Hidden Intellectualism : Hidden Intellectualism

Senior year I was trying to puzzle together this geometry problem in my mind. I couldn’t figure it out, I felt like I hit a brick wall and couldn’t break through it to solve the problem. Maybe if I reworded the problem to be similar to a real world situation I could solve it. In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, his thesis is that intellectualism is more valuable than academic intelligence. Graff begins talking about how schools fail to reach into the minds of kids who are street smart and connect that into their academic school work. He states that students would be more willing to take the academic intellectual characteristic if the schools would engage them into subjects they are interested in, rather than what the teachers think. Graff then opens up to a personal

In an excerpt from his essay “they say I say” titled “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff gives a compelling argument on how schools should capitalize off student’s street smarts to engage them intellectually. He believes that students are being fed a narrative that is inefficient to its purpose. To counter this inefficiency there should be an integration of things that interest the students with their academics.

“Hidden Intellectualism,” an excerpt from They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff, explains the importance of having diverse intellectualism and helping the kids with street smart intellectualism turn it into academic growth. The author’s claim in this excerpt is that school and colleges are missing out on an opportunity of helping the street smart kids grow their intelligence into good academic work. The significance in the author’s claim is that the students who believe they don’t have much of an opportunity in school or other things related to academics, realize they do.

In reading Gerald Graff’s short essay Hidden Intellectualism, I agree and disagree with some of what Graff argues. He emphasizes that by having students write about something they are passionate about, it will inspire them to write more academically and be willing to focus on their studies and academics. He informs the reader that “It was in these discussions with friends about toughness and sports, I think, and in my reading of sports books and magazines, that I began to learn the rudiments of the intellectual life” (Graff, pg. ) In this quote, he argues that by having discussions about his passion with sports helped him as he grew up to be able to sustain a conversation with his peers and enforce his ideas across. I believe discussing passionate subjects an individual has is a great way to expand them academically.

In Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff seeks to expose what he believes to be a fundamental issue in today’s schools and colleges. He brings attention to “street smarts”, students who are intelligent about so many things in life, yet their potential is overlooked because the things they are knowledgeable about are not things we associate with educated life such as cars, sports and video games. He claims that students are more likely to enter the world of academics if they were encouraged to view their interests from an academic perspective rather than to be forced into subjects that are considered “more academic” by the rest of society. Gerald Graff’s main point is that teachers should take advantage of the interests that students already have and convince them to pursue those interests with “academic eyes”, rather than forcing content on them that they are uninterested in. Although I agree with the first part of Graff’s statement, I think a crucial skill to acquire is the ability to find interests in something outside of subjects we initially find our interests in so that we may develop more as a whole person.

The essay, " Hidden Intellectualism," written by Gerald Graff discusses the misconceptions between academia and society. Graff asserts, that knowledge is something that can emerge not only scholarly, but through " Street Smart" as Graff refers to it. Graff uses his own life experiences, in order, to emphasize his huge disinterest in school subjects, such as reading books composed by authors like Shakespeare. However, he further elaborates on his immense interest in sports. Graff explains how he is able to spend copious time conversing about sports, cars, dating, fashion, tv and video games, without realizing that he and his friends are engaging in intellectualism. Essentially, Graff encourages schools to take " Street Smart" topics such

In assignment number three, I was instructed to write a short summary about an article titled Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff. Learning goal number two is being able to write in various academic genres. I demonstrated that I understood this learning goal because I was never able to write in any other genre then free writing. This assignment helped me perfect my skills in writing short summaries about an article because it broadened my expertise in writing. Thinking of summarizing, you’d incorporate it as an easy task but for me it really wasn't. Writing a short summary on an interesting article was not easy. I started off by using the skills of learning goal number one and annotated the article throughout my reading. Writing in different

Why don’t schools take advantage of a student’s so-called “street smarts”? Why weigh down students with heavy textbooks when they could be learning from resources that they enjoy? This is exactly the argument Dr. Gerald Graff makes in his article Hidden Intellectualism, where Graff attempts to convince teachers to broaden the scope of school curriculum to accommodate street smarts and more popular topics. To persuade teachers that this method of teaching is effective, Graff uses personal anecdotes, diction, ethical strategies, and reasoning in his article.

In his Article “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate Smart Kids" Grant Penrod claims that “smart kids” are facing exclusion from positive social norms. Penrod constructs many valid points in his article, points that may open new discussions on the subject at hand. In his essay he says that “social stereotypes, public examples, and monetary obsession are contributions behind anti-intellectualism.” (Penrod, Par.2)

In Gerald Graff’s “Hidden Intellectualism,” he reports that street-wise students are more intellectual of becoming book-wise students. Graff argues on how schools and colleges are at fault when students fail on their academics. He worships the love of sports and conveys that sports brings out argumental intellectual debates. He elaborates on his past experiences on how he withheld his intellectualism from his peers because he was afraid of being beaten down. He emphasizes that students are intelligent, but they just need to be enthusiastic about learning interesting subjects. It has become common today to dismiss what would make society be exposed to a streetwise student be evolved into an intellectual student.

In lesson three, I read a biography on Carol Dweck. A important quote in the biography was “When we started teaching this idea about the mind being malleable, he looked up with tears in his eyes, and he said, 'You mean, I don't have to be dumb?” This is important because it shows that what Carol and her researchers were doing was helping students increase there IQ.

Common sense is the most useful aspect of intelligence, yet the American school system rewards its students with the ability to memorize rather than those with common sense. Therefore, many intelligent students fail to realize their individual merit. Regarding the application of knowledge, American author Brian Tracy said, “Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” Tracy shows the value of intelligence as it pertains to thriving in society as a result of the application of knowledge. For example, an intelligent lawyer gains knowledge of precedents relevant to his case and applies this knowledge to present a strong case for his

I did not grow up in the family where reading is valued. There were not many books in our house. However, in my cousin's house, there had some children's picture books, and some books like "Tell Me Why", the series uses simple language and pictures to answer and explain hundreds of questions that parents did not know how to answer their children. I liked to read those books when I visit him. When I grew older, I did not keep the reading habit I had. Conversely, I started reading comic books for entertainment. Compare with the text that related to schools I preferred reading comics. I unintentionally influenced my younger sister, and she started reading comics with me. Sometimes we discussed the plots or the characters of the comics we read;

An increment in college drop out rates with the inability to do well in courses has been on the receiving end of many theories as well as research experiments. In “Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition” Blackwell, Trzeniewski, Dweck (2007) state that some people believe that intelligence is more of an “entity” while others think of it as “incremental”.

Night's darkness of room is cut by a bright kaleidoscope of a rectangular light from the monitor. A girl sits in front of the display with a fluffy owl on it in large headphones and quietly talking with the people behind the screen. Suddenly, a door opens up with yelling "Turn this off and go do your homework! Stop wasting your time, stupid!" This sad scene is familiar to many people all around the world: parents often think that games are useless time-killers and that teens do not get anything from it that could be used in the academic world. Despite the widespread opinion, it is not true. In fact, video games are one of many other non-academic interests which make people so-called "street smart" and it is largely underestimated intelligence. One example of such games actively played worldwide is World of Warcraft (WoW). In the game, a person chooses a character among many classes and goes to explore the world - kills monsters, accomplishes achievements, and investigates stories of thousands of non-playable characters. All the activities help a player to develop qualities which are useful in the real world - both academically and not. Some writers also investigate the theme of underrating of street smarts. One of them is a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago Gerald Graff. In his essay "Hidden Intellectualism" Graff highlights that schools fail to employ "street smart" people and turn the quality into academic intelligence, plus,