“Blue-Collar Brilliance” Analysis essay

In the article “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, the author argues that jobs that do not require a large amount of formal education, still require a certain kind of intelligence. Rose shares his mother’s and uncle’s experiences as blue-collar workers and his study to support his claim.

Rose introduces the article sharing stories about his mother, Rosie, experience working as a waitress, “she’d sequence and group task: what could she do first, then second, then third as she circled through her station” (Page. 1034). Rose includes this quote to describe that from observing his mom, he noticed that in order to adapt how active the restaurant was, his mother would mentally devise strategies to remain efficient in her work. Rose understood that her job was not solely based on manual labor unlike the common stereotypes, but instead both manual labor and intelligence. Rose later describes their family educational background stating that his mother was a middle school dropout, he included this to support the idea that even though she does not have a lot of …show more content…
Much like Rose’s mother, his uncle also dropped out of school and eventually work at a blue-collared job. Rose recalls a tour around the General Motors factory with his uncle, who over the span of working 33 years, went from the assembly line to supervisor of the paint and body department. Rose explains that his uncle “constantly faced new problems and became a consummate multi-tasker, evaluating a flurry of demands quickly, parceling out physical and mental resources, keeping a number of ongoing events in his mind” (Page. 1037), Rose includes these details to show that much like his mom’s job, his uncle’s job was physically and intellectually demanding in order to maintain a calm in a busy environment, Supporting the idea that a variety of blue-collared jobs required some type of intelligence to be