Summary Of Mike Rose's Blue Collar Brilliance

Setting the scene with including where he grew up, Mike Rose introduces where his mother works in Los Angeles in the 1950s (Rose, 2017 p.272), thus, creating an image in the reader’s head to picture how the economy was at that time. Sometimes people had to work in areas they did not want to work in order to provide for their families. Diving into the everyday life of his mother, Rose emphasized the skills she needed to be successful as a waitress. Waitressing “acquires knowledge and intuition about the ways and rhythms of the restaurant business” (Rose, 2017, p.274). His mother had to devise memory strategies in order to wait on multiple tables with multiple people.

As I mentioned before his mother was a waitress. Although a waitress doesn’t sound like the most pleasing job, she still gained a lot of knowledge. Rose notes “The restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems of her regular customers and refining her ability to deal with people in a difficult world.” In which she learned and adapted to things like human conduct and problem solving. His mother’s job required both the mind and the body, where she had to understand the different ways the restaurant business worked and then apply it. For example, being able to carry plates with one arm and cups in the other, while memorizing who ordered what and when they ordered it. Of course Rose shares “...there were the customers who entered the restaurant with all sorts of needs, from physiological ones, including the emotions that accompany hunger, to a sometimes complicated desire for human contact.” This provokes sympathy. As a customer myself, there has been times where I was impatient or I would get fustrated with my food service. Now, understanding what waitresses go through gives a perspective on what they deal with. In which, Rose sparks his readers with a feeling of understanding for what blue-collar workers go through and

In Mike Rose’s essay “Blue-collar Brilliance” published in “The American Scholar,” the author describes the intellectual powers of blue-collar laborers. Rose portrays personal experiences that formed Rose’s view on blue-collar workers. He describes how blue-collar work is perceived within society begging from the United States’ early beginnings. Rose proceeds to use tangible examples to disprove the idea of separation of intelligence from blue-collar jobs. Although some professionals categorize blue-collar work as inferior, Rose affirms that such jobs require an equal degree of intelligence as those of white-collar professions.

Author, Mike Rose, in his article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” recounts his experiences with growing up around blue-collar workers. Rose’s purpose is to reveal the misconceptions that people who are not on a higher social ladder face. Rose shares firsthand experiences to convey blue-collar jobs as being more than just physical. Mike Rose builds credibility and emotional connections by sharing specific childhood memories his writing that makes him appear both intelligent and real. Throughout his article, Rose uses various strategies that are effective in persuading his audience because Rose utilizes emotional appeal, language and structure in order to logically connect his past memories to the present reputation of blue-collar jobs.

In “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, he argue that every work requires a level of intelligence and people should understand that intelligence is not related with education. His mother Rose Meraglio Rose worked as a waitress in a coffee shops and family restaurants. He and his father spent time in the restaurant waiting to his mother to end her shift. Been in the restaurant help him notice how a restaurant works specially how his mother works.

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,

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

Understanding and using intelligence is in all of us. The intelligence determines a person who uses it for their purposes that results that there are different categories of work that people work in. The different categories are different skill-sets consider the type of person in a group of people that coexists with the other people. This results that a person is to themselves based on what they can or cannot act according to their intellect. All people are not a welder or a doctor, nevertheless at least one person is one of them with the skills they gain from the intelligence or experience that they have. Understanding intelligence difference and its subjectivity are one view of understanding Mike Rose article "Blue-Collar Brilliance"

His mother states, “There isn’t a day that goes by in the restaurant that you don’t learn something” (as cited in Rose, 2012, p. #). while his uncle compares the shop floor to schooling—explaining that it is a “place where you’re constantly learning” (as cited in Rose, 2012, p. #). Both comparisons reference the idea of learning while working and how blue collar workers are always updating their knowledge. These examples are critical in this piece because they shine light on how often blue-collar workers activate their brains—reinforcing Rose’s entire claim.

In this story, “Blue Collar Brilliance” the author Mark Rose protested that intelligence can be consistent by the amount of education a person has done. Rose advises that blue collar and service jobs lacks more intelligence. In the essay, Rose talks about “how he grew up observing his mother as a waitress in coffee shops and restaurants” (1034, Rose). He describes his mother as charismatic because she loves her job and a hard worker, also she puts her heart and soul in being a waitress. Rose describes her mother’s job on how she what orders people wanted, how much time it took for each dish to be made, and how she became a professional at analyzing the affecting rights of her customers and employees. “ He also describes his uncle’s job  at the General Motors factory and demonstrates tons of amount of intelligence that was mandatory of him as he jumped from being in the production line to administer paint jobs” (1036, Rose). “Rose explains in the story on how he observed different blue collar workers and he came to the closure, that each blue collar worker has a skill that takes a great deal of mind power to master” (1038, Rose).  The central claim of the story is, “many kinds of physical work does not require a high literacy level” (1041, Rose). Some examples of this claim would be, “like anyone who is effective at physical work, my mother learned to work smart, as she put it, to make every move count” (1034, Rose). “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 working habits of blue-collar workers and have come to understand how much my mother’s kind of work demands both body and brain (1034, Rose). “Still, for Joe the shop floor provided what school did not, it was like schooling, he said, a place where you’re constantly learning, Joe learned the most efficient way to use his body by acquiring a set of routines that were quick and preserved energy” (1036-1037, Rose). “He lacked formal knowledge of how the machines under his supervision worked, but he had direct experience with them, hands-on knowledge, and

In Chapter 6 Mike Rose accepts a full-time position at the Veterans Program to teach English and reading. After accepting the position, Mike again begins to doubt himself, realizing that he will have to design his own curriculum in addition to other heightened responsibilities. However, instead of giving up and retreating like he did with grad school, Mike takes the month he has to plan his curriculum to design a class that will truly serve the students. Mike draws upon his own experiences in school and his experiences working with the children in El Monte, and the veterans to plan a curriculum that is sensitive to student’s individual situations and provides relevant techniques and valuable content.

Firstly, let’s take a look at Alexander Hamilton. According to archives.gov, he was born the illegitimate son of a poor merchant with an aristocratic lineage and a painter’s daughter in 1757, Hamilton showed superiority in terms of intelligence from an early age and was put through school by several

Knowledge isn’t all about what people know or how well they are in school. IQ tests test the intelligence of the person; however they test the pure thinking capacity rather than what people know. This means that intelligence comes from the entire cognitive thinking ability and not what they

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

Once a person has an idea of what intelligence is and what it means, a final thought one might consider is what influences are responsible for the different types of intellect. Two possible influences are genetics and the environment in which one lives, with genetics being the strongest influence (Santrock, 2009, pg. 302). Most researchers agree that a person’s genetics and environment interact with one another to influence the outcome of that person’s intelligence (Santrock, 2009, pg. 302). Genetic influences should be pretty obvious, so there should be no need to explain it; a person’s environment on the other hand, can involve several factors. An environment can consist of elements such as a person’s school, home, friendships, family relationships, and workplaces. All of these components factor in to influence a person’s intelligence.