Redefining Intellectualism
What does intelligence mean and how does one judge another’s intelligence? Institutions, organizations, and society judge the acumen of a person based on his or her educational background without considering other forms of brilliance. Mike Rose. professor of education and information studies, English professor Gerald Graff, Melanie Luken, majoring in French and English, and Iraqi veteran Alex Horton collectively disagree with this preconceived notion. Within their writings they form the argument that intellectualism remains only partially defined if based off of formal education with disregard to unscholarly knowledge, alternative learning methods, and unacademic applications.
Firstly, the authors Mike Rose and Gerald
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Her unscholarly intellectualism allows her to efficiently solve problems within the flow of work. As another example, Gerald Graff professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago for English and Education adds his personal experiences of anti-academia to this conversation in his piece, “Hidden Intellectualism.” He navigates the reader through his own life of anti-intellectualism along with academic struggles and explains how sports surpassed school in his priorities. Despite the general consensus of sports being unacademic, he explain how sports is more academic than school. Graff writes, “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” (790). While deemed unscholarly, Graff proposes that as a result of sports creating debate, causes for analysis and utilizing intricate statistics, the realm of sports knowledge is greater than or equal to that of formal schooling when categorizing intellectualism. Rose and Graff both agree with each other that unscholarly knowledge is as valid as academic knowledge when defining …show more content…
For example, Rose speaks again about his uncle, describing how Joe utilizes his brain on the factory floor. Rose write that “As a foreman, Joe constantly faced new problems and become a consummate multi-tasker, evaluating a flurry of demands quickly, parceling out physical and mental resources, keeping a number of ongoing events in his mind, returning to whatever task had been interrupted, and maintaining a cool head under the pressure of grueling production schedules” (909). His unconventional application for his brilliance is the shop floor he must maintain. While not a traditionally academic job, Joe still faces similar issues in management that lawyers or doctors might face, timing and multitasking while achieving a refined final end product, adding to his intellect. Additionally, Iraq veteran Alex Horton joins the conversation at this point and interjects his experience in unconventional applications for intelligence, the battlefield. In his article “On Getting By” he gives encouragement and guides veterans returning to civilian life and entering formal education systems. When writing upon what colleges expect of one and keeping a straight face Horton details that “Many of your were tasked with watching the back of your fellow soldiers while in imminent danger or operate complex machinery and vehicles” (820). On the battlefield, an
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
A person who has the ability to think critically, experienced conflicts, educated is known as an intellectual person. Author Malcolm Gladwell agrees with all of Gerald Graff’s asserts. In the article, “Hidden Intellectualism” and “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” authors Graff and Gladwell both insists that knowledge does not only belong to those people who are educated, but also it belong to the people who gets scholarly from media or from the environment, known as “street smarts”. Gladwell and Graff, both supports education, critical thinking, and wisdom delineates intellectualism.
He demotes academic learning when he implies that Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission are not effective academic topics as we all thought. He does this when he compares academic topics with non-academic topics. Graff sets the article’s tone in the beginning by writing about our views towards non-intellectuals. Additionally, Graff continues to talk about the subjects and topics that create intellectuals. To illustrate this Graff mentions, “But they would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us” (265). As has been noted previously, this also proves that Graff is in favor of non-academic learning by stating how we should be teaching at schools so that children become intelligent. Graff is trying to convince readers that society must change their teaching skills because children will only learn things that they like. He automatically rejects the idea of continuing teaching academic skills and does not provide a positive view towards
The journey begins at the heart of the matter, with a street smart kid failing in school. This is done to establish some common ground with his intended audience, educators. Since Graff is an educator himself, an English professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, he understands the frustrations of having a student “who is so intelligent about so many things in life [and yet] seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work” (380). Furthermore, Graff blames schools for not utilizing street smarts as a tool to help improve academics; mainly due to an assumption that some subjects are more inherently intellectual than others. Graff then logically points out a lack of connection “between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate” (381). He exemplifies this point by suggesting that any real intellectual could provoke thoughtful questions from any subject, while a buffoon can render the most robust subjects bland. Thus, he is effectively using logic and emotion to imply that educators should be able to approach any subject critically, even non-traditional subjects, lest they risk being labeled a buffoon.
High schools are one of the many places that anti-intellectualism originates from. Most high schools cherish their football and basketball teams. Examples like Mountain view high school, shows that teens who play sports, will gain much more attention and recognition than they would if were better in school. ‘Intellectuals almost constantly see their efforts trivialized in the rush to lavish compliments elsewhere.” (Penrod 759) What he means by this, is that the student’s accomplishments would be played
General intelligence tends to relate to various degrees with each other (Cohen 2012). An example of this is that if an individual is good in math, they may also be good in spelling. In this weeks reading we reviewed several different models of measurement of intelligence. In regard to these theories and general intelligence (g), the theories are various but have commonality and overlap. The Spearman's two-factor theory is if a test has high correlation with other test than the measurement of g is highly saturated (Cohen, 2012). The greater the importance of g on a test, the better the test is believed to predict intelligence
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
Graff takes a logical approach to defending his opinion on the age old battle of “street smarts versus book smarts” in the article “Hidden Intellectualism”. Through several historical and personal examples, he strongly delivers an argument that schools have been discounting students who may not think academically. In reality the students who can relate articles from sources like Vouge and Sports Illustrated to life may be the ones who will truly be successful. Throughout his writing, he uses many devices to sway the audience’s opinions in the direction of his. Through Graff’s rhetorical writing strategies, he opens reader’s eyes to the fact that any subject can be intellectual when observed “through academic eyes”.
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 “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.
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
The article Anti-intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, written by Arizona State University student Grant Penrod, describes the culture of negatively viewing intellectuals in the United States. The author writes that intellectual achievements are often valued less than athletics. Anti-intellectualism is shown to be very common in our society. Penrod gives examples of aggression against intellectuals and stresses that it is a prominent problem. He also describes how smart kids are viewed as anti-social; this stereotype leads to them being excluded by their peers. Penrod believes that anti-intellectual feelings may come from the media’s presentation of public figures who do not say that academics have contributed to their success, or that the wealth and fame of uneducated celebrities causes the general public to question whether intellectualism is of any importance. Overall, Penrod
In “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, the author speaks about how schools should use students’ interests to develop their rhetorical and analytical skills. He spends a majority of his essay on telling his own experience of being sport loving and relating it to his anti-intellectual youth. He explains that through his love for sports, he developed rhetoric and began to analyze like an intellectual. Once he finishes his own story, he calls the schools to action advising them to not only allow students to use their interest as writing topics, but instead to teach the students on how to implement those compelling interests and present them in a scholarly way. In perspective, Graff’s argument becomes weak with his poor use of ethos, in which he solely focuses on his own anecdote but, through the same means he is able to build his pathos and in the last few paragraphs, with his use of logic he prevents his argument from becoming dismissible.
When Gerald Graff was younger he and his friends would have various debates about sports including what team had the best pitcher in baseball. Graff pointed out that while having these arguments with his friends, they would have evidence to support their thoughts whether it be using statistics to find batting averages or using their argumentative abilities in general to support their opinion. This proves that even people who do not do the best in school are capable of brilliant things, the school system just needs to encourage students to use their hobbies to enhance their academics. Instead of dividing the different forms of intelligence, book and street smarts could merge and grow into a more detailed educational system that can help not just with academics, but with life itself. While it is good to know proper grammar, knowing about dating, sports, or cars can actually get people farther than anticipated in life. Graff thought that in the school system, street smarts is perceived as less than compared to “book smarts” which are encouraged in school. If the two forms of intelligence were to merge instead of separate, the educational system can transform into something
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence focuses more on how numerical expressions of human intelligence are not a full and accurate depiction of people’s abilities (McFarlane, 2011). He includes and describes eight intelligences that are based on skills and abilities that are valued within different cultures. The eight intelligences include visual-spatial (e.g. sailor navigating with no navigational systems), verbal-linguistic (e.g. poets, writers, orators, and communicators), bodily-kinesthetic (e.g. dancers, athletes, surgeons, craftspeople), logical-mathematical (e.g. mathematicians and logicians), interpersonal(e.g. salespeople, teachers, clinicians, politicians, and religious leaders), musical (e.g. musicians and