Reflecting on the Role of the Hand, Head, and Soul of America: The Mind at Work

The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker (TMW), by Mike Rose (2004), is an engaging and timely book on the complex cognitive behaviors involved in work that is often considered “low skill” or “unskilled.” It is about blue-collar work, blue-collar workers, and the significance of technical education. It is also about how contemporary America regards the manual work “of the hands” in comparison to the intellectual work “of the head,” by ascribing greater social standing, job security, and pay to those who perform work with ideas, figures, and words rather than things. Some of the workers we meet in TMW are family members of the author, whereas others started out as participants in Rose’s observational studies of professional work and technical education. The book invites us to do two things. First, Rose encourages the reader to appreciate the social, technical, and aesthetic prowess that manual laborers exhibit on a regular basis. By making us stop and take notice of the ordinary, Rose hopes to expose the extraordinary thinking that goes into everyday tasks. I was reminded of the way artistic installations of Marcel Duchamp make one look anew at the craftsmanship of everyday objects such as shovels, toilets, and bicycles by placing them on display and out of their camouflaged context. Second, Rose urges us to reexamine our views of work and workers, particularly as they shape societal values, class structure, and the objectives for public education in the United States. In making these arguments, Rose adroitly reaches across a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including cognitive, developmental, sociological, cultural, economic, and historical traditions. The book makes at least four essential points. First, with respect to cognition, Rose shows that all forms of work, manual as well as managerial, draw on complex cognitive and social skills. Much of that complexity is hidden from view and requires a keen eye, persistent observation, and thoughtful conversation to draw them out. Through this book, we acquire some of the background knowledge necessary to reframe outmoded notions of intelligence, and we learn to notice and appreciate the complex skills of workers who may have minimal formal education. Second, with respect to society, Rose shows that our preconceptions about the intellectual demands of work are MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 13(1), 74–77 Copyright © 2006, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition