Are you hand-minded? or abstract-minded?

Mike Rose clearly shows in these three chapters the differences between vocational education and and an academic education. He uses his research to show the history of vocation schools, and why they even started in the first place. He gives us positives and negatives about vocational educational, but his main theme shows us how society and educators perceive those who receive a vocational education. There is a large separation between vocational students and academic students, he says, "the separation was also justified by theories of intelligence that defined entire social groups as "hand-minded" and others as "abstract-minded." (176) The  "hand-minded" students were the ones who went to vocational schools and got jobs doing manual labor. But the attached stereotype that those students lack intelligence is one that Rose is proving is just not correct.

I think that this book is so impressing because of the amount of research Rose has done to prove his point. Every chapter is filled with explanatory information for the reader to grapple with, and he adds real life experiences from people in the work force to add to the facts he has just mentioned, and both real life experience and informative facts tie in nicely to show the reader, where the issue is and how this stereotype can not possibly be true.

At times I think the information and research seems like an over-load for the reader, but the added stories and interviews he adds brings the reader back into reading a story and not a text book. Writing non-fiction is hard because you need the right balance of story elements and research to leave the reader satisfied.