Summary Of Mike Rose's Blue Collar Brilliance

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

High turnover is something that goes hand in hand with low wage jobs, so companies are always looking for a workers replacement. Finally Ehrenreich is able to secure employment at a place she give the pseudonym, Hearthside. To help protect identies of companies and people she actually worked for and with, Ehrenreich decides to use fake names to achieve anonymity. Ehrenreich starts out at 2.43 an hour plus tips. One of the first things Ehrenreich notices is that the people around her are only working hard enough to get by. Because the managers will yell at anybody who is done with their work, and not doing something new, the workers seem to be happy with just working at a slow pace, doing just one job. Because the only reward for finishing early is being yelled at by a manager, that apparently spends his day doing nothing, there is no real bonus to go the extra mile. Due to this negative reinforcement, Ehrenreich notes that the restaurant is almost moving in counterproductive mode. With less being worked on, less is being accomplished, attributing to the overall sad appearance and low morale of the restaurant and its employees. The next problem Ehrenreich encounters is the constant berating handed out by her supervisor "Stu". Ehrenreich observes that due to this constant barrage of insults and degradations, workers are forced to feel like they are subhuman. Weekly the managers announce

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.

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

In the passage “ Serving In Florida” by Barbara Ehrenreich, she addresses the life of an individual who is trying to handle many jobs that offer low income including the struggles and responsibilities needed while living below the poverty line. Ehrenreich first starts off with a metaphor about the digestive system saying, “ Actually, there are three folding chairs at a table immediately adjacent to the bathroom, but hardly anyone ever sits here, in the very rectum of the gastro-architectural system.” However, when the thought of a restaurant with food and a human body stem are being compared, it’s usually not a positive feeling, but in fact a negative feeling instead. Therefore, this quote is giving us a perspective on how work is like on her side, and that it’s not an environment that treats anyone well or makes the co-workers in a positive mood. Ehrenreich sets the tone of this passage very negatively when she states, “... as if they were confusing waitressing with Mary Magdalene’s original profession.” Mary Magdalene’s original profession was prostitution, therefore, when Ehrenreich refers to waitressing just like prostitute, she is saying that waitressing is just as horrible as being a prostitute and that when customers walk into the restaurant, they look at the

In the essay “Working at Wendy’s,” Franklin describes his experience working at Wendy’s. Society has developed a perception of fast food workers. In the beginning, Franklin was guilty of believing the stereotypes created by society. When Franklin first applied to Wendy’s, he describes that the manager only cared if Franklin was intelligent enough to spell his name correctly. Franklin learned to not judge anyone because of their jobs and how it felt to be judged. Franklin learned the different circumstances of why his coworkers worked at Wendy’s. Pathos, ethos, and logos are used in the story to prove that society has created stereotypes for employees of lower class jobs.

Details within the anecdote are best described to the point where the audience can draw their own conclusions on what is happening. Description is crucial in order to fully understand what is going on. In the case of “Blue-Collar Brilliance”, written by Mike Rose, the author puts in a lot of time to adequately describe what the significance of his experiences mean and how they contribute to the story. “Fry four on two, my mother would say as she clipped a check onto the metal wheel. Her tables were deuces, four-tops, or six-tops according to their size…” (Rose 262). His personal encounter with his mother’s work language and

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

Blue Collar workers as the fundamental that makes up America. One such man, author Mike Rose a professor at UCLA, who wrote "Blue-Collar Brilliance," published in a reputable magazine in 2009 in the American Scholar, what Rose argues, is that blue-collar workers often overlooked. In effect, that the establishment of where you work acts as an institution of learning and those without a formal education have valuable types of "brilliance." Rose argues his claim by using pathos, logos through personal stories, credentials, and comprehensive counterarguments.

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

In the U.S society, there is a distinguishment between the different classification of employment. Those categories of employment are either classified as “blue-collar” or “white-collar”. Blue-collar jobs are referred to the line of employment that require manual labor such as factory workers and truck drivers, as for the white-collar jobs require high skills and higher education such as doctors and lawyers (Chambliss and Eglitis 159). Although, the professions are labeled as blue or white collar through its needs, the different labels indicates one’s position in the ranks. Each rank is often associated with characteristic that either make them upper class or lower class. Furthermore, “people’s life experience and opportunities are powerfully influenced by how their social category is ranked”(Chambliss and Eglitis 159). Therefore, one’s lifestyle depends on which category they fall into within the rank. That being the case, journalist Alfred Lubrano wrote the book, Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, which describes the cultural conflict experienced by white-collar professionals that grew up in blue-collar homes. It tells readers how the white-collar professionals found it difficult to apply to their blue-collar families, due to the fact, that they often held values and engaged in behaviors that apply to the upper-class. As in order to fit in within the groups, they would have to adapt to the upper class life. So the transition from a blue-collar life to a

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

Do you ever wonder what it takes to be a hair cutter or a waitress and all the things that takes place for them to be successful? In Mind at Work by Mike Rose he explains social and technical intelligence. Rose explores the intelligence required to perform various blue collar jobs successfully. He explains how using social skills are technical skills are two different but so closely related things. He also explains socially and technically what it takes to be a successful waiter or waitress and a successful hair cutter.

The Cocktail Waitress written by James P. Spradley and Brenda E. Mann is a 1975 classic. It studies in-depth and examines a familiar female role in contemporary American society. Its authors use fieldwork methods to the study of social behavior in a college bar, as presented in the context of a cocktail waitress. They describe the daily lives of women in details and the meaning of work in a man's world. They provide a wealth of empirical data on the nature of being female in the society.

There are many, certain things that have changed and evolved in this revolutionary life that’s brought above and beyond our eyes. A particular act will reflect off a “wife” being known as a cook or baker (in the 1972’s article), to a “wife” being known as a sandwich maker, referred to in the modern day life.