An Analysis Of Blue-Collar Billiance By Mike Rose

Mike Rose’s introduces his argument by explaining the intelligence of blue collar workers and emphasizing his belief that blue-collar jobs require certain skills and tasks acquired by experience, and should not be viewed as menial tasks held by uneducated people. He goes on to point out that there are many people that feel “intelligence is…the type of schooling a person has…[and] work requiring less school requires less intelligence,” but then goes on to explain why this belief is simply not true. Rose starts with the story of his mother, Rosie, and describes what he has observed of her intelligence throughout the years of his childhood, as he

First, being employed in the blue-collar industry a person must show intuition. Rose studied the habits of the blue-collar workplace, and based on his observations came to better understand how the job requires both physical and mental capabilities of an individual. The author Mike Rose, grew up in the 1940’s, this is an example of ethos in the story. Rose observed his mother, Rosie Rose work in a local restaurant as a waitress. Rose observed his mother’s impressive ability to retain food orders while keeping track of her list of side work was a skill demonstrating her intuitive capabilities that were learned out her

The issue being debated in the article “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff is street smarts versus book smarts. Gerald Graff is an English professor at the University of Illinois and has written many books. The author claims that people are better off if they are more street smart than book smart. The authors is very persuasive using real life examples. I although disagree with this claim. I think that you need an equal mix of both street and book smarts.

In “Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose starts of by telling us two stories, one about his mother and the other about his uncle Joe. They worked what people would call blue collar jobs; everybody usually perceives blue collar jobs as grunt work which doesn’t take much intelligence to work. However Rose disagrees with that notion; Rose describes to us in detail how his moms’ intellect in the restaurant work field kept the place calm, efficient and balanced. He also told us a story of how his uncle Joe worked up the ranks of the auto industry after dropping out of school in the ninth grade. One of Rose’s main points in “Blue Collar Brilliance” is that intelligence isn’t always measured with grades and tests and, that blue collar jobs take just

In the article “Blue-Collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose’s main focus was to convey that there are forms of intelligence than just being intellectual. Rose, suggest that a broader perspective of education allow us to expand our understanding of what intelligence is. Rose explains what our culture views as intelligence: “Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm; sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain” (Rose). In making this comment, Rose urges us to take a step back and to look society’s perception of blue-collar work as not as demanding or requiring as much brain powering as white-collar work. Often people do not realize that a person who has a blue-collar job is just as

Writer, Mike Rose, in his rhetorical essay, “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” voices his familiarities with family members that labored blue-collar jobs as well as a few of his occurrences as a student. Persuading his audience, Rose judges that blue-collar jobs require intelligence and that intelligence should not be dignified by the amount of schooling that one has received. Mike Rose not only analyzes his mother, a waitress, but nonetheless of his uncle, who started a job working on the assembly line at General Motors and accomplished enough to become a supervisor. Comparing the lives of his family and the author’s experience in receiving a higher education, Rose describes his experience in observing

As Mike even began to study those who worked around the same level as that of his family, he began to piece together his belief that those of the “blue-collar” work force did have their own intelligence from “waitressing and hair styling to plumbing and welding.” (Rose 396) He noticed more and more of them portraying their own intelligence through their work. He says we “[separate] the body from the mind” instead of having them work together. (Rose 397) It was

Third, as no outside sources were utilized as a part of his article, Rose depends on his insight he got from years of perceptions from various types of individuals in various circumstances. Rose backs his aspect by saying, "To gain a sense of how knowledge and skill develop, I observed experts as well as novices. From the details of this close examination, I tied to fashion what I called, ‘cognitive biographies’ of blue-collar workers” (1038). Rose adequately analyzes the different levels of labor as a part of his investigation to better comprehend the intensity of blue-collar jobs. Another counterclaim by Rose by using pathos is Rose's exploration strengthens his

Academic work should not define intelligence nor should a job define ability; a person, regardless of grades, degrees, or job title, is an intellect. Together, Gerald Graff, a coauthor of They Say I say, professor, and former anti-intellect, author of "Hidden Intellectualism," and Mike Rose, professor, author, and in depth thinker, author of "Blue-Collar Brilliance," share two different perspectives on what an intellect truly is. Yet, both writings hold meaningful points and experiences to prove who qualifies to be an intellect. Society continuously focuses on what leads to a successful and rounded life: go to school, graduate, go back to school, get a degree, and then a job. It is believed that these high expectations of higher academics enables one to be more successful is correct; however, it is not. It is a person’s individual goals that give them the success they wish to have whether that be education, volunteering, or donating. Also, street smarts is not to be overlooked; a person with common sense can know more than a Doctor. Typically, a person can have either common sense or intelligence, not both. Street smarts is, without a doubt, a superior quality to possess as it encompasses more in life than just a degree does. For example, it is more appropriate to know how to cross a street properly in life than know how to perform a craniotomy. Furthermore, one does not gain knowledge and life lessons through school alone, but through experience,

In the article, Rose use many emotional personal examples to help the reader understand the amount of hard work and intelligence a blue collar job requires. Rose creates a personal connection with the reader by describing his first-hand experience of growing up watching his mother put her heart and soul into being a waitress in a restaurant. Rose says, “She described the way she memorized who ordered what, how long each dish is supposed to take to prepare, and how she became a pro at meeting the emotional needs of her customers and colleagues alike.” From the quote in the article the reader understand that Roses mother was required to have a high level of intelligence in order to meet the needs of her customers and colleagues alike in order to do her job proficiently. Rose uses emotion in this quote to make the reader relate to his mother and understand that she was a hard worker and did everything in her power to do whatever it took in order to hopefully receive a tip that would be used to support her family. Rose also says, “I couldn’t have put it in words when I was growing up, but what I observed in my mother’s restaurant defined the world of adults, a place where competence was synonymous with physical work”. Rose uses in this quote to relate that his mother’s job

Rose starts off with a special anecdote about his mother’s job as a waitress and then provides another anecdote of his uncle’s automotive job. By doing this, it appeals to the audience with a heartfelt and personal situation which makes it more relatable for the readers. Rose says “She walked full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand” (1034). This gives the notion that her job was not only hard physically but she had to mentally arrange the objects in her arms before picking them up to get all of it done at once. Rosie, his mother, was always very observant and “her tip depended on how well she adapted to those needs” which meant that her attitude at work was highly important. Rosie herself said, “there isn't a day that goes by in the restaurant that you don’t learn something.” Rose then goes on to tell what his uncle Joe had learned from being a factory worker

In my observation mentally with Mr. Roses essay on blue collar brilliance, Mr Rose tries to tell the reader on the different levelsof work there is for high educated people opposed to the non educated. Furthermore he tries express through his family experiences in the work environment how a person with a manual labor is not so different than a person with a high level of education, they are equal in job to job views but not in society.

People who work on Wall Street are considering elites of the society, their works relate to finance and deal with the world economy. Many students desire for working on Wall Street; however, this dream is hard to accomplish because this job is for people who are considered “smart”. In Biographies of Hegemony, the author Karen Ho brings up the idea of smartness, which addresses to people not only have individual intelligence, but also have the quality of being an expert and has self-confidence, aggressive, and hard-working. Basically, in the article, Ho talks about students graduate from Harvard or Princeton and now they are working on Wall Street. Ho believes smartness is a form of impressiveness because smartness is not just about intelligence, but also a way to separate away from normal people. However, in Project Classroom Makeover, the author Cathy Davidson pays more attention to students who may not be the expertise, but they will use collective learning to share different opinions. Collective learning brings out the idea of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a group of people share ideas and solve problems, which is one way of collective learning. The theory of smartness shares commons and differences with collective learning. For common, both smartness and collective learning require students to work together and have the confidence to conquer the difficulties, which lead students to the future success. For differences, smartness is associated with students who have an

If a person was to search up the richest men and women in the world they would find a list that included names such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Carlos Slim Helu and if they were then asked to identify what connects these billionaires together most people would answer that they are smart, if not some of the smartest individuals in the world evident in the way they conduct business and money. Even people with jobs such as investors and stock brokers are considered to be intelligent by the common masses and that because of their intellect these characters are able to gain themselves financial security and financial independence. Now while there are those that believe in other factors that attribute to financial success such as personal connections and luck, I believe that intelligence is a prime factor that can have an effect on your financial well being as well as your socioeconomic status. There is evidence that intelligence can be affected by environmental factors such as socioeconomic status, which can also affect how successful students are in schools and on standardized tests such as the SAT. Further studies indicate that as both a person’s intelligence and education increases so does their future income and how intelligence can be a powerful predictor of job success. This paper will delve into these observations and more to provide a successful argument that

Within their jointly authored case study entitled Deep Smarts, Harvard professors Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap seek to quantify the intangible set of intellectual abstractions which combine to form the foundation of extreme competence in an employee. Citing that rare but harmonious connection between "raw brainpower" and "emotional intelligence," Leonard and Swap posit the existence of "deep smarts," which they define as "the stuff that produces that mysterious quality, good judgment" (2004). Seemingly an amalgamation of human attributes which aid in decision making and critical judgment, deep smarts would appear to be the highly functioning union of intuition, instinct, intelligence and insight. The authors base their conception of deep smarts on the value of firsthand experience, by noting repeatedly that deep smarts are "based more on know-how than on facts; comprising a system view as well as expertise in individual areas" (Leonard & Swap, 2004). According to the authors, most corporations and large-scale organizations have members, from executives to temporary employees, who possess deep smarts through the "judgment and knowledge - both explicit and tacit - stored in their heads and hands" (Leonard and Swap, 2004), but these valuable assets are routinely overlooked and underutilized. The purpose of the case study is to present managers, and others responsible for maximizing an organization's efficiency, with viable methods for identifying those employees with deep