2021: Back to Work

Learning & Earning Our Way Back Into a Shared Future

“I grew up a witness,” Mike Rose writes, “to the intelligence of the waitress in motion, the reflective welder, the strategy of the guy on the assembly line. This then is something I know: the thought it takes to do physical work.” ~ The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker’

I became aware of the On Being Project back in 2010 when my dear friend & mentor Mike Rose was interviewed about his body of work beginning with his initial tome ‘Lives on the Boundary’ to ‘The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker’, the focus of this interview.

Integrating personal stories of his own working-class family with interviews, vivid snapshots of people on the job, and current research in social science and cognitive psychology, Mike Rose draws a brilliantly original portrait of America at work. As he probes the countless decisions, computations, and subtle judgments made every day by welders and plumbers, waitresses and electricians, Rose redefines the nature of important work and overturns the “hand/brain” dichotomy that blinds us to the real contributions of working people.

Since then he has published four additional titles framing the value & purpose of public education in America: