1) It seems that Rose's life in Voc. Ed. was unsatisfying. Teachers were there mostly to babysit the kids and, hopefully, train them to behave like adults in the real world. In middle school, I definitely remember having a couple of teachers like that. There were some in high school, but I didn't really take their classes.
2) It seems that Rose remembers the other kids in his Voc. Ed. class better than the things he learned in there. His story gave me the impression that Rose discovered that there were many different kinds of 'smart' people - your knowledge didn't have to come from a book or quiz, but from life itself. It was hard for Rose to catch up in Math because he was an Italian student (not to mention math is just hard in general.
3) High school is disorienting for kids like Ken Harvey because they feel like they just don't fit in. Some kids want to be the best at something, while some just want to blend in. Kids usually try to blend in by not really excelling at anything. It's much easier to not try at all than to try and fail in front of the whole school.
4) I can't really compare with Rose because I didn't take BS classes in high school. I purposefully surrounded myself with other smart kids (or I tried to) and I took the hard classes that I did very well in. Sure, we all learn that real 'smarts' comes from life experience, but I learned that a much different way than Rose did.
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