Today, a piece of paper verifying one has graduated from a university can hold a significant amount of leverage over another person’s thirty years of experience. Society has developed to directly relate intelligence to one’s level of schooling. However, in “Blue-Collar Brilliance” Professor Mike Rose opposes the notion of intelligence being measured by levels of education and degrees. After years of close observation, Rose proposes that blue-collar and manual labor occupations offer just as many opportunities for intellectual growth as the average classroom (97). Criticizers of blue collar jobs fail to realize that they can be just as enlightening as higher education and professional jobs, because the skills learned by these workers hold applicability
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On how many occasions does the question “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” arise in the classroom? The truth is that much of the knowledge that is acquired through a traditional classroom setting will never be put to use. Post-secondary schools often force students to take higher level classes on something completely irrelevant and extremely difficult simply because they wish to test the student’s breaking point. Kristine Cueto, a current student, affirms this notion when she states, “My general perception of the purpose of college is to obtain the degree necessary to pursue the career I'm interested in... college does give you more knowledge, but a lot of that knowledge we end up flushing because it won't help in the long run if it has nothing to do with how you execute your career” (Cueto). This is not to argue that professionals such as psychologists and astrophysicists are not intellectuals, but to highlight that “the big difference between the psychologist’s laboratory and the workplace is that in the former the problems are isolated and in the latter they are embedded in the real-time flow of work with all its messiness and social complexity” (Rose …show more content…
However many people fail to realize this because “intelligence is closely associated with formal education…and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose 97). Society directly relates higher education to intelligence and looks down upon jobs that require physical labor; categorizing them as mindless and repetitive jobs. Rose challenges this statement because he has grown up around his mother, a waitress, and seen that “[her] kind of work demands both body and brain” (Rose 97). Growing up with a chef as a father, I was exposed to a similar atmosphere. By accompanying him on every ‘take you child to work day’ I was able to observe him in the place he felt most comfortable. Twenty years of experience had taught him to decrypt servers’ messy shorthand and memorize recipes, cut vegetables at an angle to avoid losing a finger, prepare three dishes to be sent out simultaneously, and direct his kitchen staff through the busiest hours of the day. However, most impressively I observed him speak in Spanish. My father, who dropped out of school after the fifth grade to support his family, had learned to speak Spanish to communicate with his coworkers. More significantly, he had not learned by taking a class but through his coworkers. Despite taking a course for four years, I am unable to speak anything
On how many occasions does the question “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” arise in the classroom? The truth is that much of the knowledge that is acquired through a traditional classroom setting will never be put to use. Post-secondary schools often force students to take higher level classes on something completely irrelevant and extremely difficult simply because they wish to test the student’s breaking point. Kristine Cueto, a current student, affirms this notion when she states, “My general perception of the purpose of college is to obtain the degree necessary to pursue the career I'm interested in... college does give you more knowledge, but a lot of that knowledge we end up flushing because it won't help in the long run if it has nothing to do with how you execute your career” (Cueto). This is not to argue that professionals such as psychologists and astrophysicists are not intellectuals, but to highlight that “the big difference between the psychologist’s laboratory and the workplace is that in the former the problems are isolated and in the latter they are embedded in the real-time flow of work with all its messiness and social complexity” (Rose …show more content…
However many people fail to realize this because “intelligence is closely associated with formal education…and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose 97). Society directly relates higher education to intelligence and looks down upon jobs that require physical labor; categorizing them as mindless and repetitive jobs. Rose challenges this statement because he has grown up around his mother, a waitress, and seen that “[her] kind of work demands both body and brain” (Rose 97). Growing up with a chef as a father, I was exposed to a similar atmosphere. By accompanying him on every ‘take you child to work day’ I was able to observe him in the place he felt most comfortable. Twenty years of experience had taught him to decrypt servers’ messy shorthand and memorize recipes, cut vegetables at an angle to avoid losing a finger, prepare three dishes to be sent out simultaneously, and direct his kitchen staff through the busiest hours of the day. However, most impressively I observed him speak in Spanish. My father, who dropped out of school after the fifth grade to support his family, had learned to speak Spanish to communicate with his coworkers. More significantly, he had not learned by taking a class but through his coworkers. Despite taking a course for four years, I am unable to speak anything