Mike Rose "I Just Wanna be Average"

Mike Rose's essay "I Just Wanna be Average" is both similar and different in comparison to Malcolm X's writing "Learning to Read". They both discuss their personal feelings and experience in their educational adventure, and they both describe the hardships they faced in acquiring their knowledge. Both essays are more like a story being told rather than a cut and dry, step-by-step, "this is how I did it" type of paper or blog.
They differ in that Mike Rose delves deeper into his experience and discusses so much about his life during the time of his attending school; Malcolm X describes his situation, being in prison, but focuses on the actual learning and process of doing so.
Mike Rose's essay is so far my favourite reading in this class, it hits home for me. His description of his school and his experience in it reminds me so much of my own school. The separation of "slow learners" and the "elite students" is too common an attribute of schools in the United States, as this also took place in my high school in New York. I was in the "Advanced Placement" and "Honours" classes throughout my jr. high and high-school experience, of course I was always only after that extrinsic reward of receiving an "A", and I wonder now, after reading Rose's essay, if I truly learned enough.
My high school, like many American schools I imagine, was driven to achieve academic excellence. Standardized tests and "advanced placement" were pushed on students like a lemon juicer and we were the lemons. In order to get more funding for the school, it had to be ranked high in academic excellence. Similar to Mike Rose's experience in high school, many student fell through the cracks and the education was impersonal.
This essay is a very strong and excellent example and model to use for writing my own paper on my educational experience.