Blue Collar Brilliance Mike Rose Analysis

Individuals frequently expect that manual laborers are less educated, therefore making them less smart. Mike Rose was brought up in a group of blue-collars. Both of Rose's folks scarcely had educations, as they were early dropouts. Rose grew up watching his mom tend to tables, and learned at an early stage that blue-collar workers possessed an important set of abilities. In the article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance," author Mike Rose stresses his belief that blue-collar jobs must not be seen as illiterate jobs, but rather must be recognized for the amount of skills and intelligence these jobs truly require. Rose uses his personal experiences to show that blue-collar jobs require just as much intelligence and skill as jobs that require higher level academic credentials. Rose tells us how his mother learned to “work smarter” and “make every move count” by using memory tricks and being observant to her customers and colleagues so she knew how to act around them (Rose 906). Rose also tells us about his uncle who dropped out of school in the ninth grade and eventually became a lineman where he “constantly faced new problems and became a consummate multi-tasker, evaluating a flurry of demands quickly, parceling out physical and mental resources, and keeping a number of ongoing events in his mind” (Rose 908). Rose uses individuals from his
childhood life as an approach to show the difficulty of such jobs, and to clarify that those occupations contain a great deal more than simply the manual aspects of it. Rose additionally attempts to prove that originating from a blue-collar environment doesn’t automatically place a limit on achievement, and the desire to learn more. Rose later “watched a cabinetmaker measure a long strip of wood, he read a number off the tape out loud, looked back over his shoulder to the kitchen wall, turned back to his task, took another measurement, and paused for a moment in thought. He was solving a problem involving the molding, and the measurement was important to his deliberation about structure and appearance” (Rose 912). As Rose describes his encounters to his audience, his goal is to trigger the feelings of understanding and compassion for blue-collar people. Blue-collar workers must be intelligent, practical, and know how to deal with people from numerous backgrounds in order to complete everyday tasks they encounter. Rose uses his research and credentials to aid him in expressing and defending his claims about the blue-collar workers. Throughout his studies, Rose gained extensive information about human thoughts and behavior, which created the foundation for analysis of his own family of blue-collar workers. Rose supports his views 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” (Rose 910). Rose finds that “More reading occurs in the blue-collar workplace than is generally thought, from manuals and catalogues to work orders and invoices, to lists, labels, and forms. With routine tasks, reading is integral to understanding production quotas, learning how to use an instrument, or applying a product” (Rose 913). Rose states that “in manipulating material, the worker becomes attuned to aspects of the environment, a training or disciplining of perception that both enhances knowledge and informs perception” (Rose 911).
Rose uses examples of different blue-collar jobs to demonstrate the intellectual and physical tasks they demand. He describes that movers require coordination, negotiation, planning, and the establishing of incremental goals when determining how to get an electric range down a flight of stairs (Rose 912). Rose says that observing and interpreting behavior and expression, inferring mood and motive, taking on the perspective of others, responding appropriately to social cues, and knowing when you’re understood is used by hair stylist to convert vague requests into an appropriate cut through questions, pictures, and hand gestures (Rose 912). Rose writes that mechanics rely on their senses when using sound, vibration, and even smell to understand what cannot be observed (Rose 911). In Mike Rose’s article “Blue Collar Brilliance,” he stresses the point that people who work blue-collar jobs are not less intelligent than those who spent more time in school.
The article, “Blue Collar Brilliance” is important because it gives credit to those who work blue-collar jobs and shows people that just because they had less schooling they are just as intelligent. The article shows people that blue-collar jobs not only take an extreme amount of physical labor they also require a large amount of intellectual skills as well. So, next time you see a blue-collar worker will you be as quick to judge their intellectual
abilities?