There are also two types of literacy in Mike Rose’s book: literacy as a way of moving through the world, which matches his definition of intelligence, and literacy as the ability to read/write and perform tasks in the classroom. For Rose, this is not just the vocational-academic divide, but a divide that rests on the mind/body binary. He asks the reader to reassess the opinion that working-class jobs are brainless simply because they are physically demanding. But I wonder if we can change the symbolic associations of jobs without drastically changing material compensation, because, as an example from Lu and Horner’s essay demonstrates, people do still have respect for blue collar workers but this respect doesn’t always translate into their action (e.g. The I-respect-blue-collar-workers-but-I-still-want-a-white-collar-job sentiment).

As I was reading Rose’s book, I couldn’t help but wonder how Evan Watkins would react to it. So the next portion of this post is just me trying to put Rose and Watkins in conversation. Watkins believed that the changing relations of literacy and work cannot be studied through individual experiences, but Rose is doing exactly that. Rose urges the reader to “honor [the] desires” of individuals who resists literacy from formal schooling. In response, Watkins, who is skeptical of the assumption of individual autonomy, might unpack and question these “desires.”

Going back to Mary-Kate’s comment/question last week, which is (I’m paraphrasing): Watkins frames everything we do as labor, but is it necessarily the case? I kept thinking about this since our last seminar because it’s such a great question. And I think Rose’s answer would be: no. He writes:

Many of our depictions of physical and service work […] tend toward the one-dimensional. Work is ennobling or dehumanizing; it is the occasion for opportunity or exploitation; …  But one of the things the writing of this book had made clear to me is how difficult it is […] to capture the complex meaning work has in the lives of people like Rose Emily Rose.

What Rose missed is perhaps the influence of second-wave feminism on Rose Emily Rose’s generation. In other words, her job in the restaurant was framed as a personal attainment of freedom, but in fact, it was a part in economic and social forces at the time.

When reading Lu and Horner’s article, I was struck by the idea that “we cannot assume a self-evident and unified notion of financial and career security toward which our work with students might lead” (115). As an instructor, I would like to unpack the problematic nature of the learning goal of “teaching marketable skills,” but I often run into an ethos problem. I don’t feel equipped to tell students how to prepare for long-term challenges in their desired fields because I don’t know what these fields are like. I wonder if others face the same problem when teaching writing.