When the Light Goes On: The Life-Changing Wonder of Learning in an Age of Metrics, Screens, and Diminished Human Connection

by Mike Rose

Overview

The final work from one of the most beloved voices in American education explores stories and lessons of transformative experiences in education

For more than a generation, American education has been structured as though it was built of and for concepts, not people. This has transformed education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a sales platform for high-tech entrepreneurs; and a fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt.

In When the Light Goes On, educator Mike Rose features the stories of people of all ages and backgrounds to illuminate how education has added meaning to their lives. The inspiring stories include:

• A supermarket checker whose job wore away his soul takes a remedial math class that starts him on a path to architecture school
• A young man badly injured in a motorcycle accident finds both rehabilitation and a career in a welding program
• A transgender youth’s odyssey to self-definition extends though courses in social sciences and campus advocacy groups
• A Native American athlete finds graduate study as a way to use her celebrity to articulate the needs of her people

When the Light Goes On helps us dig through the discord and fragmentation of school politics and policy to reclaim the mind and heart of education. Through various students’ stories and his own, Rose provides an urgent reminder of the core purpose of education: to learn about ourselves and the world around us, to spark new interests, and to experience with guidance both the fulfillment and the uncertainty of exploring our limits—all in the service of creating a meaningful life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807008539
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	02/28/2023
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	374,743
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mike Rose was an education scholar and author of 11 books. He was a research professor at the University of California-Los Angeles’ Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. A popular contributor to national media as well as commercial and academic literature, Rose has written approximately 125 opinion pieces, commentaries, and essays.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Christina A. Christie
Preface

INTRODUCTION
When the Light Goes On

CHAPTER ONE
Anatomy of an Awakening

CHAPTER TWO
Learning to Do Things with Books

CHAPTER THREE
What Teachers See

CHAPTER FOUR
From Life Lessons to the Classroom

CHAPTER FIVE
Expecting More of Yourself

CHAPTER SIX
Becoming Smart

CHAPTER SEVEN
Finding Educational Opportunity

CHAPTER EIGHT
How the Light Goes On

CONCLUSION
On Method

Afterword: Through Light and Shadow, by Power of Opportunity and Experience, by Manuel Espinoza
An Acknowledgment
Notes

Editorial Reviews

[The author’s] inspiring accounts offer strong testimony.”
—Booklist

“Mike Rose’s masterful final book, When The Light Goes On, is a reflection on the beauty and magic of learning. But it is not only that—it is also a much-needed reframing, for policy and practice and research, of what learning is and how we talk about it, foster it, and measure it. With meticulous detail and artful storytelling, Rose brings to life the moments when learning changes everything—life trajectories, identities, intellectual engagement, futures. It is fitting that this is his final work, laced with both fear about the state of education and hope that we could reach for something more humanizing, richer, and more connected to the lives and personhood of learners.”
—Dr. Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation

“Mike Rose had a unique voice. He was not in the thick of policy battles. He worked on a different level, seeking to understand people and their lives.”
—Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools; former US assistant secretary of education; and founder of the Network for Public Education

“The particular way [Rose] saw the world resonates more than ever before as our debates about the future of school and work only intensify. He argued with care and eloquence that we risk too narrow a view of the way the physical, the human, and the cognitive blend in all kinds of learning and in all kinds of labor. Mike Rose’s intelligence would enlarge our civic imagination on big subjects at the heart of who we are—schooling, social class, and the deepest meaning of vocation.”
—Krista Tippett, On Being

“[Rose] had a keen gift for uncovering, through intensive one-on-one work with writers, the deep (and often poignant) logic behind surface errors. His work heralded a paradigm shift in the way that writing is taught in our educational system, from elementary school through college.”
—Kevin Dettmar, The New Yorker

From the Publisher

★ 12/16/2022

Five years in the making, Rose's (Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education) book is both an ode to the profession of education and a testament to the importance of individual learning experiences. Based on interviews with a multitude of Americans, it investigates the aha moments when something just clicks in a person's schooling. In the book, the author, who died in 2021, examines his own reawakening in a senior high school English class in conjunction with the teacher who taught that class. Reflecting on his high school notes, papers, and memories, and his teacher's remembrances and observations, the author lays the groundwork for exploring similar moments in the lives of others. He concludes that society needs a binocular view of education in order to facilitate these moments for more students. Such a view would include acknowledging barriers and needed supports but also realizing the current potential opportunity present in every situation. Neither a simple fix book nor an elegy to despair, the author reminds readers that learning is a fundamental human endeavor that's necessary for all. VERDICT Highly recommended for all education collections.—Karen Bordonaro

Library Journal