"Blue-Collar Brilliance" by Mike Rose
One. Rose's mother learns to craft her skills as a server at a restaurant. Is this brilliance or adaptation? Is there a difference? Explain.
Some might argue that the skills the mother develops are adaptive. She needs to multitask, read body language, show savvy, show insouciance.
But some would ask why be adaptive to a dead-end job? To acclimate to a dead-end and suffer the ennui or boredom of stagnation evidences something less than brilliance, some might argue.
Two. What other types of intelligence is Rose exploring beyond the kind associated with a formal education?
Emotional intelligence: Being able to read people, to measure how close or far one needs to go with another, to know how to draw boundaries with people, to read subtle cues of sadness, anger, joy, and react appropriately to those cues.
Street smarts: Being able to read a fluid situation and react in ways that brings one advantage. We also call this being smart off the cuff.
On the opposite extreme, a person could be an idiot savant, someone with extraordinary skills in one specialty while lagging in social skills.
Rose questions a culture with mind-body dualism as we venerate intelligence in white-collar jobs but dismiss the idea of intelligence in blue-collar jobs.
We create an artificial dualism in which we attribute intelligence to white-collar jobs and bovine dullness to blue-collar jobs.
In some cases what we associate with brute force is not brute force at all but requires mental dexterity. For example, a top security manager told me a security guard has to be over 90% psychologist before offering me a $1,000 to be the bodyguard for a mental celebrity on Christmas Eve. I declined after being warned that she was abusive.
Three. What is the main purpose or objective of Rose's essay?
He argues we shouldn't stereotype people if they are blue-collar workers because this dismissing their intellectual skills results in our becoming blind to the complex education that many blue-collar jobs require.
As he writes:
"If we believe everyday work to be mindless, then that will affect the work we create in the future. When we devalue the full range of everyday cognition, we offer limited educational opportunities and fail to make fresh and meaningful instructional connections among disparate kinds of skill and knowledge. If we think that whole categories of people--identified by class or occupation--are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and cripple our ability to talk across cultural divides."
Four. Why do so many people have the stereotype of the "dumb blue-collar worker"?
I have a theory. Blue-collar people are not dumb. However, their work makes them tired, so that when they're off work they're so exhausted all they have the energy for is to "wind down," drink, and consume entertainment.
I worked in construction in my late teens and early twenties, and when I got home I was too tired to watch TV. All I wanted to do was eat and go to bed. Doing construction, a job I hated, I realized that if I did this for very long I would hate my life and knowing this motivated me to stay in college.
Five. Do all non-college jobs have a stigma?
No. I notice a lot of people can work in sales, finance, and real estate without a college degree and enjoy a certain esteem in society. Also, there are entrepreneurs and inventors.
Writing Prompt from Page 286
This essay asks you to think about the relationship between blue- and white-collar work. Write an essay in which you compare the particular rules, scripts, roles, and norms that teach us how to think about each of these two categories. How is each type of work typically defined? What tasks, skills, or abilities are we told each conventionally involves? And, perhaps most important, how are we taught to value these types of work differently? In your view, are these value distinctions fair? Accurate? How or how not?
Explanation Part in Your Intro
Write an essay in which you compare the particular rules, scripts, roles, and norms that teach us how to think about each of these two categories. How is each type of work typically defined? What tasks, skills, or abilities are we told each conventionally involves? And, perhaps most important, how are we taught to value these types of work differently?
Argument Part in Your Thesis
In your view, are these value distinctions fair? Accurate? How or how not?
Support of Rose
Mike Rose has written an invaluable and insightful refutation of the class prejudice that dismisses blue-collar work as a brain-numbing exercise relegated to life’s losers and dummies. A close look at blue-collar work, in fact, evidences that it can be as high-minded as any white-collar job evidenced by ________________, _________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
Thesis That Refutes Rose
While Mike Rose makes good points about the mental adroitness his mother used to be a waitress, his overall thesis that equates blue-collar work with white-collar work in the realm of intelligence collapses when we consider that too much blue-collar work is defined by mindless monotony; too much blue-collar work has no room for promotion resulting in the death of motivation; and too much blue-collar work exhausts the mind and spirit and becomes a dead-end impeding blue-collar workers from aspiring to greater things. Therefore, Rose does a great disservice by his starry-eyed attempt to glorify blue-collar work.
“Preparing Minds for Markets” by Jonathan Kozol (301)
One. Why are all the high school practice jobs manager positions in the service industry like being a cashier or manager at Walmart or Sears or Home Depot or Pet Smart?
It appears the teachers have low expectations for their poor students who they feel are either going to prison or, as their salvation, getting a mediocre job in the service industry.
Perhaps the teachers have good intentions. Perhaps not. But in any case, they have prescribed a narrow role for their students. As one principal says, “I’m in the business of developing minds to meet a market demand.”
Many would argue this isn’t the role of education. Education should expose students to as many opportunities as possible. Would you want your children trained exclusively for service industry jobs at school as if to say, “This is all you can do”?
Part of the problem is financial. A lot of poor schools don’t have computers, so they can’t teach computer literacy, or beyond that, computer code. Some schools don't even have books.
Two. What is the psychological devastation that results from treating students like they’re on the road to prison or a service-industry job?
Demoralization, a crushed spirit, disconnection from the teacher, hatred of education are all results of the system described in Kozol’s essay.
I know an English professor and published author who grew up in the inner city of Detroit, and he said his teachers were scared of him, in part because he’s six feet six inches and weighs 300 pounds. One day in high school he blew up and said to a teacher, “If you keep treating me like a gangster, I’m going to become one just because you're making me very upset!”
The conditions Kozol and others describe is a scandal that underscores how the disparity between the haves and the have-nots contradicts notions we have about American freedom, American democracy, and the American Dream.
We watch Shark Tank and say, “See, everyone, the American Dream is still alive!” But only a minuscule percentage of the show’s aspiring entrepreneurs come from a school in which they were trained to be service workers and managers in department stores.
Writing Prompt from Page 313
From very different perspectives, Kozol and Mike Rose invite readers to take a closer look at the way cultural stereotypes about different jobs can influence how we define legitimate or valid intelligence. Write an essay in which you identify and assess how these writers’ respective commentaries compare. How does each understand the connection between work and learning? What sort of conclusions or critique does each offer? And which do you find more convincing or compelling? Why?
Key words and passages
Identify and assess how these writers’ respective commentaries compare.
How does each understand the connection between work and learning?
What sort of conclusions or critique does each offer? And which do you find more convincing or compelling? Why?
Sample Responses
Support of the Authors
Rose, Gatto and Kozol are allies in the battle against economic class warfare, which perpetuates the divisions between the lower and upper classes evidenced by _____________, ________________, ________________, and __________________.
Refutation of the Authors
Rose and Kozol are shrill liberals whose attempts to bridge the gap between the poorer working classes and the more affluent classes prove misguided when we consider that Rose is guilty of glorifying blue-collar work and making it attractive to those who should aspire to greater career goals; Kozol is guilty of dismissing vocational training in low-income schools that are giving students options that they otherwise would not have; both are guilty of intrusive and unrealistic social engineering and economic redistribution.
Write a thesis with a concession clause at the beginning so the reader knows you've considered your opponents' main objection.
Sample template of a concession clause followed by a thesis statement
While I concede that my opponents make strong arguments about___________ and _________, their arguments do not diminish my contention that _____________ evidenced by _______________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
Another example:
While my opponents have some worthy points about ____________, their argument collapses when we consider _______________, ______________, ______________, and ___________________.
Using Parallel Structure for Mapping Components of Your Thesis Statement
Parallelism in Different Parts of Speech
The theater eaters were hoggish, avaricious, relentless, and made lots of disgusting smacking sounds.
A diet that consists of locally grown vegetables, organic animal proteins, organic dairy, and fish that swim wildly in the open seas promotes strong health.
The diners at HomeTown Buffet smacked their lips and were sweating.
The HomeTown Buffet diners were pleased about the unlimited salad bar and that everyone got five extra slices of chocolate cake.
Corrected: The HomeTown Buffet diners were pleased that they had access to the unlimited salad bar and that they could have five extra slices of chocolate cake.
When it comes to losing weight, it's better to change one's lifestyle than dieting in a manic and compulsive panic.
Corrected: When it comes to losing weight, it's better to change one's lifestyle than to rely on manic, compulsive crash dieting.
“Can You Make Yourself Smarter?” by Dan Hurley (316)
One. What are the “two flavors” of intelligence?
There’s crystallized intelligence, stored information in human memory that grows over time.
And there’s fluid intelligence, a supposed fixed entity. It’s “impervious to training,” we have been told.
But then the Jaeggi Study proved that fives days a week of twenty-five minute mental exercises could improve fluid intelligence.
Writing Prompt from Page 326
Underneath the debate over technology and education, Hurley notes, is a deeper debate over whether intelligence is biologically or culturally derived. Write an essay in which you present and defend your own views on this question. Do you think intelligence is largely a matter of intrinsic or inherited ability? Or is it possible that changes in our external circumstances can actually make us smarter? And on the basis of what evidence do you make this claim?
Sample Response to the Above Prompt
Refutation
While intelligence results from both biological hardwiring and the environment, Hurley’s claim that we can significantly augment our intelligence through a variety of exercises collapses under the weight of evidence, which includes _____________, ___________, ______________, and ________________.
Defense
While Hurley may at times be guilty of overstating the role of increasing our intelligence through various exercises, his research is valuable and stands up to the empirical evidence when we consider ______________, _______________, __________________, and _______________________.
NYTimes observes that Hurley's book is "premature" in its findings.
Jeff McMahon Sentence Fragment Exercises
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
McMahon Grammar Exercises: Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Comma Splice Exercises
After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
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