Leonid Fridman in his article “America Needs Its Nerds” (1990) proposes that “For America’s sake the anti-intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought.” Fridman accomplishes the by first spelling out how the meaning of the terms geek and nerd are derogatory, secondly, he explains how at prestigious colleges “nerds are ostracized while athletes are idolized.” Third, Fridman describes how other countries treat the intellectually serious: hold them and teacher above athletes. Through his utilization definition, rhetorical question, and contrast, Fridman attempts to convince America of why nerds are important to our society and to provide evidence as to why they should not be ridiculed. Throughout the article, Fridman employs a serious tone that is not overly scholarly with the purpose of trying to connect with the audience and causes the nerd’s importance resonates with the audience and does not go understated. …show more content…
However, the word geek “according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads off live chickens,” (lines six and seven) and has nothing to do with a person’s intellectual curiosity or ability. Therefore, to provide a logical backing to his claim and to increase his credibility to the claim of the terms being derogatory, Fridman executes this tactic. It also assists in the establishment of ethos, so it was wise to exercise this point at the beginning so that it will remain for the rest of the
Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill in the book They Say/ I Say “Should everyone Go to College” have an informative tone throughout their passage. The authors apply their findings and reasoning to real situations and probability’s. Looking at how the author applied pathos, ethos, and logos, you’ll find that the authors did an exceptional job of applying pathos and logos to enhance their arguments to be more persuasive and accurate. They provided logos in their augments by providing statistical rates and data charts to back up their statements. They apply pathos buy examining real scenarios and showing that sometimes it’s a personal determination that will make you successful in college
The article “The Coddling Of The American Mind”, written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, was written about how teachers are afraid of what they are allowed to say during in class because of the emotional effect on the students. While writing the article the authors have many examples of logos, ethos, and pathos. The logos of the article appeals to logic by presenting facts and statistics. The writers provide definitions of words such as microaggression and trigger warning. While explaining the definitions they go on to give real world examples to further the understanding of the words. Also statistics of the amount of mental health issues are provided to enhance the logos. Secondly to make the article more appealing is adding an emotional
When analyzing the article “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” written by Mike Rose, and the article “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” by Matthew B. Crawford, you can see several differences in the strategies they use. Rose’s text was an educational article about the intelligence gained through manual labor trades. Roses intended audience is the well educated, professional class, as well as educators, and individuals working in white collar jobs. His purpose is to prove that not all blue-collar workers need an education to succeed and to bust the stereotype that blue-collar individuals can gain the essential skills and education from their jobs. Crawford also based his article around blue-collar work, he mainly focuses on the values the craftsman, being a craftsman
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
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.
The purpose of Rebecca Solnit’s “Abolish High School” is to criticize the present high school system along with the emotional and academic strain it puts on developing minds. Solnit’s intended audience is any educated person with the opportunity to voice their opinions on the current approach to schooling.
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.
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
He explains two different kinds of people in two different neighborhoods from his childhood: “On the one hand, it was necessary to maintain the boundary between “clean-cut” boys like me and working-class “hoods,” as we called them, which meant that it was good to be openly smart in a bookish sort of way. On the other hand, I was desperate for the approval of the hoods, whom I encountered daily on the playing field and in the neighborhood, and for this purpose it was not at all good to be book-smart” (266). This backstory he shares reveals not only his past, but it helps to give him a purpose for writing. Based on his personal experiences as a boy with two different kinds of “intellectuals,” he has firsthand seen both kinds of intellectualism in action, so he can easily argue for both sides, creating a complete argument incorporating aspects of each side. Furthermore, he specifically he mentions the terms “clean-cut” boys, and “hoods.” These simple quotes using slang terms from his neighborhood exemplify his situation and brings us back to his childhood, helping the audience visualize the situation he is coming from. Simultaneously, this invokes a reaction in the audience about each distinct term, making the audience think about Graff’s argument in relation to their own thoughts and connotations of each term. Therefore,
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...
The authors of “Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, use ethos, logos, and pathos convey their negative stance regarding trigger warnings and the effect they on education. Lukianoff and Haidt’s use of rhetorical appeal throughout the article adds to the author’s credibility and the strength of the argument against increasing the use of trigger warnings in school material. The authors, Lukianoff and Haidt, rely heavily upon the use of logos, such as relations between conflicts surrounding trigger warnings and other historical conflicts impacting student ethics. Examples of the use of these logical appeals are the relation between the Columbine Massacre and the younger generations ideology. The author goes on to mention other societal turning points such
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
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.