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.
Street smart students are much smarter than book smart students because of their knowledge and experiences. Author states in the article “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,” which means that street smart students are smarter than book smart students because of their vast amount of information about many things and previous experiences. Author is right about his point that street smart students get more out of their mistakes and learn more from their previous experiences. According to author, street smart students always try to learn from their mistakes where book smart students rely on the books and information from the studies. Book smart students never try to experience the situation of an issue, which gives them biased information and they don’t learn much, where street smart students experience the situation of an issue and learn much more than book smarts. Book smart students are also smart because they learn a lot of information from books and readings also they know how to use that information properly to succeed in academic area, but these students learn very much less from their mistakes and previous experiences to succeed, than street smart students.
Secondly, street smart students don’t get equal opportunity in schools and colleges to prove themselves. In the article, author says that “In competition, points were scored not by making arguments, but by a show of information or vast reading, by grade-grubbing, or other forms of one-upmanship,” which explains that many street smart students make arguments in academic competitions and they don’t get enough points for their arguments to win a competition, where book smart students provide only the information from books and readings to win those competitions.
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
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
I think people who didn’t get much schooling didn’t mean they are not intelligence. Intelligence can’t use to measure a person schooling. In the old generation, parents don’t have much money to support all their child’s go to college because of the tuition fee and they had a lot things need to support. For example, my parents didn’t go to school, doesn’t mean they are not intelligence or not smart, their family can’t give them that much tuition fee and not much money to let them go to college, however now they still have a job to work on and keeping it. However people don’t go to college doesn’t mean they can’t get a job or can’t survive. So I agree with the author, intelligence can’t use to measure a person schooling. Also I believe that can’t go to college doesn’t mean you can’t get success in other way. The god is fair for you close a door at the same time will open another door for you but you need to be confident.
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 essays, Two Year Are Better than Four by Liz Addison, and Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose respectively, take two different approaches to learning. Addison firmly believes in the traditional method by advocating community college is the better choice for students to experience higher education. Addison also asserts community colleges offer the same level of education compared to four universities. She also emphasized in her writing the value of the experience is much more personal due to the smaller classes in community college. On the other hand, Mike Rose observes that higher education does not define a person’s intelligence. Rose believes that society plays a big part in the judgmental view towards people without degrees. Yet the same society fail to recognize that blue collar jobs such as plumbers and waitresses require specific kinds of intelligence just like Rose’s mother Rosie, whom he described as an example of blue collar brilliance. Even though Addison and Rose take
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.
Gladwell and Graff, both agrees that education defines intellectualism. Both authors believe there are two types of educated people: street
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
In their minds, if they do well in school, they can get a career that can help them become successful. Although the students do not put limits on the relationship between social class and education, the school system does. The view that the school system has for the classifications of intellectualism leaves out the interests of most of the students. The writer Graff address this in his article within the lines, “ Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less. Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not.” (Graff 790) In those lines, he speaks about sports, which is a topic that is not considered to hold intellectual value by the school system. He shows that other interests besides the things we learn in school can have intellectual value. He makes it apparent that it does not matter the individual’s economic status because they can still be smart. This article shows that everyone can connect and contribute to learning with their different interests, and their interest can bridge the gap that society creates between the social classes if they decide that they want to be successful and take their education
Similarly, in Gerald Graff’s essay titled Hidden Intellectualism argues that “street smart” can enhance scholarly thinking. Graff used his knowledge of sports to present an analogy of the two subjects. Graff observes that sports bring people
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
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
“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
“What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning.” That’s what the senior United States Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley once said. When students get a “F” on their exam, that does not necessary means they are stupid, or they do not know the material. It could only mean they have a different way of learning, or a different way of explaining the material which the teacher is not aware of. There are different ways of learning that students have, and there are different ways they apply their knowledge into real life. Therefore, grades are not the best way to judge the students’ standing in their classes, nor is it the best way to judge their learning process. In addition,