Mike Rose is arguing against the ideas that Western culture embodies about blue-collar workers. Western culture is the They in They Say. We've come to accept the belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence. Because of this, biographical accounts of the lives of scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals are rich with detail about the intellectual dimension of their work. We associate how smart any one person is, with how much formal education they've acquired. This can be seen throughout history, as we've come to accept the notion that mechanics are usually an illiterate "bunch of dummies". All brawn, and no brain.
However, Mike Rose (I Say) affirms that blue-collar jobs are just as intellectual as white-collar jobs. That such jobs require precise knowledge, skill and calculation etc. Factory work is in fact equal to formal education, and deserves more credit and recognition. He first realized how much blue-collar work actually demands of both body and brain, by watching his mother work as a waitress. He sees how her job, that most people would deem insignificant and intellectually un-challenging, actually requires math & calculation, strategy, intelligence and psychology. Many of these factory jobs are actually highly scientific processes that include intense amounts of thinking, analyzing, and learned knowledge through observation and trial & error. His uncle Joe learned about the auto industry, technological and social dynamics of the shop floor, machinery and production processes, basics of paint chemistry and plating & baking first hand through direct experience, and hands on knowledge. He had dropped out of school, but was still learning through experimenting on the job.To work is to solve problems. Whether you're a lawyer fighting a case, or a carpenter making an exact measurement, both require high levels of skill.
After reading Mike Rose's 'Blue-Collar Brilliance', I was reminded of Mike from Studs Terkel's 'Working'. Rose's essay really opened up my eyes, and allowed me to see blue-collar and service jobs in a whole different light. The factory jobs Mike(Working) groaned about, that are often synonymous with monotony, repetitiveness, and unsafe working conditions, took on a new appearance of scientific, intellectually stimulating and strategic. Both Mike's strongly believe that blue-collar workers deserve more credit than they are given for the work that they do. Ross communicates that their line of work is indeed on the same level as the effete snobs that Mike is familiar with, while Mike argues that they should at least be recognized for the hard work they put in. Blue-collar workers are indeed brilliant, and should not go unnoticed like those unknown who built the pyramids.
Hi Avery - Very good, strong, smart writing and response. Your last paragraph raises an interesting possibility: that some of these kinds of jobs may actually demand a lot of intelligence and skill but sill be boring, unfufilling, or alienating, to use Marx's term. It would be interesting to explore why and how both these things might be true and what would change it. Ironically, now that there are fewer of them, many people are nostalgic for jobs like Mike's largely because of the higher wages they gave as compared to many service jobs.
ReplyDeleteOne little formatting thing: are the parts in italics quotations? If so use the regular way of introducing them we talked about in class: we need to know where they come from which we can't tell right now.
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