Author of Critically Acclaimed Series on Language, Literacy, and American Education Will Speak at Pitt May 20

PITTSBURGH—Mike Rose, professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, will present a reading and discussion at 4 p.m. May 20 in Room 501 of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

Rose is the author of a critically acclaimed series on language, literacy, and American education, including Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared (Free Press, 1989) and Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), which won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education and the Commonwealth Club of California Award for Literacy Excellence in Nonfiction in 1997.

Rose's latest book, The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker (Viking Penguin, 2004), has been highly praised by such writers as Studs Terkel, Howard Zinn, Michael B. Katz, Howard Gardner, and David Tyack.

A Publishers Weekly review of The Mind at Work stated: "This groundbreaking study finds that the intelligence, integrated skills and achievements of blue collar and service workers have been consistently undermined and marginalized by cultural stereotyping. … Rose demonstrates, through research and personal exploration of a variety of workplaces, that cognitive ability, including perception, judgment, memory and knowledge, is employed daily in the work of laborers like welders, carpenters and drivers. … Rose also provides an excellent overview of the academic-vocational divide and argues that its effacement is necessary for a more democratic society."

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