Blue collar and white collar jobs have equal value in every aspect imaginable. The amount of reading in blue collar jobs is either more or the same as white collar jobs; it can’t be said that one has a low literacy level because of their occupation. The pay in blue collar jobs can be level or just a small bit less than white collar jobs. The last reason is that hands on learning during the career can be just as effective and rewarding as in school educations. Most people think that blue collar jobs don’t require a high literacy level or even one at all, but contrary to popular belief, there are more or equal amounts of reading in blue collar work as white collar work. For example, in the article, the author wrote about his mother who dropped out of school in 7th grade to get a job, “Rosie took customers’ orders, pencil poised over pad, while fielding questions about the food.”(Page 1, Paragraph 3) Rosie had worked in a diner of sorts. This all proves that blue collar workers have a higher intellectual capacity or ability than is generally thought because of the high amounts of reading that takes in their workplace. …show more content…
Blue and white collar jobs can be sometimes inseparable when it comes to the annual pay. Most will think being a heavy machinery operator for a car manufacturing factory isn’t a good job because it doesn’t require a specific (college) degree and because of the fact they work in a factory. However, those workers can, with a few years of experience, earn up to about $120,000 per year(Mike Rose on talk show). That’s a very substantial amount of money for a job that is simply looked down upon. Another example would be that in the article, the author had an uncle that dropped out of school in 9th grade to work in a car factory, and it was said that: “…at General Motors, over a 33-year career, he moved from working on the assembly line to supervising the paint-and-body department.”(Page 2, Paragraph 4) He went on to improve the factory overall by having all the employees learn each other’s jobs so they could easily switch at any time without any problems, increase employee break time amount and break frequency, and introduce many other new concepts to the factory. Hands on learning is extremely important. Hands on learning during one’s career can be just helpful and rewarding as in-school educations because the workers would be using firsthand accounts and experiences to teach themselves how to solve problems and find productive solutions. If there is a problem, the blue collar worker would have to learn to solve it by themselves without any prior knowledge making it easier or remember or even repeat. Joe(from previous paragraphs) learned to master his job at General Motors as well as improve his workplace and his employees’ workplace(Page 2, Paragraph 4). All through the wonderful process called hands on learning. Although many manual labor jobs don’t require a high literacy level, more reading takes place in the blue collar workplace than is generally thought by those not involved in blue collar work(Page 4, Paragraph 3). From manuals and catalogues to work invoices, reading is all over the blue collar workplace; sometimes even more than white collar jobs. There is and always will be equal value in blue collar jobs as white collar jobs.
This is because of the amount of reading in blue collar work, the equal pay, as well as the amount of hands-on work that takes place in blue collar workplaces everywhere to substitute for in school educations. Blue collar workers should be recognized in their hard work more, as well as their jobs be talked about with a better image to kids of the future workforce and adults, too. “To acknowledge a broader range of intellectual capacity is to take seriously the concept of cognitive variability, to appreciate all the Rosies and Joes the thought that drives their accomplishments and define who they are. This is a model of the mind that is worthy of a democratic society.”(Page 4, Paragraph 6) Blue and white collar jobs should be considered equals in the job world and everywhere
else.
However, in the restaurant I currently work at and have been working at going on six years, I work with handful of college graduates. These college graduates who have a diploma at home hanging on their wall still choose to work as blue-collar status. The reason being that there are not many other options of employment that you can work a six-hour shift and walk out of that shift with a hundred dollars in your pocket. “Like anyone who is effective at physical work, my mother learned to work smart, as she put it, to make every move count”
He claims to relate his mother’s quick and effective decisions, customer interactions, memorisation and problem solving, and his uncle, Joe’s, learning, planning and management skills to that of a white-collar worker. “Preposterous”, some might argue. “You cannot possibly compare waiters and conductors with boffins.” However, the dichotomy between the blue-collars and white-collars are subtle. Regardless of Rose’s claim that blue-collar workers are more efficient and carry a broader skill set, there exists no comparison between the two categories. Granted, the social biases about one’s occupation are irrational; however, blue-collars cannot substitute white-collar workers merely because of their “diverse intelligence”. Given Rose’s experiences, he has colluded blue-collar intelligence with white-collar intelligence. Id Est, he believes that social discrimination against blue-collar workers is fallacious from his observations; thus, their skills are the analogous to white-collar workers. In sum, blue-collar workers are intelligent and important in their respective and applicable fields, and white-collars in theirs’; drawing comparisons between them are like comparing apples and
In the article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, he begins with an anecdote of his mother working her blue-collar job at a diner as a waitress. Rose vividly describes her common day that is packed with a constant array of tedious tasks she has to accomplish to make her living. The authors goal appears to be making the reader appreciate the hard work of blue-collar workers because society places a stereotype on them as being less intelligent than someone with more schooling or even a white-collar job: “Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no inmate that links hand and brain” (282). I agree with Rose’s conclusion that if we continue to place a stigma on
Blue Collar workers today are looked down upon by most of society. People think that if you have a blue collar job you aren’t smart and not successful. But in my opinion, blue collar workers are the backbone of our society, and deserve the same amount of respect as white collar workers. “Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose” explains how blue collar workers are very smart and use a lot of brainpower to get their jobs done. Both his Uncle and mother were blue collar workers and that’s where he got his inspiration to stand up for blue collar workers around the world. He gives us examples of how his own family members were blue collar workers and how they were smart and how they excelled at their jobs. He uses his own experiences to show us that blue collar workers are in fact smart, able to adapt to many different situations, and deserve respect.
“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 the notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose 276). My Dad has worked blue collar jobs his entire life. Security guard, lawn service, woodworker, carpenter, plus anything else that involves his hands. He didn’t have any schooling past his high school diploma. But he’s always told me, “Yeah, I wish I went to college, but I’m sure as hell glad I was taught and forced to learn the skills I have now. Like doing things on my own and working with my hands, my work ethic, and my ability to absorb as many things as I could to get the job done.” Blue collar jobs can never be outsourced. There will always be a need for plumbers, electricians, machine operators, carpenters and many, many more
Through the various types of texts I went through, Mike Rose’s article on “Blue-Collar Brilliance” was the one that I felt I could personally relate to. I grew up in a family where manual labor was the key to a good income. Out of my entire family, I was the only one who graduated high school and went to college, therefore I grew up realizing that people didn’t necessarily need a college education to be considered “smart”. My father has been one of the smartest people in my family, I could explain my calculus homework to him and he would be able to quickly grasp at all the equations and concepts, even though he dropped out of high school as a freshmen in Mexico. In the fall of 2015, I had decided to skip a semester of college to find job opportunities outside of the education field. Starting off with high hopes, I quickly came to realize that job opportunities were hard to find. I came to have a lot
A college Degree used to be an extraordinary accolade but now its just another thing that we need in order to be successful, at this points its nothing more than a paperweight to some. Mike Rose states, “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” (Mike Rose 276). In other words the author of Blue-Collar Brilliance, Mike Rose, believes that blue-collar jobs require intelligence as well. I agree that those who work blue-collar jobs need to be intelligent, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe that those who work blue-collar jobs aren't intelligent and that why they have them. Although I also believe that
In “ Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose argues that intelligences can’t be measured by the education we received in school but how we learn them in our everyday lives. He talks about his life growing up and watching his mother waitressing at a restaurant. He described her orders perfectly by who got what, how long each dish takes to make, and how she could read her customers. He also talks about his uncles working at the General Motors factory and showed the amount of intelligence that was need to work at the factory. Rose goes on talking about the different types of blue-collar and how he came up with the idea that a person has skills that takes a lot of mind power to achieve.
In the essays, Two Year Are Better than Four by Liz Addison, and Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose respectively, take two different approaches to learning. Addison firmly believes in the traditional method by advocating community college is the better choice for students to experience higher education. Addison also asserts community colleges offer the same level of education compared to four universities. She also emphasized in her writing the value of the experience is much more personal due to the smaller classes in community college. On the other hand, Mike Rose observes that higher education does not define a person’s intelligence. Rose believes that society plays a big part in the judgmental view towards people without degrees. Yet the same society fail to recognize that blue collar jobs such as plumbers and waitresses require specific kinds of intelligence just like Rose’s mother Rosie, whom he described as an example of blue collar brilliance. Even though Addison and Rose take
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
In “In Defense of Literacy,” Wendell Berry explains literacy is a requirement, not an embellishment. Literacy is more than the ability to just read and write; it's also the ability to understand what a person is reading and make sense in what a person is writing. While some people may think that achieving literacy requires hard work and gets little outcome, I think that literacy makes people more ambitious, confident, more attentive, and more prosperous in life than those who are not literate. Joining in on conversations and voicing ones philosophies is easier if people are literate and educated, and people feel worthy of themselves when they have the ability to do so. People are more determined in life, whether it is with their professions
“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work Reading;” Tue 5 Feb. 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.
Throughout the entire article, “Blue Collar Brilliance” the author Mike Rose is trying to show the real fact of Blue Collar jobs by describing his mother work as a waitress and his uncle as a factory worker who made his way up to manager. By giving evidence, he is also trying to open the readers eye that Blue Collar workers are in a same intelligence skill as other high-level workers though they do not have four years degrees. The author, Mike Rose, passed his childhood by watching his mom as waiting on booths and table with skillfully to assemble the skill to do work efficiently. He also watched out all other workers and interested by their adaption to coexist with each other. He got the chance as a first person to attend college in his family,
Education and experience are considered “human capital” by economist. The knowledge and skills learned on the job make employees more productive. Historically women were less likely to go to college and graduate, however according to the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences National Center for Education Statistics Between 1970 and 2001, women went from being the minority to the majority of the U.S. undergraduate population, increasing their representation from 42 percent to 56 percent of undergraduates. If these trends continue women will make up the larger segment of the skilled labor force. Educational attainment is particularly important in closing the wage gap. The simple fact is that employees with a college degree makes more than employees with a high school education. The gender wage gap exists at all levels of education, and women with graduate degrees experience the widest wage ratio of 73 percent, earning almost $450 less per week than
The reason for that is, college is too expensive. If the United States of America wants to be at the top of the educational statistics, why not make college affordable? There are many people in today’s world that are smart enough, but don 't have the money to go to college, so what happens to those people? Most work a minimum wage job for the rest of their lives, others save money until there 30 years old and can afford college. If jobs need people to fill certain positions than they should look at those people who got high school diplomas and not just people with some college experience or a college degrees. Companies should take into consideration that not everyone can afford college but they can be just as experienced as a person who has a college