What is a geek? A geek is “a street performer who… bites off heads of live chickens.” In the passage “America Needs Its Nerds” by Leonid Fridman, Fridman argues why “America needs its nerds.” He begins by illustrating how the “intellectually curious” and “academically serious” are ostracized. From there he displays in the open why “nerds are ostracized while athletes are idolized.” Fridman develops his argument by displaying why “nerds are ostracized while athletes are idolized” and comparing the U.S with other countries across the globe on an intellectual platform.
To start Fridman defines what is a geek. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, a geek is “a street performer who shocks by.. biting off live chicken heads.” Even to a well established knowledge resource like Webster, the “system of values in a society has only derogatory terms” for the “intellectually curious.” Later he elaborates on the education systems of all ages. Beginning with Harvard, one of the most “prestigious academic institutions,” he touches on why even at Harvard, “anti-intellectualism is rampant,” which correlates to nerds being “ostracized” while athletes being
With the ever growing endeavor of the technological industry becoming more prevalent, we need to step up our game and follow through by eliminating “anti-intellectualism” to create more qualified individuals for higher academic occupations like technicians instead of ostracizing the “intellectually
Fridman begins this excerpt with a strong claim. “There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious” He begins with his claim, clearly stating what the excerpt will be about, without any pretense or pomp. Fridman likely chose to
The term hipster is a difficult, and contested term with dynamic and often ambiguous connotations. According to Ferrier (2014), what was once an umbrella term for a counter-culture of young creative types morphed into a pejorative term for people who looked, lived and acted a certain way. The Urban Dictionary
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
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.
I’d like to start answering this question with Kellner’s definition of Intellectual because it helped me to better understand the rest of the article and I think it might help others too. We all know what “intellectual” means but here is Kellner’s definition of intellectual from his article “Techno-Politics, New Technologies, and New Public Spheres”; “The concept of the intellectual traditionally involved workers in the sphere of mental labor, who produced ideas, wrote text, and developed and transmitted intellectual abilities as opposed to manual workers who produced good and worked with their hand in the realms of manufacture, heavy industry, agriculture and other field that primarily depended on manual labor”.
Leonid Fridman’s article,”America Need Its Nerds”, published in the New York Times, conveys American society’s unpleasant perception towards intellectuals. Fridman asserts the issues of American society's evaluation of people in order to convince readers of the New York Times to acknowledge educated individuals. He employs logos, ethos, and pathos to contribute to his goal if the readers of the New York Times recognizing the value of intellectuals.
Critics argue that “overemphasis on liberal arts can be detrimental to people” and ask “why doesn’t one just go to technical school to get what they are really after?” It’s because most jobs require the mental capacity to adapt as time passes. This mental capacity is obtained through studies of the liberal arts. For example, one might ask: what possible use could an executive IT (information technology) Manager have for a class like history 2393: Japanese history?
Brian Caswell’s book a cage of butterflies develops the idea of fear within society today, the social pressure of it all and the abusive nature of those who rule in it. These points are really driven home through the teenagers of the ‘think tank’ and especially through Greg. Greg is a teenage boy who is hyper intelligent but has a physical disability, having both his legs inactive he is teased and bullied. Although this isn’t directly stated in the book it is inferred many times. The other teenagers were faced with similar issues as being intelligent in the modern society is not cool. This fear and pressure of normal society can develop many issues, a few of which are feeling like you don’t fit in, feeling unloved and feeling like you are being
The author begins by giving the definition of a geek and how it has been portrayed wrong the whole time. The correct definition of geek is “a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens”, but society has been incorrectly using this term. Society inclines to call people that are academically serious and highly value education names like nerd and geek. The author uses juxtaposition to compare Geeks to circus side-show freaks by introducing the correct definition of a geek and how it has been used erroneously in our culture. Our society has been associating geeks with freaks for many years because they simply do not understand people that are scholastically gifted. The author uses the rhetorical device of juxtaposition to simply demonstrate how mistaken our civilization is in comparing a freak biting off a head of a live chicken to a person who is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. The author also compares an intellectual to a “freak” to illustrate the disproportionately negative meaning of the term “geek”, while the actual definition of geek is far more negative than the common, everyday usage of the word. Later in the pas...
What would changing the definition of nerd do to anyone? First, the general definition of being a nerd has been engraved in everybody’s brains. This definition has the image is a white skinny boy with glasses and doesn't play sports. This boy usually hangs out by themselves or with other nerds. There are real people that are like this in the world and that definition directly affects their life. All the movies and TV shows out there that
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.”
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.
“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
Julian Nava was one of the people who fought to end IQ testing. He believed that students that did not get high IQ scores still had the potential to be something greater than a factory worker.
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.