Ray Williams The Rise Of Idiot America

The author agrees with the fact that the jocks get the majority of the fame rather than the occupations that deserve it such as teachers. Teachers show kids how to act during the real life and to learn right from wrong. While

In the world of academia, from Graff’s perspective, street smarts are associated with anti-intellectualism. Graff states “we associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty an academic.” He argues that educators should broaden their aspect of material they once preserved as inefficient. Graff implies that a person who is studious enough can find substance in any content. He reasons that intellect can be uncovered and observed in various forms, hence the name “hidden intellectualism.” He suggests that the Education system overlooks the interest of the students because they consider their interest irrelevant.

If it wasn’t for people acting against conformity and developing their interests in academics America wouldn’t be where it is in technical advancements. Fridman argues that for America’s success it’s necessary that, “the anti-intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought” to raise more citizens to be intellectual (Fridman 20-21). He urges for society’s values to be challenged in order for individuals to get more involved with educating themselves. Fridman points out, “There are very few countries in the world where anti-intellectualism runs as high in popular culture as it does in the U.S.”

High school in real life is full of surprises, but according to David Denby in his article "High School Confidential," High School in the movies is very predictable. The typical Hollywood "High School Scene" opens with the jock and the cheerleader characters. Blonde and buff, the Jock and the Cheerleader are superficial and proud to proclaim it. They are popular and perky, and always too good to be true. The cheerleader is usually the enemy of the hero or heroine. She is generally rich, blonde, and queen bee of the social circle, with no sense of selflessness. The jock is usually the bully, muscular, good looking and not very smart.(Denby 343) In an essence, the male counterpart of the cheerleader. The Jock and the Cheerleader are almost

In Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff, he begins with the argument of “street-smarts” versus “school-smarts”. Graff explains that school-smarts can be hidden within street smarts and can be learnt through not just talking with friends, but also from the media and our surroundings, hence the “hidden” intellectualism. He goes onto explain that “schools and colleges overlook the intellectual potential of street-smarts” (198) because these types of intellectualism are actually considered anti-intellectualism. Graff then begins to discuss that intellectualism is often looked down upon within schools, and people that are considered “school-smart” are seen as nerdy, or boring. We learn that as a child, Graff was afraid of bullying and

Many intelligent kids are being overlooked because of the stigma of being a “nerd,” as well as the fact that anti-intellectualism is becoming more popular. A man, author Grant Penrod, wrote “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We

In the passage taken from “America Needs its Nerds” by Leonid Fridman, the author gives examples of how our society compares to others, regarding how they successfully treat intelligence as a gift, and we treat intelligence as a social inormality, ostracizing our nerds. He uses examples from schooling in America to universities in East Asia, to just different amounts of respect shown to different occupations (such as a university professor), in East Asia vs. America.

The general argument made by Gerald Graff in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” is that, All people are intellectual but that intellectual side is hidden, People’s intellectual side usually emerge when they focus on things they are inquisitive in, maybe in academics or in sports as long as the person doing it is really passionate about it. More specifically, Graff argues that students in school should choose the subject that they believe will assist them and applicable to their skills because once they are force to study subject that is not relevant to what they want or they are not really interested in, they will just attend their class for a whole year without learning anything about it. That is because they are not willing to do it, their intellectual capacity will remain hidden for a long period of time. In addition the author writes, that “It was in these discussion with friends about toughness and sports, I think, and in my reading of sports books and magazine that I began to learn the rudiments of intellectual life”. This passage means that intellectual potential is not only gain by academic people, anyone can aquire it as long

In his essay “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff argues that street smarts are much more important as school smart. Graff explains how many people are street smart, but do not perform well in school. The street smarts are the ones who are focused on sports or entertainment and the school smarts are the ones who love books and are into their academic lives. He believes students who are in school need to read literature to become more intellectual. Graff believes schools should encourage the street smarts and make them have more focus on their academic work.

In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff argues that street smart kids can do better in school if teachers had gave them the opportunity to perform their intelligence on academic work. It will be helpful if school encouraged students to learn the subject they are interested in. Graff share his adolescent experience to support this argument. He was passionate about sport. Until entered college, he only read things about sports. This habit unwittingly developed his literacy, analyzing and debate skills. In the neighborhood he grew up, to maintain the class boundary between upper class and lower class, it was better to be book smart. However, he was struggle about whether to be intelligent or not. Because he wanted to be smart and impress the

We begin our education in kindergarten and spend 12 long years preparing ourselves for a life-changing 4 years, college. Those 12 years of preparation consisted of learning the alphabet, doing multiplication, reading Shakespeare, and many more subjects that most kids and teenagers hated and found unnecessary. We are learn different subjects, and we don’t also find much interest or liking to those subjects. In Gerald Graff’s essay, Hidden Intellectualism, he talks to us about what intellectualism is and how it isn’t only associated with subjects like mathematics or literature. He argues that students can channel their intellectual passion and will eventually be able to channel their work in school and do better. Graff himself writes “ If a

“Hidden Intellectualism” Summary In “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he starts with the argument of the difference between “book smarts” and “street smarts.” He’s saying even though some people don’t have academic intelligence, they can have common sense or “street smarts.” Graff mainly focuses on how young adults view intellectualism in a negative way that only “nerds” aim for. He also mentions his experiences in hiding his own type of intellectualism. Graff grew up thinking “book smart” was not taken seriously and the subject was stigmatized.

Jacoby seeks to answer how and why these barriers negatively affect this “Age of American Unreason”. In Jacoby’s book she explain how American’s have become less and less intellectual over the year due to our culture our distraction. In order to understand what constitutes such anti-intellectualism in our culture, we must first understand what it means to be an intellectual. By doing this, it will help us understand why many American’s today lack such intellectualism.

In a 2014 article on Psychologytoday.com, Ray Williams informs his audience about the rise of anti-intellectualism in American in an article called: Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America. Williams clams that America has suffered in intellectualism because society has dismissed science, the arts, and humanities and have been replaced by media, entertainment, and ignorance. He backs up this claim by citing Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, Pulitzer price winner Richard Hofstadter, author of The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein, a number of studies and statistics done across the country, and as well as many other authors on this subject. Williams makes bold claims by comparing American education to Japanese,

To most kids in high school, social status and physical appearance are everything. A kid doesn’t necessarily have to be the most attractive person in the school to be considered popular, but sadly it seems to help amongst the more superficially minded teenagers. The jocks are seen as the “top dogs” of the school, due to their athletic physique and luck when it comes to dating. Cheerleaders are considered “the perfect, most beautiful” girls in the entire school, and some of them believe that makes them better than everyone else. I was viewed as a loser when I first moved to Plano, Texas. I had a chili bowl haircut, large glasses, and a thick west Texas accent. I also had a lot of friends who enjoyed playing video games and daydreaming about