Essay #1: Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff In his essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff discussed his hatred towards typical academic subjects, and love for sports. The essay is about the many cases of people not using their gifted talents to their best ability. Are you smart, but secretly acting dumb in public to get attention? Do you waste your knowledge trying to fit in with others? He thinks street smarts is an example of intelligence. “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school. What a waste, we think, that one who is intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work” (Graff 244). Gerald Graff claims that street …show more content…
For example, Gerald said: “He was desperate for the approval of the hoods, whom he encountered daily on the playing field and in the neighborhood, and for this purpose it was not at all good to be book-smart. The hoods would turn on you if they sensed you were putting on airs over them: “Who you look’ at, smart ass?” (246). He grew up confused. He did not know if he should prove that he was smart or fake that he is dumb. If you were smart, you had stand up and defend yourself. The evidence shows that, Graff had a conflict and it “came down to a choice between being physically tough and being verbal. For a boy in my neighborhood and elementary school, only being “tough” earned you complete legitimacy. I still recall endless, complicated debates in this period with my closest pals over who was “the toughest guy in the school”. If you were less than negligible as a fighter, as I was, you settled for the next big thing, which was to be inarticulate, carefully hiding telltale marks of literacy like correct grammar and pronunciation” (246). He learned how to be smart and how to hold proper conversations about sports related topics with his neighbors or friends. He believes that street smarts is more superior to book …show more content…
Sports were entertaining in Chicago and it became Gerald’s new love. “When you entered sports debates, you became part of a community that was not limited to your family and friends, but was national and public. Whereas schoolwork isolated you from others… Sports introduced you not only to a culture that transcended the personal. I can’t blame my schools for failing to make intellectual culture resemble the Super Bowl, but I do fault them for failing to learn anything from the sports and entertainment worlds about how to organize and represent intellectual culture, how to exploit its game like [an] element and turn it into [an] arresting public spectacle that might have competed more successfully for my youthful attention” (248). He felt that sports were more useful, entertaining, and common in Chicago than academic subjects. He was showing his intellectual side when arguing with others about sports and other cultural related
Gerald Graff expresses his concern in “Hidden Intellectualism” about how the education system does not accurately measure true intelligence. If the education system used each individual’s interests, Graff argues, the individual would be much more intrigued in the subject matter; therefore, increasing his or her knowledge. Throughout the article, Graff also draws on his love of sports to support his argument, saying that it includes elements of grammar, methodologies, and debate. He believes this proves that interests can replace traditional teaching. Graff contends one’s interest will create a community with others throughout the nation who share the same interests. While it is important to pursue your interests, there
According to “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff says that “ Everyone knows some young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poor in school” ( Gerald Graff 244). He explains that to many people believe that one who is so intelligent in life cannot do well in academic work, and he or she needs spend extra time on his or her school works than things in sports. However, Graff used his own anti-intellectual experience to verify his opinion that street smarts are simply as important as school smarts, and he recommends school should take all these street smarts and apply them into good academic environment. Graff also believes we should allow students read literature or any things they first feel interested, for example “George Orwell, which is a writing on the cultural meanings of penny postcards is infinitely more
In the essay ”Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he discusses different types of intellect, more specifically the ways they can apply to us in our lives. He discusses the different types of “smarts” referred to in his paper as street smarts, and school smarts. Graff hints upon the missed opportunities by colleges to embrace the form of intellect called “street smarts” because of a preconceived idea that there is no way to use this form of knowledge in an academic setting. To quote Graff directly “Colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts”. We then learn some of Graffs personal experiences pertaining to this very thing. He shares a story about himself which reviews his underlying love for sports and complete diskliking for books or any form of intellectualism, until he became college aged. He shares that he now believes, his love of sports over over school work was not because he hated intellectualism but perhaps it was intellectualism in another form. He shares his
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.
A philosopher once said ”A child educated only at school is an uneducated child”. As we are living in a world where everyone knows the importance of schools and the meaningful of being educated, then why does he believe that a child is illiterate when he only studies at school? Are schools actually limit on areas of study and overlook the essential of real life experience? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff claims that schools and colleges are might at fault due to their omission of the “street smarts”-knowledge necessary to deal with reality-, and their failure to invest them into academic work. By stating the fundamental of intellectualism and the influence of personal interests, he informs readers that those street smarts,
In “ Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose argues that intelligences can’t be measured by the education we received in school but how we learn them in our everyday lives. He talks about his life growing up and watching his mother waitressing at a restaurant. He described her orders perfectly by who got what, how long each dish takes to make, and how she could read her customers. He also talks about his uncles working at the General Motors factory and showed the amount of intelligence that was need to work at the factory. Rose goes on talking about the different types of blue-collar and how he came up with the idea that a person has skills that takes a lot of mind power to achieve.
Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist writing for The New Yorker; he often deals with popular modern life theories and ethical issues. The essay was published in The New Yorker magazine, September 2013, so the issue of the essay is an ongoing and controversial incongruity ethical dilemma among sports industry. The magazine is nationwide read especially in the U.S. metropolitans. The contents are mostly about American literary and cultural landscape, reportage, and including short stories. The target audience of the magazine is originally educated to elite readers, also the essay intended audience would not be much different from the magazine’s, specifically, the sports circles and sports spectators among middle to upper-class people.
Street smarts are intellectual resources that are ignored by schools. It is the most informal version of intellect, generally relating to hobbies that seem anti-intellectual. Gerald Graff’s journal article Hidden Intellectualism shows that everyone is an intellectual whether they are aware of it or not. Using mainly ethos, he describes how sports can be a form of intellectualism because of the use of logic. He says it beautifully here, “I see now that sports provided me with something comparable to the saturation of life by argument… that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means.”
Is it better to be book smart or street smart? Is it better to be happy and stable or unhappy and ‘rich’? Blue-collar jobs require you to learn skills that college cannot teach you; Rose points this out in his essay, stating: “It was like schooling, where you’re constantly learning” (277). In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” written by Mike Rose, he talks about how his mother worked as a waitress and how his uncle Joe dropped out of high school, eventually got a job working on the assembly line for General Motors and was then moved up to supervisor of the paint and body section. Rose suggests that intelligence is not represented by the amount of schooling someone has or the type of job they work. In this essay I will be explaining why Rose
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, author and professor Gerald Graff describes his idea of what book smarts and streets smarts actually are. He details how new ideas can help to teach and build our educational system into something great and that perhaps street smarts students could be the factor that traditional education is missing that could make it great.
Shropshire, Kenneth L. 1996. In black and white: race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press.
“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
Why street smart students are considered anti intellectual in academic area? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he accounts the idea that street smart students are way more smarted than book smarts. He explains that street smart student will be able to solve an issue much faster than book smart because of his/her previous experience. According to author, the problems with considering street smarts as anti intellectual are they are actually much smarter that book smart students, they don’t equal opportunity , and schools along with colleges never challenge their mind get them to succeed in academic work.
In one historical moment from Pamela Grundy's book Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina, she writes about men's college athletics between 1880 and 1901. Grundy states that "metaphors of competition gained new prominence, particularly among the members of the state's expanding middle class, which was coming to dominate public affairs" (Grundy, 12). Male college students living in North Carolina began to excel in organized athletics during this time period. "The contests on the field seemed to mirror the competitive conditions prevailing in the society at large, and the discipline, self-assertion and reasoned strategy that sports were credited with teaching meshed neatly with the qualifies required for business and political success" (Grungy, 13). People who supported athletics wholeheartedly believed it taught good values such as discipline and good character, while there were some who opposed this saying that sports were a distraction for students and thus a hindrance to their educational goals. White college men perceived athletics as a way to show their superiority and justify their presence in business as well as politics. They believed athletic sports were essential in their "vision o...