Blue Collar Brilliance Analysis

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It has often been taught that in order to gain respect in life and be successful you must have a formal college education. Blue-collar workers were under appreciated or looked at as less intelligent individuals unlike their counterparts, white-collar workers. Mike Rose, a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies wrote, “Blue-Collar Brilliance” in response to this theory. He stresses the point that people who spend more time in school, are not more brilliant than those who do not. He suggests that blue-collar and service jobs require more intelligence than meets the eye. The author uses a relevant anecdote of his mother Rosie, a waitress in a restaurant that quit school before graduation to help raise her brothers and sisters. Even though school ended early for her because of her obligations to her siblings, Rose educates the readers about what type of work his mother was capable of without completing a…show more content…
Patricia Parks has a graduate degree, and works two part time jobs. She teaches writing at a university; the other job is working at the supermarket. In the article, “The Case for Blue-Collar Work: College No Longer Guarantees Success” written by Parks, she agrees with Rose by stating, “We are a society that glamorizes white-collar professionals at the expense of their blue-collar counterparts”. This concurs with Rose’s idea that, “Although we rightly acknowledge and amply compensate the play of mind in white-collar and professional work, we diminish or erase it in considerations about other endeavors-physical and service work particularly” (Rose 250). The idea here is that there is an automatic predisposition placed upon the blue-collar workforce that forcefully places them beneath their white-collar counterparts in a workforce
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