Analysis Of Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate Smart Kids By Grant Penrod

1623 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: An introduction on intelligence essay

Joseph Abolarin
ENG 1010 D
Professor Jasmine
29/08/17
I'm a Nerd, So what! 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 …show more content…

In his essay Grant Penrod stated that uneducated success goes far beyond singers and athletes. In his essay Grant Penrod also stated that, the united states president shows an image of no intellectualism, which I strongly disagree with. With examples like these I feel like Penrod is extending or reaching this to make his points. In Penrod's essay he states that the president was a "C" student and also that his speeches did not portray an intellectual image. While this example might have helped his essay a little, it seems like it also holds the essay down by a bit. Penrod used the president as an example but didn’t speak much on him, he said the president was a "C" student, but was it throughout his whole education? Or was it for a short time, the reader doesn’t know because Penrod did not specify. Also, a lot of things or factors could have contributed to this, ranging from disabilities, to plain shyness. The President is one of the biggest public figure and speaker, if not the biggest of them all and anyone can get nervous even him. This should be expected of him some times since he has to address the whole nation, a stutter here and there, maybe even a mispronunciation, he's only human after all. I do not think the president contributes to or supports anti-intellectualism because to be the president one has to be intelligent enough to make the right dictions for the country. Not everyone can be president and I feel like this incomplete example undermines the president and his role. This example and another where Penrod generalized that all public figures support Anti-intellectualism, leads me to believe that for these points or examples he reached in order to accentuate his points. Grant Penrod states that “the image of intellectualism is

Show More
Related

  • Hidden Intellectualism And Blue Collar Brilliance

    1432 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Overview of The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Cultural Illiteracy,” a preface to the novel The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein critically evaluates how technological distractions affect the younger generation. Bauerlein states that “digital diversions” are cutting the younger generation off from culturally enhancing mediums and is in turn making the younger generation less intelligent. Though Bauerlein is correct about the increase of peer pressure due to technology, he is mistaken about how technology is making the younger generation unintelligent.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Hidden Intellectualism By Gerald Graff

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Grant Penrod's Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate The Smart Kids

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    School is a frightening place. It is broken down into multiple social ranks, and many children find themselves at the bottom. With children trying to work their way to the top of the food chain, the actual learning portion is either set aside or forgotten altogether. In Grant Penrod’s essay, Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, he explains how modern children are growing to dislike intellectual children. The varying social ranks teach children to ignore low grades and try to be popular in school. Anti-Intellectualism is a trend which is becoming increasingly popular throughout the world. People who only strive to be popular tend to tease intellectuals, but this is not half of the story. If the only goal children have in school

    Read More

  • Gerald Graff's Hidden Intellectualism

    1635 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Hidden Intellectualism, by Gerald Graff

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • America Needs Its Nerds Rhetorical Analysis

    504 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fridman employs a values based premise that states that America’s insignificance towards education creates degrading phrases for the intellectual through “There is something wrong with the system of values in a society that only has derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious” (P.1). He expresses that American society’s values, which degrades education, results in demeaning terms to address intelligence which is wrong since intellectuals don’t deserve to be classified negatively for their efforts in studying. He expresses that educated people being offensively labeled due to American society’s values of minoring education is wrong, in order for readers of the New York Times to appreciate intellectuals since their success in studying is not worth being degraded due to it being in the field of education. Next, he utilizes a sociological base premise that conveys America's culture of supporting non education through “For America’s sake, the anti-intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought” (P.6.). This indicates the culture of America is wrong since promoting uneducated citizens regards America as a incompetent country that has unqualified leadership due to unscholarly decisions. Fridman states that American culture advocating unintelligence is wrong in order for readers of the New York Times to appreciate the intellectuals since they

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Graff And Street Smarts

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gladwell and Graff, both agrees that education defines intellectualism. Both authors believe there are two types of educated people: street

    Read More

  • America Needs Its Nerds

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    American culture has evolved, and Society tends to ostracize people for their intelligence, and our culture has been giving these intellectuals derogatory names like nerd and geek. Leonid Fridman believes that these anti- intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought and should stop for the sake of America. The author supports this position in the passage “America Needs It’s Nerds” through the use of rhetoric by giving definitions of terms such as geek, offering comparisons through juxtaposition, adding a tone shift, and posing rhetorical questions to the reader.

    Read More

  • Jonathan Kozol's From Still Separate, Still Unequal

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through our class discussions of education we came across this quote by Joseph Sobran, an American journalist and writer who spent a great amount of his career working for the National Review Magazine, "In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college." When asked to critically think about the meaning of this quote I concluded that our educational standards have been lowered over the years and that students in America are not as intelligent as they once were in previous years. These two thoughts brought me to the questions, what does it mean to be educated or intelligent and who gets to decide. When reflecting emotionally on how this quote made me feel I realized it made me feel

    Read More

  • Hidden Intellectualism: An Analysis Of Gerald Graff's Hidden Intellectualism

    859 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.”

    Read More

  • Hidden Intellectualism

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    “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

    Read More

  • IQ and the Controversy Concerning Human Intelligence

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight [3]. Many scientist and psychologist have made numerous attempts to come up with an explanation for the development of human intelligence. For many years, there has been much controversy over what intelligence is and whether it is hereditary or nurtured by the environment. Webster's dictionary defines intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge; which includes a sensing an environment and reaching conclusions about the state of that environment [7]. In this paper I am going to examine the factors, which make up ones intelligence. I will be investigating whether or not intelligence is fostered by genetic heritance or nurtured by ones environment.

    Read More

  • Why Street Smart Students Are Considered Anti-Intellectual in the Academic Area

    645 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate Smart Kids By Grant Penrod

Open Document