Analysis of Gerald Graff’s Essay “Hidden Intelligence”

In the American society, the exterior of a human has higher values than the interior. For instance, an athlete is held in high regard by the public, due to their aesthetically appealing body and the proficient ability to do physical activities. On the other hand, a nerd or geek is seen as an outcast in society, because of their intelligence. These uneven values of society are exactly what the founding member of the society of Nerds and Geeks at Harvard University, Leonid Fridman argues upon in his writing of “America Needs its Nerds.” Through the rhetorical strategies of tone, pathos, and rhetorical questioning, Fridman emphasizes the significance of intellectually driven people in America.

"the word, 'intellectual ', of course, became the swear word it deserved to be...the boy in your class who was exceptionally 'bright ', did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols,

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

The United State’s education system pay noticeably more attention to appear intelligent rather than actually being intelligent. As a scholar in the United States, I felt compelled to rely heavily on my ability to memorize to achieve success in the future rather than taking the time and effort to engage in deeper learning.

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.

The issue being debated in the article “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff is street smarts versus book smarts. Gerald Graff is an English professor at the University of Illinois and has written many books. The author claims that people are better off if they are more street smart than book smart. The authors is very persuasive using real life examples. I although disagree with this claim. I think that you need an equal mix of both street and book smarts.

In this excerpt, the author expresses it’s important to have knowledge not only in school but out of school as well. For instance, Gerald Graff states “I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because streets smarts are nonintellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school cultures, which seems pale and unreal,” (par. 11). In other words, the author elaborates on the importance of also having street smarts because you will need knowledge from school and outside of school in real world situation. This

Graff shares with us his personal experiences on how reading intellectually converted him from being street smart to book smart. Graff now urges colleges and schools to teach students the importance of reading intellectually as well as writing. "If I am right, then schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study. It is self defeating to decline to introduce any text or subject that figures to engage students who will otherwise tune out academic work entirely" (Graff, 270). By this, Gerald Graff means schools should encourage students to take their areas of interest and apply them to their education. All in hopes that students will one day feel comfortable enough to step outside

“Hidden Intellectualism” an article written by Gerald Graff is a very interesting piece of writing intended for the audience of high school and college educators. Throughout the text Graff argues that high schools and colleges are failing to incorporate topics that interest street smart students into the school system, which is therefore resulting in street smart students failing to do well academically in high school and college. He uses his own personal anecdote to support this. Graff successfully persuades his audience that high school and colleges can develop a student’s intellectualism by using topics that already interests students. He successfully does this through the use of development, conventions, and evidence.

Academic work should not define intelligence nor should a job define ability; a person, regardless of grades, degrees, or job title, is an intellect. Together, Gerald Graff, a coauthor of They Say I say, professor, and former anti-intellect, author of "Hidden Intellectualism," and Mike Rose, professor, author, and in depth thinker, author of "Blue-Collar Brilliance," share two different perspectives on what an intellect truly is. Yet, both writings hold meaningful points and experiences to prove who qualifies to be an intellect. Society continuously focuses on what leads to a successful and rounded life: go to school, graduate, go back to school, get a degree, and then a job. It is believed that these high expectations of higher academics enables one to be more successful is correct; however, it is not. It is a person’s individual goals that give them the success they wish to have whether that be education, volunteering, or donating. Also, street smarts is not to be overlooked; a person with common sense can know more than a Doctor. Typically, a person can have either common sense or intelligence, not both. Street smarts is, without a doubt, a superior quality to possess as it encompasses more in life than just a degree does. For example, it is more appropriate to know how to cross a street properly in life than know how to perform a craniotomy. Furthermore, one does not gain knowledge and life lessons through school alone, but through experience,

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

Many times a student will be generalized into a category of book smart or street smart. A teacher or person of higher authority can overlook a pupil’s potential intellect due to their grades not being the most attractive in a main course subject. Gerald Graff expands to his audience on different areas of the world such as sports intriguing him and bringing out his “book smart” side. In Gerald Graff’s Hidden Intellectualism, Graff argues that all too often students are not given enough variety of topics to demonstrate their potentially brilliant mind. Due to teachers solely focusing on the print of the textbook it has become the norm to brush off students who may not excel in those areas, therefore, not try to explore where their actual skillful side can arise.

In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff discusses the need to encourage students to apply their knowledge in a variety of areas to academic pursuits and the need for schools to ‘exploit’ the students interests in such a way that they will succeed in their studies. Graff is a professor at the University of Illinois and begins the essay with discussion of his childhood and Chicago and the impact that upbringing had on his interests and personality. He understands that not every student is going to be immediately interested in subjects which have long been near and dear to those in the higher levels of academia, but that student’s more “lowbrow” interests are just as valid as means of communication,

Graff also uses reasoning and logic to convince teachers that his proposed solution is effective. On the fifth page of the article, Graff uses reasoning through example when explaining that sports “was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about…” (248) Graff continues to explain that because of those reasons, “street smarts beat out book

This article helps us understand if the levels of anti-intellectualism are related to students who choose specific majors like business and sociology. It gives us a chart with results that portray the SAIS, Student Anti-Intellectualism Scale (Laverghetta). This is a survey/questionnaire that measures a student’s anti-intellectualism and represents it on a scale (Laverghetta). The results that they found show that students with majors such as business administration, criminal justice, communications, and nursing scored higher on the SAIS as opposed to students who had majors in sociology, philosophy and theory embracing