Blue Collar Brilliance By Mike Rose

He observed that each blue collar occupation requires different kinds of intelligence and skills in addition to quick decision making and large quantities of mental capacity in order to fulfill each person’s duty. Rose argues that in doing so, the worker becomes tuned to solving problems “that both enhances knowledge and informs perception” (280). While it may not seem apparent, blue collar workers actually use a wide range of skills that are difficult to find in other occupations, specifically in white collar

Mike Rose describes his personal childhood observations about his mother and uncle in his essay titled "Blue collar Brilliance". Rosie, the authors ' mother, was a waitress in several coffee shops and family restaurants over the span of Rose 's childhood. Joe Meraglio is Roses ' uncle who worked over a thirty-three year career at General Motors after being in the Navy and working on the railroad. Neither Joe, nor Rosie had a formal education. Rose describes his childhood as years of sitting in the back booth, at whichever restaurant his mother was employed at the time, and watching her juggle all kinds of intricate task simultaneously such as; devising memory strategies to remember orders, and monitoring how long her orders spent in the

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

Mike Rose argument was different in terms of content and the evidence he used. Rose is trying to explain that our culture has a series of assumption towards intelligence. We assume “intelligence is closely associated with formal education- the type of schooling a person has”. People now believe that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence. He’s saying this assumption is wrong. He uses anecdotes from his personal experiences and historical stories about his family accomplishments has evidence to clarify and support his argument. I think his argument his convincing based on the way he use step by step examples to describe how each family member didn’t have much schooling to being successful. For instance; his mom was only a waitress, but during her work experience she solved both technical problems and human problems very well. Joe was a foreman who learnt more and more about the auto industry (the machinery and production process). With further promotion has a supervisor he solved more problems and also found more problems to solve. Overall, many kinds of physical work don’t require a high literacy level, but it requires much reading. Workers may lack formal education or knowledge, but they are not less intelligence. These workers gain hands on knowledge through direct experience which made

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

“I am just going to Joliet Junior College”, said about half of my classmates my senior year of high school. People everywhere make community college out to be something that is looked down upon and for people who were not as bright. In his essay “Blue Collar Brilliance”, Mike rose explains the reputation community colleges have acquired over the last few decades depicts two year schools as a place for people who could not make it into “real colleges”, also known as four year colleges (276). Although four year universities have reputations for quality education and excellent programs, students can get the same quality, if not better education at a two year college at a better convenience.

Author of “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” Mike Rose, writes about observing his mother and uncle working while he is a child. His mother, a waitress, and his uncle, a foreman, both have a career considered “blue-collar.” In the magazine Newsweek, Bob Muldoon writes “White-Collar Man in a Blue-Collar World,” and explains his journey from a white-collar to a blue-collar job. Throughout the essay, while defending against the assumptions of blue-collar employees, the authors discuss the importance of blue-collar jobs and the skills equipped with them.

Rose continues to bring other blue-collar job that requires similar ability and to explain we only try to measure intelligence solely on grades in school and their intelligence at this level. However, he argues that blue-collar intelligence goes far from what we usually can perceive. He ends his argument we the following statement: “If we believe everyday work to be mindless, then that will affect the work we create in the future. When we devalue the full range of everyday cognition, we offer limited educational opportunities and fail to make fresh and meaningful instructional connections among disparate kinds of skill and knowledge. If we think that the whole categories of people—identified by class or occupation---are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and cripple our ability to talk across cultural divides” (Rose, 2015, p283). In my view, Rose made a very good argument about how Blue-Collar workers are labelled in many cases as intelligence, but he ends this argument by basically said that those who may can to that conclusion are not that smart. If you think about everything, that Rose describes in this essay

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

In the article, the author highlights differing views on the nature of intelligence. He states that in Asian cultures intelligence is something that they must acquire or work to achieve; whereas, western cultures view it as something one is born with. Neither of these views is necessarily incorrect however, I believe the best outlook lies somewhere in between. People are born with natural gifts and skills. Therefore, certain subjects come very easily to them. Nevertheless, it is possible for one to increase his skill by applying himself.

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.

Education level is a major difference in blue collar and white collar jobs. White collar work generally requires formal education. White collar workers typically have a least a high school diploma, while most complete and associate’s, bachelors, masters or professional degree. In contrast, Blue collar workers employed in skilled trades, such as carpentry, receive formal, vocational education, though some blue collar workers acquire their skills on the job. Most blue collar occupation do not require formal education to perform basic job

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

Intelligence is a combination of an individual’s ability to learn, pose problems, and solve problems. Learning is the ability to combine education, experiences, and training and transform that into background knowledge to be used later. Posing problems is the ability to recognize that there is a problem in a given situation. Problem solving includes not only finding a solution to a given problem, but by also forming products and doing complex tasks. However, the way one may solve a problem or overcome an obstacle can be completely different from another’s solution. These differences between individuals make it difficult to make a single measurement of how smart or “intelligent” someone may be, but intelligence tests can be useful to identifying strengths and weaknesses.