Blue Collar Brilliance Analysis

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After reading several essays that The Norton Reader has to offer I decided on choosing the essay titled “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose for my assignment response to reading an essay. I choose this essay because I am the definition of quote on quote blue collar as I have been working in the restaurant industry for nearly the last sixteen years. I know the steps, the value of each of my step or misstep, and how these steps impact my serving abilities. I relate to this essay because I have to modify my behavior to work around the moods of management and to anticipate the needs and wants from each table and every guest. I have a love hate relationship with my chosen career however it wasn’t really ever a choice. What child says that when they grow up they want to be a waitress? It’s what I found at a young age that I excelled at and that I was able to obtain tips or instant gratification as I call it for a job well done. …show more content…
My son has grown up in an empty booth at the restaurant I serve at, always bringing smiles to returning guest, and he has become the mascot of Denny’s. Not only do I relate to this essay as the mother that has mastered the craft of the serving world but I can also relate to the author’s perspective through the eyes of my child. The main idea that I want to express is that how blue-collar industry, mostly focused on the restaurant industry, are viewed as uneducated low class. As the author Mike Rose states that the notion of belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence and how the blue collared are referred as “bunch of dummies.” I disagree with the thought process that all blue collared workers are uneducated and I agree with the Mike Rose’s statements that his mother’s work was not only hard on the body but she used her mind

Analysis Of Blue Collar Brilliance

Workers in a blue-collar profession seem to learn more than workers who sit in the same office and do the same job everyday. Blue-collar jobs are never the same whether it is learning something new or doing a different task each day. With blue-collar jobs dealing with manual labour and industry, a lot of people working them jobs are people who do not finish high school. Although, a greater share of people drop out and join the workforce, they teach themselves how to work more efficient and learn…

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Blue Collar Brilliance Analysis

Blue collar workers are known to be part of a middle to lower class group. Although blue collar jobs aren’t very high paying, and most of the workers haven’t had an education past high school, most of their jobs consist of critical thinking, and problem solving. In the article’s “Blue Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, and “First, Eat All the Lawyers” by Torie Bosch both authors state how blue-collar workers are more driven to be the best at their job, and have many more skills to be taken into the…

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Blue Collar Brilliance Analysis

On Blue-Collar Brilliance In Blue Collar Brilliance, Professor Mike Rose provides a distinctive insight into the cognitive value of wage labor. Specifically, he tells us how he spent time while growing up at the restaurant where his mother worked as a waitress. It was here that he observed “a place where competence was synonymous with physical work”. Corroborating the common belief that body and mind are separated and by which people insist that the complexity of using of a tool is very distant from…

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Analysis Of Mike Rose's Blue Collar Brilliance

A professor and writer of literacy issues, Mike Rose, in his piece Blue-Collar Brilliance, aims to counteract the stigma encompassing blue-collar and pink-collar occupations by narrating stories of his family members’ jobs and addressing the different levels of intellect required to perform several tasks while managing amongst others. Intelligence isn’t commonly associated with blue-collar careers as in popular belief, mental capacity correlates to possessing both verbal and mathematical skills along…

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Analysis Of Mike Rose's Blue Collar Brilliance

In his 2009 article "Blue-Collar Brilliance," author Mike Rose explores and dispels the intellectual assumptions levied on the blue-collar working class by our society. With his insight into the service and production industries, he highlights the often overlooked physical and mental demands these workers must overcome to become successful in their respective fields. His writing illustrates how we often correlate low-wage and labor positions with an inferior intellectual ability. Rose asserts that…

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Analysis Of Mike Rose Blue Collar Brilliance

In his essay “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” Mike Rose argues that, “intelligence is closely associated with formal education–the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long-and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence.”(lines 56-58) Mike Rose believes that society thinks that blue-collar jobs are mindless. He wants to show people that their common sense is wrong, so he starts with his mother’s story, who worked…

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Analysis Of Blue Collar Brilliance By Mike Rose

article “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” Mike Rose argues that blue-collar workers gain more knowledge through hands on experience than people give them credit for. These manual careers are commonly thought of as not needing much intelligence or skill. However, in Rose’s view, the ability to multitask and the different capabilities that are cultivated while performing such jobs educate the worker in a way not frequently acknowledged. In his own words, “I'm struck by the thinking-in-motion that some [blue-collar]…

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Hidden Intellectualism In Rose And Graff's Blue Collar Brilliance

American education system is not wholly fit for preparing students for life, something Mike Rose, author of the essay Blue-Collar Brilliance, and Gerald Graff, author of the essay Hidden Intellectualism, can agree upon. Both Rose and Graff show how the intellectualism taught in schools is…

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