Summary Of Blue Collar Brilliance

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Pages: 3

In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose he begins with a description of his mother Rosie’s work life, who is a waitress at coffee shops and family restaurants, he goes into detail of her daily routines, how everyday she would memorize orders, knows how to deal with customers, how long orders would take, and more. Also describes his Uncle Joe’s job, he talks about how he worked in a General Motors Factory and how he moved up from production line to supervising paint jobs. What Joe and Rosie have in common is that they quit school at a young age for different reasons, one for family and the other for work. As he observed Rosie and Joe he realized how much skill, technique, body and brain go into their line of work or generally any blue collar jobs, not only his mothers and uncles. Rose emphasizes that the amount of schooling a person completes should not determine their level of intelligence, and I strongly agree with him.
I agree with Rose because people are looked at as unintelligent if they don’t complete a high level of education. School isn’t for everyone and people shouldn’t feel pressure to have to attend if they detect it’s not for them. Some people don’t have the desire to finish school and should be acceptable. You
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For instance, in school they don’t teach you about credit cards, how to handle money, about health insurance, how to jumpstart a car, etc. and you may at some point in life need to know about it. Like in the essay Rosie had to learn how to multi task, how to deal with customers and coworkers emotions and she didn’t learn about it in school. There are qualities and skills that you just can’t learn sitting in a class room, you have to learn in the real world. You may not be academically smart but instead street smart and they are both essential in life. Just because we lack knowledge in one of the two doesn’t make us uneducated or