Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Cultural stereotypes in the media
Cultural stereotypes in the media
Cultural stereotypes in the media
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Cultural stereotypes in the media
The nerd trope is ubiquitous to American media and culture. Usually, it’s an academically ambitious kid who has beyond thick glasses, tucked pants, and acne: a target. Leonid Fridman takes on this stereotype in “America Needs Its Nerds.” Fridman condemns America’s neglect and contempt for intellect. He argues that America’s perspective is self-destructive through the use of definition, example, and patriotism. In the beginning of the passage, Fridman defines geek; a word casually thrown around to describe someone who is smart. He writes “A geek... is a street performer who shocks the public by biting the heads off live chickens”(paragraph 2). This definition provides the reader with imagery of a freak, not an academic. Hence, Fridman shows the condescension that society has for intellectuals exists even on a linguistic level. Then, for the bulk of the passage, Fridman offers various examples of nerds being looked down upon to convey the issue’s pervasiveness. This is seen when Fridman refers to Harvard when he describes “anti-intellectualism is rampant”(paragraph 3). By citing an esteemed school that prides itself on academic achievement and rigor, Fridman shows how far reaching intellectual devaluation is. In other words, even places that claim to have academically driven …show more content…
Fridman asks his audience, How can America compete with other countries if intellectual ability takes backseat to trivial matters? In Fridman’s call to action, he resorts to patriotism when he pleads “For America’s sake, the anti-intellectual values… must be fought”(paragraph 5). Fridman’s patriotic tone frames the issue as a matter of national security. This allows Fridman to draw concern and motivation from his audience, to make them believe that America’s perspective is self-destructive and that urgent action is
Co-author of “They Say/I Say” handbook, Gerald Graff, analyzes in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” that “street smarts” can be used for more efficient learning and can be a valuable tool to train students to “get hooked on reading and writing” (Graff 204). Graff’s purpose is to portray to his audience that knowing more about cars, TV, fashion, and etc. than “academic work” is not the detriment to the learning process that colleges and schools can see it to be (198). This knowledge can be an important teaching assistant and can facilitate the grasping of new concepts and help to prepare students to expand their interests and write with better quality in the future. Graff clarifies his reasoning by indicating, “Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a life-less explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology” (205). Graff adopts a jovial tone to lure in his readers and describe how this overlooked intelligence can spark a passion in students to become interested in formal and academic topics. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos to establish his credibility, appeal emotionally to his readers, and appeal to logic by makes claims, providing evidence, and backing his statements up with reasoning.
In “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff pens an impressive argument wrought from personal experience, wisdom and heart. In his essay, Graff argues that street smarts have intellectual potential. A simple gem of wisdom, yet one that remains hidden beneath a sea of academic tradition. However, Graff navigates the reader through this ponderous sea with near perfection.
To start Fridman defines what is a geek. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, a geek is “a street performer who shocks by.. biting off live chicken heads.” Even to a well established knowledge resource like Webster, the “system of values in a society has only derogatory terms” for the “intellectually curious.” Later he elaborates on the education systems of all ages. Beginning with Harvard, one of the most “prestigious academic institutions,” he touches on why even at Harvard, “anti-intellectualism is rampant,” which correlates to nerds being “ostracized” while athletes being
It is important to differentiate between the type of college student that is the target of Eighner’s criticism in his essay and the average college student. Eighner mentions here how he specifically targeted areas that he knew affluent college students lived in and would be bountiful to scavenge from:
Gerald Graff analyzed the discussions he had with his friend about their interests, “complicated debate about …. who is the toughest guy in the school yard…” (Graff 246) explained about his hatred for book and school work and his preferences for sport and materials that were related to sport. He viewed himself as an anti – intellectual “ “…. I was your typical anti-intellectual- or so I believed at the time…”. Later in his life, Graff realized that what he was doing with his friends was learning “the regiment of intellectual life: how to make arguments, weigh different kinds of evidence ………… and enter conversations about idea”. They were developing “intellect by other means”” Skills which he applied to school and other areas of his life.
In the United States, “nerds are ostracized while athletes are idolized.” To provide an example: the intellectually gifted are called derogatory names by society, yet fans would not be able to watch their favorite athletes if it wasn’t for the invention of the television by a “nerd.” As the author establishes, “enough is enough.” Writer, Leonid Fridman, in his argumentative essay, “America Needs Its Nerds,” asserts that Americans must eliminate the anti-intellectual values in order to prosper as a country. Fridman utilizes rhetorical strategies including exemplification, contrast, and rhetorical questions to defend the purpose of his article: it is crucial for society to idolize nerds, rather than athletes, for the U.S. to maintain power. The author adopts a frustrated and indignant tone in order to convince America that anti-intellectual values must end.
In “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids”, Penrod states that anti-intellectualism is one the rise and tells us why intellectuals are looked down upon by society. In his essay, he says that he believes social stereotypes, public examples, and monetary obsession are several factors that contribute to anti-intellectualism. In his essay, he claims that people who excel in school are typically associated with the terms “geek” or “nerd” and that they tend to get excluded from social activities because of those labels. Penrod incorporates a quote from an online venter that says, “A+ﰃ this and . . . got a 1600 on my SAT and got all AP class[es] next year woohoo. That’s all these people care about don’t they have lives damn nerds” (Penrod
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York, NY: Sentinel, 2007. Print.
Graff begins by talking about the educational system, and why it flawed in many ways, but in particular, one: Todays schools overlook the intellectual potential of street smart students, and how shaping lessons to work more readily with how people actually learn, we could develop into something capable of competing with the world. In schools, students are forced to recite and remember dull and subject heavy works in order to prepare them for the future, and for higher education. “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic. We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, or video games.” (Graff, 198-199) In everyday life, students are able to learn and teach themselves something new everyday. It is those students, the “young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school” (Graff, 198), that we are sweeping away from education and forcing to seek life in places that are generally less successful than those who attend a college or university.
“Hidden Intellectualism” written by Gerald Graff, is a compelling essay that presents the contradicting sides of “book smarts” and “street smarts” and how these terms tied in to Graff’s life growing up. Graff felt like the school was at fault that the children with more “street smarts” were marked with the reputation of being inadequate in the classroom. Instead of promoting the knowledge of dating, cars, or social cues, the educational system deemed them unnecessary. Gerald Graff thought that “street smarts” could help people with academics. In his essay, Graff confessed that despite his success as an “intellect” now, he was the exact opposite until college. Where he grew up in Chicago, Illinois, intelligence was looked down upon around peers
One thing people in the society seam to overlook or pay no attention to is anti-intellectualism. What is anti-intellectualism? and does it exist in the society today. Anti-intellectualism is the hostility or overlooking of intellectually skilled individuals in the society. According to Grant Penrod, anti-intellectualism doesn’t only exist in the society but also in the schools today, which he showed in his essay "Anti-intellectualism: Why We Hate Smart Kids". In his essay Penrod talked about smart student or people and how they are being overlooked or ostracized in the society. In this essay he made an argument that students or people who are intellectually
This is basically stating that all students choose to ignore what other people’s values are due to their higher education. If he would have said something along the lines of “broadly true of all the universities and elite schools that I have been around, precisely because the students that I have met possess this one form of intelligence to such a high degree, are more apt to ignore the value of others,” then he wouldn’t have caused such a generalization of all students in higher education. The way that he phrases his sentences could easily offend many readers, this leads to what could almost be considered a contradiction due to the fact that he is offending some of the people he is trying to persuade to be offended by other means. He expresses his opinion in an extremely blunt way, in which he is making the attempt to show the discrimination between higher educated students, alumni, and professors contrasted to students or individuals who did not take the same path of higher education. With this attempt, he was trying to persuade the reader to be insulted by the way that Ivy League or higher education schools teach that they should have a sense of superiority. With using this offensive phrasing in his argument he could cause many students or alumni who are in or have gone through college (majority of audience), to heavily disagree and even be offended by his main point of the
Media dictates popular culture. The television sitcoms I’ve watched growing up all displayed who is the stereotype for a geek. Steve Urkel from Family Matters, Screech from Saved By The Bell, Ross from Friends are some examples. All are viewed as highly intelligent and with low social skills. Yet the word is still evolving and currently is accepted as an honor. Examples of cool geeks of the 21st century are hobbits from Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Seth Cohen from The O.C, and Napoleon Dynamite. The consensus of the word geek by the media shapes the society’s minds of what is perceived to be true.
In “Brain Candy: Is Pop Culture Dumbing Us Down or Smarting Us Up?” (2005), Malcolm Gladwell argues that pop culture is implementing our intelligence in a positive way, through: televisions/video games, books and homework. Firstly, Gladwell starts by stating how Steven Johnson, a former editor of an online magazine called Feed, directs out how television and video games have changed over the course of twenty to thirty years. He writes how earlier, television shows had obvious plot lines, while presently the viewers are required to implement what they have seen in other shows and maintain track of the story line. Gladwell writes that Johnson states how previously, video games were simple trainings in the art of harmonization and pattern identification.
Bullying statistics suggest that at least one out of every four kids will be bullied sometime throughout their youth. Children may be bullied for a variety of reasons, including attracting positive attention, being intelligent, having personal vulnerabilities, having few to no friends, popularity, unattractive features, disabilities, sexual orientation, uncommon beliefs, or even race. Among these reasons for bullying is a very important one many people fail to realize and this is anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards, opposition, and mistrust of intellectuals or people with intellectual views. Anti-intellectualism basically believes that academics or any form of professionalism isn’t important to listen to because it doesn’t have much “common sense”. Intellectualism is usually expressed throughout education, philosophy, literature, art, and science.