Essay On Blue Collar Brilliance

The story “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, was originally published in the American Scholar, in 2009. Rose is an American education scholar and was born in 1944. Rose has written several articles on literacy matters. He studied the struggle of the working-class America. Throughout the article, Rose used personal stories to persuade the reader blue-collar workers are very intelligent despite having a formal education. Rose’s agenda could be compared to that of Aristotle regarding their similar ideas on persuasion. Aristotle, was a well-known Greek philosopher, implemented three key terms: ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade his audience. Much like Aristotle, the author of Blue-Collar Brilliance, portrays the importance of his mother and uncle’s jobs by them showing intuition, intelligence, and multitasking thus demonstrating ethos, pathos, and logos.

Many people consider book smart the only form of intelligence, but a lot of people who attended college and obtained a degree can’t perform a basic task of changing a flat tire. So does that make those people unintelligent? Mike Rose explains in “Blue Collar Brilliance” and Gerald Graff explains in “Hidden Intellectualism” that there are many different forms of intelligence. In Rose’s article, he explains how he observed his mother along with other family members work blue-collar jobs. He explains how everyone involved with blue collared work develops a sense of intelligence in many different forms. In Graff’s article, he explains how schools and colleges are doing a poor job at getting the full potential out of students. Graff thinks that if we give students things they like to read then they will progress to more scholarly readings. Both authors describe how society doesn’t value all types of intellectualism. Rose explains how people are stereotyping blue-collared jobs and not appreciating them. Graff explains how schools and colleges aren’t fostering intellectualism because they don’t take interests into account.

Writer Gregory Mantsios in his article “Class in America”, talks about these things, and how wide the gap is between the rich and the poor and also discusses how the rich continue to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. Mantsios gives his readers the profiles and backgrounds of three hard-working Americans, two of them are white males, whose family background as well as education played a role in their success, while the other person is a black woman who is just above the poverty line despite her work as a nurse’s aide. Through these profiles, Mantsios article shows exactly how sex, race and shows how your parental and educational background of a person can play a role in the things that you achieve. Mantsios also talks about one’s performance in school and the level of school completed can suggest whether or not class that person may belong in.

Mike Rose has spent most of his life watching those defined as “blue-collar” workers with much appreciation. He would watch his mother, Rosie, and his uncle, Joe, work to their fullest potential with skills he had never really seen anywhere else except in their “blue-collar” world. Mike believes that the way his family worked, as well as others considered “blue-collar”, are intelligent in their own ways and are underappreciated compared to the way he sees them.

Many people in today’s society tend to believe that a good education is the fastest way to move up the ladder in their chosen. People believe that those who seek further education at a college or university are more intelligent. Indeed, a college education is a basic requirement for many white collar, and some blue collar, jobs. In an effort to persuade his audience that intelligence cannot be measured by the amount of education a person has Mike Rose wrote an article entitled “Blue Collar Brilliance”. The article that appeared in the American Scholar, a quarterly literary magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, established in 1932. The American Scholar audience includes, Company’s , Employees,

This onslaught of capitalism directly revolutionized modern industrialism as well as the industrial city. Machines morphed the predominately agricultural nation to a herd of factory and corporate workers. Swarms of people, both native and immigrant, flocked to major cities. “The present century has been marked by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of steam and electricity, the introduction of improved processes and labor saving machinery, the greater subdivision and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effectiveness of labor.”(George, p.20) The major problem with this newfound industrialism was the way in which the workforce was treated. Capitalism was supposed to provide a way out, a way ascend the financial and social staircase, if you worked hard enough. This however was not the case, if you were a loyal, hardworking employee you simply got to keep your job, and if you were in any way injured or incompetent you were fired.

Over many centuries, society tends to frame the obscene differences to antagonize and alienate each other whether it's about a political or religious view, social reasons, or financial situations. In “Blue Collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose provides an invigorating story to persuade his audience to understand that having a blue collar job compared to a white-collar job does not determine how smart someone is. Rose uses anecdotes, rhetorical question, and logos to show that blue-collar workers learn just as much without a formal education.

In the article, “Blue-Collar Boomers Take Work Ethic to College” from Writing Now, author Libby Sander talks about workers in the baby boomer generation that are attending college to get new skills for the new jobs they hope to land. Sander says that middle aged people coming back to college is becoming more common as they become unable to do physical demanding jobs but are too young to retire (Sander 642).

He challenges widespread expectation of all middle-class Americans: “‘vocational training’ is second class. ‘College’ is first class” (Murray 632). This passage, while appearing to offer a simple definition to the reader in order for him or her to be informed of the subject matter argued herein, already states his position in the matter.

Hubbard said that his heart went out to “the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive”, one who never went on strike for high wages. He especially values them given the lack of such workers around in society (31). Also negatively affected are employers whose production and efficiency are stagnated and decreased respectively by these kinds of workers. Hubbard discusses the rarely-discussed employer who wastes great amount of time trying to find such competent, obedient workers, constantly in a “weeding out process” due to “help that does nothing but loaf when [his] back is turned”

The class divide is a serious issue in America. People make decisions that they think are easy to do but they don 't test the future impacts that may results from their decisions, that some time huge impact on their life. In the New york times article “No Degree and no way back to the Middle”,Timothy Egan tells the story of a man who quit high school and wanted to work, without having an education degree the end of his life started to get gloomy and unbalanced, at the end he was very ashamed of what he did and he wished that he have an education degree, and have his own career, because every company he work in sometimes has some issues and throw it’s workers out, and the job without education degree is not guaranteed to be successful.

Many children grow up dreaming of living the luxurious life of a white collar worker. However, Denis Johnson's poem, "White, White Collars," shows that this dream is not as perfect as it may seem. This was done by looking at the monotonous nature of white collar occupations and the effects on the individuals who hold these jobs. His theme of workplace uniformity is portrayed through his use of poetic form and structure, figurative language, and diction.

It is clear that Jimmy’s school, a school of lower class, will bring him no success such as a high paying respectable job. On the contrary, Crake’s school, an institute of higher class, will bring him prosperity. The state of education in Oryx and Crake show that being of higher class surpasses hard work and persistence.

One moment that particularly stood out to audience members during the play would have to be where Irina longs for a life of hard work and earning a living rather than her privileged ways of having no commitments or responsibilities. Not many individuals can relate to the idea of wanting to live a work-filled life, and those who reside in the upper class do not share this idea. However, Irina is separating herself from the regular members of the aristocratic class by saying that she wants to do an honest day’s work instead of having everything in life handed to her on a silver platter. This moment in time relates to the plot of the play because even though these three sisters have been pushed out of the aristocratic class because of the

In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” written by Mike Rose, he ponders the meaning of these blue collar jobs, how he views them, as well as how they are viewed by society. Rose recalls memories from his childhood, observing his mother, a waitress, call out abbreviations while hustling around the restaurant to fulfill her duties. In addition at a young age he could recognize that she had a seemingly endless list of responsibilities, along with the requirement of pleasant customer service. By the end of her shift Rose recalls his mother was always intensely fatigued. Developing into a man, he further contemplated what he recalls observing as a young child, what he now recognizes as “the world of adults”. In greater detail he states “A place where competence was synonymous with physical work.” Rose shares that as he matured, he obtained further information regarding the working habits of such “blue collar” workers. Now he recognizes that while seemingly insignificant to many, this fashion of work is very taxing, not only mentally, but physically as well. Rose suggests, though typically, various physical jobs don't require high literacy levels, mental function and an ability to focus and operate in difficult situations are required. To his understanding, this is something regularly slighted. His judgement is notably strong, that everyday work is important to our society as a whole. His perception of this is that those who work in this field should not be devalued because of