Blue Collar Brilliance Summary

Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff touches on the struggle of integrating street smarts into the academic world. Book smarts were usually associated with middle and upper class, whereas street smarts were usually associated with working and lower class, and Graff felt that he didn’t belong to either. Graff later explains how there should be a way to build a bridge between a student’s outside interests to the academic world, and he believes that can be done through reading, analyzing and debating on those topics (sports, fashion, cars. etc). Not only would it combat issues like boredom and isolation, but it would also help students develop better literacy and analytical skills, as well as create a sense of community in schools. Graff knows

that incorporating outside interests into academics will not guarantee a student’s full interest in the academic environment. He does believe, however, that acknowledging such interests and allowing students to take an academic approach to it, will put street smarts on the same level as book smarts. I think this point is very important because it can often be a struggle that street smart students may face in academic environments, feeling as though their street smarts aren’t useful or as important as the academic topics learned in school. Like Graff expressed in this reading, building the bridge between street smarts and academics could dismantle the divide between the two.
Similarly, Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose touches upon the same issue of social class influencing the beliefs on education, especially when it comes to blue-collar jobs.

Blue collar jobs are typically manual labor jobs that do not require “formal education” like white-collar jobs. Rose fascinates over how underrated the blue collar worker’s intelligence is by society. Rose recalls his observations of his mother when she was working at a local diner, and how much intellectual work goes into waitressing. Rose’s mother was able to multitask; remembering tables and orders, knowing how to satisfy a customer’s or fellow worker’s needs, and how to navigate around the diner in an efficient way. Rose further explain how any blue-collar worker can learn how to solve problems through cognitive skills (reading, writing, remembering, paying attention, trial and error, etc). I think Rose’s idea should be heavily stressed to everyone, especially people who work or are interested in working. It’s unfair to blue-collar workers to assume that because they have not received formal education like college/university or vocational schools, that they don’t use or develop intellect in their work areas. The physical work that is performed on the job should not take away from the fact that blue-collar workers use cognitive skills to ultimately solve problems on that job. Rose concludes with the points that society should not think that people who have blue-collar jobs are not intellectual and that it should be acknowledge that there are many variations of intellect across the blue-collar

workplace.
In conclusion, both Gerald Graff and Mike Rose communicate that working/lower class individuals do have an intellect that comes in various forms that can influence the shape of the academic and work world. Through personal experiences, as well as observations of other people, both Graff and Rose are able to depict the bigger picture of the connections with social class and how intellectualism is judged from there, as well as providing insights on how to move past those judgments of not being intellectual enough.