My first memory of the word smart traces back to third grade. My elementary school was testing a new program called ACE, which was designed to challenge kids that were ahead of their class. Everyday, the ACE students were taken out of normal class and were given an accelerated lesson. The ACE kids were instantly labeled as the smart kids. Prior to third grade I never understood what it meant to be smart and thought it was just a simple compliment. Objectively, my third grade understanding of the word smart was that it was a privilege and a way to be glorified by peers and family. I became absorbed by this term and it springboarded myself into a major passion for education. I began to wish to attain the praise of my parents and impress my teachers and peers. By being labeled smart, school became similar to a competition in which every opportunity or class was another chance to please my family.
The label of being smart at such a young age is complex because children, and many adults, do not understand the term. The term smart is an adjective that praises one’s intelligence or ability to understand a topic. According to Byrd, the term smart should be omitted from schools because it has a
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Ben Michaelis explores the concept of test smart. Although someone may be excel in a single standardized test, it does not reflect how they may have performed in the classroom and capture the effort they used to achieve. A test designed to be a comparative measure of one’s intelligence is ineffective because they test how effective one can complete passages in a given time slot. In the actual classroom, timed tests are present, but they pertain to information discussed. Class tests, and in an essence, grades, are a more accurate tool to measure one's smartness because they reflect how well students absorb given material and their ability to use it in various
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
Education” by Russell Baker, the author argued that many student futures are based off of a test score - whether that test is a state-regulated test or a test required for admission to college. Society measures what we learn by tests and schools receive more funding for better scores. Baker explained that many students base their intelligence on these test scores, and many institutions focus on test scores more than anything else. However, every student learns that their education and their future is based off of the score that they receive on tests. Baker said that this is “[a period that a child] learns that success come from telling testers what they want to hear” (225). Teachers don’t teach the content but teach students how to make educational guesses. I considered myself to be “dumb” because I did not get a satisfactory score on the ACT. Therefore, I didn’t think I would be a good candidate for college because I would not receive personal funding in the form of scholarships and I didn’t know whether or not I would be accepted into college. This score convinced me that I would not be able to complete college work and that I would only have a future working minimum wage jobs. However, I realized that I was smarter than my test score told me that I was. In the end, the author and I both agreed that students should not be subjugated by the scores provided by an invisible
Every person has their own definition of what street smarts means to them. To me, however, having “street smarts” means having the common sense to recognize what to do whenever faced with a problem. Street smarts come from our life experiences. Not only do street smarts come from what we encounter every day, but they also occur through the principles, morals and wisdom passed from generation to generation by our parents, teachers and role models. Street smarts allow a person to meet and overcome a variety of obstacles in the world. Quite the opposite, "book smarts" have virtually a wide-ranging definition. Being book smart suggests an individual is well-informed when it comes to understanding calculations, numbers, academics, etc. Typically, book smart people do well on tests, understand subjects very well, and almost always have their noses stuck inside of a book. I think every person ought to have a fair amount of each quality, if they want to succeed in the world today. In his essay titled “The Purpose of Education”, Martin Luther King sum up my arg...
Anti-Intellectusim: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, author Grant Penrod argues that intellectual kids are not respected in today’s society. Although he makes a valid argument with some good points, he bases his statements off of his high school experiences. In reality, the world is much different after high school. His idea of intellectual kids not being praised in society is false. This idea can be compared to the false idea that upper social classes are treated worse than middle and lower classes. Kids with high intellectual abilities are valued and can be compared to the upper social class with its access to many privileges.
Such as street smarts, musical, and artistic intelligences. To begin, street smarts can be earned by knowing what’s wrong and what’s right. Abraham Lincoln is a perfect example of street smarts because of how he was able to keep the country united and controlled the country from all of the dangers. As he had dealt with all of these problems most people congratulated him for his good work. In the story “The More You Know, the Smarter You Are?” states that people are intelligent in many ways.
After reading the article, “The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math’” I began to think about my past learning experiences and realized that my opinions on this subject have changed drastically over the years. For the most part, I felt like this article made a lot of good points, especially considering my own experience with believing in incremental vs. fixed intelligence. Basically from the beginning of my schooling I was taught to think that some kids were just smarter than others, and that that couldn’t necessarily be changed. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that I was considered a “smart” kid: I caught onto most learning concepts easily, so people told me that I was “smarter” than other kids. If I had been a child who learned a different way, I think that I would have been taught to believe in the incremental model of intelligence very early on as to not discourage me from growing as a learner (which was exactly what teaching kids that
To be intelligent means to be able to apply what we learned in school and use what we learned in our everyday life to achieve a goals that is sit or one that we are accomplishing without knowing. Many people think that a person is intelligent because they went to a university, got a degree, and have a good paying job, so they must be smart and know everything however thats not always true. If we would ask a teacher or professor the chances of them knowing how to fix a car are slim. So why do we think teachers are so intelligent? We think teachers are intelligent because they know everything about their subjects, know how to teach it and know how to apply their knowledge to their everyday lives.
Results of students who received praise for intelligence: The students in this category had negative results after receiving praising. When asked afterwards if they wanted to do the same level of problems or try more challenging ones, they chose the task that would allow them to look smart and do well on. Consequently, while telling a child how smart he or she is, we are sending a message to not take risks and just look the part. Afterwards, these children were given a hard task, which they performed poorly on, and they know longer liked the problems and did not want to practice them at home. Children also felt “dumb” and when given the initial task (in which they did well), they performed significantly worse. Lastly, their opinions of intelligence reflected that it was an innate capacity as though you cannot improve.
Some students simply do not test well, others try their hardest and still cannot reach the impracticable standards set for them. The individuals who create these tests do not understand the pressures of being a student, or the struggle to answer thirty-five questions in a compressed time period. One test cannot accurately measure the intelligence of a student.
In grade school there were five different sections, ranging from one to five. The fifth section being the smartest
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.
“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
6. What is the difference between a'smart' and a'smart'? A person who is not a man unto himself, and whatever he does seeks assurance of success and gain.
Overall it is evident that standardized testing has affected the education in the United States negatively. The main flaw is that policymakers made standardized testing the center of our education system, which intern led to vast changes in curriculum where educators were forced to teach to test rather than teaching materials that fosters creativity, and enhances knowledge. Howard Gardner, famous for his work on multiple intelligences, stated he was unconcerned that American children were ranked last among the major industrial nations in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. He reported that tests measure exposure to facts and skills not whether or not kids can think (Ritter 5).
Many students believe that doing well on tests and getting good grades is the equivalent to being intelligent and educated. While those attributes coincide with being knowledgeable, they are not the determining factors of whether or not a person is smart. Being “smart” comes from knowing information – information about matters such as science, cars, or cooking. (14) Everyone is smart in his or her own way. The ways by which people obtain information are different, but the same is true for all that they were taught in some way. Teachers all have different styles of teaching, and these differences have been very apparent to me during my education. Several attributes – the rate at which they teach, how they test, their personalities, and how much