In a society that likes to put people into categories based on certain defining characteristics, Leonid Fridman highlights how “nerds” and “geeks” receive unfair treatment for being smart. In his argument, Fridman goes to highlight how our culture, especially in the United States, looks down upon people who are “intellectually curious and academically serious.” Leonid Fridman is able to construct a compelling argument by illustrating how children are dissuaded from being smart and hardworking at an early age, depicting intellectuals as the damsel in distress, and by illuminating the ostracization of intellectuals in the U.S. specifically. A recurring defense Firdman uses in his argument is the referral back to childhood behaviors. Talking
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
In the world we live in today is mostly criticizing not really your in different parts of something in school , but its mostly about you have to criticize someone over what they look like or how they dress or where they get there clothes from. All mostly what people think are "intellectual" are the smart ones , critics , and imaginative creators. I think Captain Beatty is trying to get Montag
Author and Harvard graduate, Leonid Fridman, in an excerpt of his article, America Needs Its Nerds, points out America’s anti-intellectualism. Fridman’s purpose is to inform the reader of the contempt held for the intellectually curious and call for a change in the country’s attitude. He adopts a condemning tone to make the reader aware of the issue and encourage them to change their mindset.
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
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.
Why does our society praise braun over brain? When did athletic talent and beauty begin to reign over intellect? In past cultures intellect was cherished, praised and honored. However, in present time our most honored members of society are our athletes and entertainers. Why do we no longer honor our philosophers, scientists, and innovators? Intellects keep the world turning. Due to this lack of admiration for intelligence, our children are no longer inspired to learn. Their dreams co...
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
“Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.” - Charles J. Sykes. This quote relates to “ America Needs Its Nerds” by Leonid Fridman, by the way they both see how society doesn’t value its nerds. Fridman and Sykes both know nerds or intellectuals aren't valued as high as someone who is popular or an athlete. Fridman develops his argument by showing how society snubs nerds through childhood and as being an adult.
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
Vygotsky believes that a child’s cognitive development originates in socialization activities, and then goes through a process of increasing individuation. He argued that self-directed speech did not show any cognitive immaturity, but did show some form of development. He claims that private speech represents a functional differentiation in the speech of a child, or that a child begins to differentiate between speech that is directed towards the others and speech that is self-directed.
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.
It is fascinating to compare "geezers" and "geeks". The era where heroic leaders was born, the Geezers age range from 70-93. It was between the years from 1945 – 1951 when the geezers were about 25-30 years old. (G.Bennis and Thomas). Geezers went through the Great Depression when growing up itself is a major issue. During WWII, the geezers experience dislocation from family and community, mortality and personal loss. The fail in government also created greater awareness of U.S diversity and hypocrisy. The needs of the geezers was stability and security. The ability to control over my space and the strong believer of “hard work pay off” theory. Making a living become their main priority. Heavier emphasis on military service shape a command-and-control leadership style within the geezers. Entrepreneuring was a big word back then; it is the only way for one to control his/her destiny. (G.Bennis and Thomas)
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.
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