Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Street smarts in academia
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Street smarts in academia
Do schools and colleges help students to develop fully their intellectual abilities? In the book They say I say, Gerald Graff, a professor who is one the coauthors of this book stated the importance of putting street smarts into academic work. He assumed that schools and colleges must take chances to exploit students’ hidden intellectual abilities.Through his own adolescent experiences, on intellectual vision, he believed that getting street smarts into academic education would bring better results in the real intellectual world. Moreover, having new experiences on nonacademic subjects helps students get more attentions and decrease tediousness. So, students would be allowed to follow the way that they feel best in their educational capabilities, as long as they do so in an intellectually righteous way. Students need to understand that they maybe explore much more their intellectual abilities if they do not afraid to experience new things that is maybe limited in academic education. Graff assumed that “it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not care about cars, dating, sports, …show more content…
Additionally, following young Graff’ case, when he attended colleges, he hated books and loved only sports. Approaching to sports created positive thoughts in his prospect. Furthermore, young Graff demonstrated that why sports was more convincing than school when he said “Sports after all was full of challenging arguments. debates, problem for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not” (267). Therefore, he believed that students could be more attractive on subjects that interest them. It is better if educators may encourage students have more chances to look at different topics that they can expand more intellectual on their
A famous quote by Martin Luther King states “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” The two articles “Hidden Intellectualism” and “Blue Collar Brilliance” both emphasis the author's opinion on the qualifications and measurements of someone's intelligence. “Hidden Intellectualism” focuses on students or younger people who have trouble with academic work because, they are not interested in the topic. Today, in schools students are taught academic skills that are not very interesting, the author mentions this is why children are not motivated in schools. The main viewpoint of this article is that schools need to encourage students
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
How? Graff says it perfectly, “I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are nonintellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which seems pale and unreal.” What he is saying is that students should be taught something perhaps that they’d actually want to learn. Graff understands students need to know math and how to speak correctly, but he feels students should have the opportunity to learn things they care
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
In the essay, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” from Inquiry to Academic Writing, Gerald Graff argues that students learn things differently from class to class and are not taught to use information from one class in another. This is a problem especially in higher education today because there is such a large gap from professor to professor. Although the disagreement from one subject to the next may seem like a problem to some, if there were no disagreements, nothing would be worth learning. While these problems may occur, they are essential in the evolvement of education. Without these disagreements there would not be any search for more information to solve the problems. Also, students would not be motivated to continue to learn. The disagreements between the two are what seem to confuse students, but what confuses them more is how the education system is set up. Students must learn to make
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 his closing remarks, Graff once again makes a slight stumble. He begins his final paragraph with, “If I am right, then schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study” (386). Using the words “If I am right” shows uncertainty and might hurt his credibility with some readers. Luckily, Graff’s argument and credibility remains intact. Since, the reader will most likely pause and reaffirm, to themselves, that Graff is indeed right.
Intellectuality needs to be redefined; what does the word intellectual mean? Typically one would describe someone as either “street-smart” or “book-smart,” in other words someone who knows how to live in the real world versus someone who has knowledge about academics. But is one more “intellectual” than the other? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff addresses this issue and brings to the audience’s—the audience being experts about the subject along with himself—attention that schools are missing the opportunity to fuse together street-smarts and book-smarts to increase overall academic performance. Graff definitively presents his opinion on this topic by manipulating ethos, pathos, and logos. Through ethos his credibility
To put it in another way, schools need to take their students’ passions seriously and put them into a solid matter that grab student attention to conquer their lassitude over tiresome works. According to Graff, “Students need to see their interests “through academic eyes” is to say that street smarts are not enough”(269). The essence of Graff’s argument is that, students now need to put their interests into academic work, and in order for students to accomplish that, it is school duty to provide areas of study that match their interests. Still, this idea will not entirely get the student exactly where they want to be. Nevertheless, students don’t have to be completely pedagogical when they study the areas such as fashion, cars, animals or beauty whereas the mandatory is to think and understand them purposefully and critically, in a way that Graff proposes is to “see them as microcosms of what is going on in the wider culture”(270). Basically, he is saying that students should analyze their interests, observes and consider them as a small piece simultaneously with the extensive world. The world is too big, though, we are still asked to target details, and student are individuals who is need to be understood. Eventually, noticing students’ passion and backing them up will be supportive to lead their path on the
Graff's idea is that schools fall short in encouraging and nourishing interests that aren't strictly “educational.” Society has built an ideal intelligence and told us for years that doing well in these specific classes is what it means to be an intellectual. But is it really that simple? Graff doesn't think so. He states, “Real intellectuals turn any subject, however lightweight it may seem, into grist for their mill through the thoughtful questions they bring to it...”
Most students tend to perceive teachers as boring and ordinary, and rarely look up to them because they are seen as social outcasts. Students like Graff tend to look up to sports stars, actors, and singers. They are generally easier to connect to than teachers are. People want to be cool, not to be thought of as a know-it-all. Graff talks about how he never connected with school because being smart wasn 't cool, and how he turned to things that appear to be anti-intellectual. He says, “I was already betraying an allegiance to the
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.
As stated in my introductory paragraphs, both authors examine the academic motivation of student athletes, but focus their arguments on different aspects. Since both authors agree on the fact that athletics make big impacts, it makes it harder to choose one argument over the other. Both Flynn and Herbert D. Simon’s have similar ideas in which they discuss, but they add their own opinions. Both authors have a strong agreement but the way they present their ideas are completely diverse.
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.
Sports programs have been an integral part of all schools. They support the academics of the school and therefore foster success in life. These programs are educational and help produce productive citizenship. They help students experience and build skills that may help them in their future, like interpersonal and time management skills. Education may kindle the light of knowledge, but sports help to maintain the proper physique. Sports are also an important means of entertainment and a use for energy after long hours of study. Sports increase a student’s performance not only in the classroom but also in their life.