindset where he believed there was nothing to gain by working hard. He only went for the bare minimum and just enough to maintain his head out of the water; just enough to hit the