Many believe that hierarchies limit intelligence. This is shown in Cathy Davidson’s “Project Classroom Makeover,” Azar Nafisi’s “Lolita in Tehran,” and Karen Ho’s “Biographies of Hegemony. Davidson discusses how formal education limits the knowledge individuals obtain. Nafisi explores how hard it is for individuals to imagine and learn due to the Islamic Country of Iran. Ho investigates businesses that dictate what intelligence is without allowing others to consider it for themselves. All three authors discuss hierarchies and how they define intelligence. Without a hierarchy, individuals grow and acquire different values.
Hierarchies control individuals which limit their ideas. Davidson shows this when describing formal education. Davidson
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Davidson shows this when she explains how “formal education typically teaches hierarchies of what’s worth paying attention to” which shows that individuals are forced to learn what hierarchies think as important (Davidson 51). Davidson implies that since formal education teaches individuals of what’s important this limits the likelihood of learning in new ways. Having different learning mechanisms is very important to Davidson; she views this as a way to obtain knowledge. However, individuals cannot obtain knowledge because hierarchies are limiting individuals to have a specific learning mechanism. This specific learning mechanism therefore limits their skills because they are not able to use their own mechanism. This is shown in the high expectations that the hierarchies have when it comes to standardized tests. This high expectation “narrows the spectrum of skills that we test in schools” thereby limiting their understanding (Davidson 61). The hierarchies tell students what and how they should understand in class. If these individuals do not understand the material they are labelled as failures. These students who have failed may have skills that are not tested. Cathy Davidson states how “more and more kids who have skills …show more content…
Hierarchies teach what’s worth paying attention to. This is apparent in Nafisi and Ho’s texts. Their subjects are led to focus on the way they present themselves. For example, Nafisi states how “rituals governing what I was forced to wear, how I was to act, and the gestures I had to remember to control” (Nafisi 283). Nafisi shows that the Islamic State of Iran is controlling her actions and her only way of expression; her clothes. Nafisi shows that Iran is limiting her imagination by limiting her expression. Self-expression is a form of imagination. Nafisi shows the rush of imagination she feels when “trying on different outfits, until I finally settled on a red-striped shirt and black corduroy jeans. I applied my make up with care and put on bright red lipstick” (Nafisi 285). Nafisi’s use of color connects her clothing to art, and therefore to self-expression. By limiting her expression they are thereby limiting her imagination. This is shown in the uniformity of clothes that the women wear. Nafisi was shocked by “seeing them shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color” (Nafisi 281). For so many years these women have been controlled by the hierarchies in which narrowed down the
Rose rejected the idea that education can only be learned through schooling and suggested that education can happen in the workplace. By mentioning the social and mental skills his mother obtained working at the diner and the advanced problem solving skills his uncle obtained on the shop floor, the author shows that blue-collar workers are constantly learning every day on the job. In the conclusion of the essay, Rose says “To acknowledge a broader range of intellectual capacity is to take seriously the concept of cognitive variability.” By acknowledging that knowledge isn’t just achieved through higher level schooling, formal education, or limited to scholars and students, the world is able to appreciate blue-collar workers and understand that the “formal” intelligence is not the only type of intelligence people of this world have to offer. To offer the full range of educational opportunities to all social classes, scholars and intellectuals must acknowledge “everyday cognition,” such as: using memory strategies to take order in a diner, managing the flow of customer/employee satisfaction, or developing new strategies to make work more effective, which rejects the normal “Generalizations about intelligence, work, and social class [that] deeply affect our assumptions about ourselves and each
He professes: “We set out to determine what a child knows in order to tailor instruction, but we frequently slot rather than shape, categorize rather than foster. And the poorer the kids are- the less power their parents have- the more likely are their chances of being, as Lillian put it, hurt about their intelligence.” This portion of the passage really stuck out to me for many reasons. In this part of the passage I am brought back to the beginning of the book when Rose, himself, was put on the remedial track because his file was misplaced with another individuals file; Rose’s parents had minimal education themselves, didn’t know what to say or do in the situation. If the test would have been used to tailor and shape, the teachers would have known that he wasn’t supposed to be on the vocational track. Also, this reminded me of the ACT and SAT testing, a common standardized test that is used for college acceptance. The American education system relies on the test to show the intelligence of a person when all the test accomplishes is how well a person can
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
With such a unanimous resentment, particularly in the dominating religious sect of Iran, it is important to address the ideologies within the religion enforce the country’s patriarchal social structure, i.e. the “form of social organization in which males dominate females” (text 38). Furthermore, with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, these attitudes were the driving force behind many of the discriminatory laws that confined women in Iran to a life defined by its limitations.
Women in Iran don’t have this luxury.They never got the choice to wear what they wanted to because religious customs were enforced into the law. In “Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return”, Satrapi states, Little details made a big difference in the fight against the rule(Satrapi,84). When some of the women defied the laws set by the government, they discreetly had demanded their freedom.Makeup or colored clothing displayed their demand. They wanted to express themselves so they rebelled with these little actions risking arrest. Their choice of clothes was never given to them so they demanded the right by rebelling. After years of not being able to express themselves they felt as though they were representing the community with the same clothes, but they wanted their own. Azar Nafisi says in “Reading Lolita in Tehran”,” Does she realize how dangerous she can be when every stray gesture is a disturbance to public safety?”(Nafisi,83). The author emphasizes that many actions and clothing are banned so there is opportunity to rebel. Rebelling is demanding for it to be changed. Clothing and movements can be an act that represents the demand. This granted them the ability to rebel and
This means that even students who do not understand the material or gain any knowledge from their classes can be easily passed onto the next grade level. An interview with a teacher from this school district expresses the disappointment the teachers have in the new system. “The students that struggle the entire year, the ones that fail every test, are still forced to move to the next grade level. They aren’t gaining the knowledge they need to move on and grow” states the concerned fifth grade elementary teacher. She continues to explain the stress teachers feel when they are pushing students further than their potential. Students are becoming less aware of the world around them; they don’t develop the knowledge they need to succeed. With such absence of knowledge, naïve citizens are allowing government control over their thoughts. A clear example of this is when teachers are pushing these students from grade to grade, they are simply only learning what the government and school districts want them to learn. This, in turn, affects our future leaders due to our democratic republican way of electing officials. These students grow up into adults who vote for our government and leaders based off the little knowledge they are provided throughout
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.
The world is no longer concerned with educating whole human beings, but instead, it is focused on collecting “data.” “Standardized testing robs students and teachers of using their creativity and critical thinking. It holds everyone accountable for meeting this one standard when that is nearly impossible to do. It turns us into robots, dehumanizing both teachers and students.” (Gettysburg College, 1) Standardized test are given to schools by the government. The problem with that is that the government is not in the classroom with students every day. They do not know what the students need. Standardized testing takes away time from student learning experiences where they are not able to think critically or be creative. Standardized tests take place in an artificial learning environment. They are timed, students are not allowed to ask questions, use references, talk to another student, and they cannot even get up and move around. All of these things do not mirror the reality of the real world at all. These tests are reducing the richness of human experience and human learning to a number/ set of numbers. A student may have a deep knowledge of a particular subject, but receive no acknowledgement for it because their test score may have been low. Maybe if students could draw a picture, lead a group discussion, or make a hands-on project, they could show all the knowledge that they really have. They cannot do any of these things in a standardized test. As stated before, testing also creates “winners” and losers.” The “winners” get to move on with their life, but the “losers” often suffer from loss of self-esteem and the damage of “low expectations.” Standardized tests do not value diversity either. There are a wide range of differences in the people who take standardized tests. People have different cultural backgrounds, different levels of proficiency in the English language, different learning and thinking styles, different
As child growing up some of the frightful memories include a visit to the dentist; an evil man with scary drill whose solve purpose is to hurt you or the first day in elementary school you finally leave all behind the cozy classrooms and nap times of kindergarten and enter the big leagues. All of these are considered a cakewalk compared to standardize testing. Since the start of elementary school students in the United States are taught to test. In many instances students are held back or placed in remedial classes because of lower grades. But many don’t realize that some students are not great at testing taking and because of the lower grades some educators believe that these students are lower achievers. This leads to lower self-esteem and encourage students to drop out in later years. Also students are forced to memorize information merely as facts without sparking their creativity or enhancing their knowledge.
There are many various issues about the education system which are controversial today. One of these common issues nowadays are schools concentrating on raising standards to evaluate knowledge for students. Many students have been working extremely hard just to achieve higher scores on tests. However, asking students to do many difficult tasks in their studies, is really not helpful now, is it? That is why Alfie Kohn wrote the article, “Confusing Harder with Better”, showing his dissatisfaction with the current educational system. In the article, he complains against “raising the bar”, meaning since they raised standards, teachers are making students memorize facts for tests instead of engaging intellectually with them. In other words, with
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.
The way they dressed quickly changed as shown when Marji asserted that “In no time, the way people dressed became an ideological sign. There were two kinds of women. The fundamentalist woman [and] the modern woman. There were also two sorts of men. The fundamentalist man [and] the progressive man” (75). Satrapi uses the two frames on page 75 to illustrate the idea associated with the two different ways in which both men and women chose to dress whether it be tradition, or not. Satrapi expounds how their choice of dressing then depicts their view on the Islamic Revolution. She explains how the modern women rebelled by wearing heard scarves, instead of the traditional full veil, along with letting some hair slightly fall out to show opposition against the Iranian regime. She continues with how the progressive man also showed their opposition by tucking their shirts in and shaving their facial hair, in contrast to the fundamentalist man who leaves his shirt hung out, along with a full beard. Satrapi denotes that both genders of characters take the risk of not dressing like a fundamentalist, in order to show their form of rebellion in a settle way, knowing of course that there is always a possibility of
“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
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
The “Kenyon Commencement Speech,” by David Foster Wallace, explains the intellectual thought process of how people think in the white-collar business’s higher-income lifestyle, while “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” by Mike Rose, depicts how a blue-collar worker develops great cognitive skills through working a lower income job. While these passages have separate settings, in which one shows the life-style of college graduate in commission and the other a simple high school graduate’s career, both give great insight on the proper meaning of intelligence and its overall impact on a worker’s mentality. Many ideas on the opinion of intelligence white-collar and blue-collar jobs require