Matos 1 Jose Matos Professor Newhart 20 October 2013 English 1010 Homework 8 There are many different ways that one can show how intellectual they can be whether it book smarts or it be street smarts. A person can excel in any area that they feel comfortable in. But who is to say one is smarter than the other? In the article Hidden Intellectualism author Gerald Graff gives personal experiences of the difficulties that may surround his and many generations after him of those students who want to excel in book smarts but at the end of the day they have to settle for street smarts so they can socially accepted by their peers. As students and teaching institutions we need to learn reach out and help our fellow peers tap into either their street smarts or book smarts so that we can have better well rounded society. Author Gerald Graff starts by making a generalized assumption. He states, Everyone knows some young person who is impressively street smart but does poorly in school. He jumps right into the essence of the paper in the first sentence. He goes on to say, What a waste, we think, that one who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work. Now there might be some of those young people who would disagree with Graff thinking that anything you learn in a book can learn on the streets. Also, there might be those academics who may thing, what s the point in helping them? If they wanted to they could do whatever they put their mind to. He responds to both of those critics or opposition by saying, Nor do we consider one of the major reasons why schools and colleges
Matos 2 overlook the intellectual potential of street smarts: the fact that we associate those street marts with anti-intellectual concerns. That statement does not only put an end to the arguments of the different academic institutions but also gives hope to those street smart youth. It states that, it does not matter if those institutions are concerned with them not succeeding. But, that does not mean they are correct. He states that many overlook at the potential the young person might by knowing what they know. Graff goes on to say, We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts 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. In that statement he asks the same question that I asked at the beginning of this essay: who says what is better books smarts or street smarts? Yes, many may argue for one side or the other. Graff makes his very clear. Both are equally important. We need to know how to function in society and also how to excel in academic work. One should not take the lead in front of the other. We must learn to use both to succeed in every area in life. The author in this article goes into his own personal experiences with his hidden intellectualism. He presents it in such a way that he can reinforce his argument that sometimes students are succumbed to social pressures. Also, whether or not they are street smarts does not mean that they are not book smarts. Now, there may be many people out there who may disagree with Graff s argument by saying, If students wanted to they could succeed in not only street smarts but also in book smarts and that students are influenced by their surroundings but ultimately it comes down to making your own decisions. Graff in return does answer those statements in the personal narrative of his life growing up in Chicago. He states that, I grew up
Matos 3 torn, then, between the need to prove I was smart and the fear of a beating if I proved it too well, between the need not to jeopardize my respectable future and the need to impress the hoods. With that statement Graff gives the opposition a look into the life of many middle-class Americans. In the following paragraphs Graff begins to make more statement to the youth in this generation of why it is not wrong to have the passion to move into the intellectual side, better said, shine very bright and let everyone know that you are smart. The way he illustrates it with the following statement, In one way, then, it would be hard to imagine an adolescence more thoroughly anti-intellectual than mine. Yet in retrospect, I see that it s more complicated, that I and the 1950s themselves were not simply hostile toward intellectualism, but divided and ambivalent. When Marilyn Monroe married the playwright Arthur Miller in1956 after divorcing the retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio, the symbolic triumph of a geek over the jock This statement clearly states that the time period has nothing to do with whether or not a student is trying to hide their intellectualism but the surroundings of that certain student. The thing that really caught my attention was that Graff not only gives his expertise on how an adolescent he was intimidated to excel academically but he has the opportunity to show his point of view as a University professor. He can look at what both academically sound and street smart students are missing. He states, For here is another thing that never dawned on me and is still kept hidden from students, with tragic results: that the real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school is organized very much like the world of team sports, with rival texts He reassumes the point of this article and it is that to succeed in life we need both academic smarts and book smarts to succeed. Both set of students need to be susceptible to the possibility there is more to the way of life than their way of looking at it. Graff goes on to
Matos 4 give difficulty through a quote, The challenge, as college professor Ned Laff has put it, is not simply to exploit students nonacademic interests, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes. Right there is the way to make students shine with using there nonacademic interests. He finishes his paper on reflecting on that point once more, 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 studies. For example, if a student likes a sport or a sport s team then schools and colleges should interest that student by having them write or present on that very topic. Thinking on how to make them present on nonacademic interests I feel like something that institutions can do to make well-rounded students is the book smart students make them do school work on nonacademic topics. Make those book smart students work hard on pushing them to their limits. In conclusion, there are many different types of students. Each has their own abilities to excel. Whether they be academically or street smarts, we can help every student push themselves to become well-rounded. We must also not let our academic opportunities think that they are not smart enough or discard that a student with a street smart background cannot succeed in an academically driven world. We must them all realize that they too can succeed with the help of other students and also of professors.
Matos 5 Bibliography Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, eds. They Say I Say with Readings Read TSIS, Gerald Graff, Hidden Intellectualism