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Street smarts in academia
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Do schools and colleges help students to develop fully their intellectual abilities? In the book They say I say, Gerald Graff, a professor who is one the coauthors of this book stated the importance of putting street smarts into academic work. He assumed that schools and colleges must take chances to exploit students’ hidden intellectual abilities.Through his own adolescent experiences, on intellectual vision, he believed that getting street smarts into academic education would bring better results in the real intellectual world. Moreover, having new experiences on nonacademic subjects helps students get more attentions and decrease tediousness. So, students would be allowed to follow the way that they feel best in their educational capabilities, as long as they do so in an intellectually righteous way. Students need to understand that they maybe explore much more their intellectual abilities if they do not afraid to experience new things that is maybe limited in academic education. Graff assumed that “it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not care about cars, dating, sports, …show more content…
Additionally, following young Graff’ case, when he attended colleges, he hated books and loved only sports. Approaching to sports created positive thoughts in his prospect. Furthermore, young Graff demonstrated that why sports was more convincing than school when he said “Sports after all was full of challenging arguments. debates, problem for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not” (267). Therefore, he believed that students could be more attractive on subjects that interest them. It is better if educators may encourage students have more chances to look at different topics that they can expand more intellectual on their
Gerald Graff expresses his concern in “Hidden Intellectualism” about how the education system does not accurately measure true intelligence. If the education system used each individual’s interests, Graff argues, the individual would be much more intrigued in the subject matter; therefore, increasing his or her knowledge. Throughout the article, Graff also draws on his love of sports to support his argument, saying that it includes elements of grammar, methodologies, and debate. He believes this proves that interests can replace traditional teaching. Graff contends one’s interest will create a community with others throughout the nation who share the same interests. While it is important to pursue your interests, there
In the essay ”Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he discusses different types of intellect, more specifically the ways they can apply to us in our lives. He discusses the different types of “smarts” referred to in his paper as street smarts, and school smarts. Graff hints upon the missed opportunities by colleges to embrace the form of intellect called “street smarts” because of a preconceived idea that there is no way to use this form of knowledge in an academic setting. To quote Graff directly “Colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts”. We then learn some of Graffs personal experiences pertaining to this very thing. He shares a story about himself which reviews his underlying love for sports and complete diskliking for books or any form of intellectualism, until he became college aged. He shares that he now believes, his love of sports over over school work was not because he hated intellectualism but perhaps it was intellectualism in another form. He shares his
In “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, the author speaks about how schools should use students’ interests to develop their rhetorical and analytical skills. He spends a majority of his essay on telling his own experience of being sport loving and relating it to his anti-intellectual youth. He explains that through his love for sports, he developed rhetoric and began to analyze like an intellectual. Once he finishes his own story, he calls the schools to action advising them to not only allow students to use their interest as writing topics, but instead to teach the students on how to implement those compelling interests and present them in a scholarly way. In perspective, Graff’s argument becomes weak with his poor use of ethos, in which he solely focuses on his own anecdote but, through the same means he is able to build his pathos and in the last few paragraphs, with his use of logic he prevents his argument from becoming dismissible.
In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism” Gerald Graff expressed his views on education. He feels that teachers or professors only see traditional subjects or text as intellectually valuable even though, although as a professor himself, he disagrees with it. He feels that the spectrum should be broadened to be able to interact with the kids more and get them more interested in the reading that are taught in schools. He is speaking to teachers in an effort to get them to change from the mindset of teaching traditionally and get reading that students to relate to. He is also speaking to students to get them to feel better about not being able to relate certain readings, and to also see that not being able to relate to the readings is not a bad thing. Although Pop Culture reading is not considered as intellectual reading it should be.
In his closing remarks, Graff once again makes a slight stumble. He begins his final paragraph with, “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” (386). Using the words “If I am right” shows uncertainty and might hurt his credibility with some readers. Luckily, Graff’s argument and credibility remains intact. Since, the reader will most likely pause and reaffirm, to themselves, that Graff is indeed right.
In the essay, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” from Inquiry to Academic Writing, Gerald Graff argues that students learn things differently from class to class and are not taught to use information from one class in another. This is a problem especially in higher education today because there is such a large gap from professor to professor. Although the disagreement from one subject to the next may seem like a problem to some, if there were no disagreements, nothing would be worth learning. While these problems may occur, they are essential in the evolvement of education. Without these disagreements there would not be any search for more information to solve the problems. Also, students would not be motivated to continue to learn. The disagreements between the two are what seem to confuse students, but what confuses them more is how the education system is set up. Students must learn to make
Graff insists that students should target their own passions and turn them into something academic and intellectual, as they get them hooked in the academic proceeding. Specifically, when students study about an area that is interesting to them, it is likely easier for them to perceive the given information and provide the arguments based on their own perspective about the topic reasonably and comprehensively. Young Graff, himself, admitted that “the sports world was more compelling than school because
Graff begins by talking about the educational system, and why it flawed in many ways, but in particular, one: Todays schools overlook the intellectual potential of street smart students, and how shaping lessons to work more readily with how people actually learn, we could develop into something capable of competing with the world. In schools, students are forced to recite and remember dull and subject heavy works in order to prepare them for the future, and for higher education. “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that 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.” (Graff, 198-199) In everyday life, students are able to learn and teach themselves something new everyday. It is those students, the “young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school” (Graff, 198), that we are sweeping away from education and forcing to seek life in places that are generally less successful than those who attend a college or university.
When Gerald Graff was younger he and his friends would have various debates about sports including what team had the best pitcher in baseball. Graff pointed out that while having these arguments with his friends, they would have evidence to support their thoughts whether it be using statistics to find batting averages or using their argumentative abilities in general to support their opinion. This proves that even people who do not do the best in school are capable of brilliant things, the school system just needs to encourage students to use their hobbies to enhance their academics. Instead of dividing the different forms of intelligence, book and street smarts could merge and grow into a more detailed educational system that can help not just with academics, but with life itself. While it is good to know proper grammar, knowing about dating, sports, or cars can actually get people farther than anticipated in life. Graff thought that in the school system, street smarts is perceived as less than compared to “book smarts” which are encouraged in school. If the two forms of intelligence were to merge instead of separate, the educational system can transform into something
Why street smart students are considered anti intellectual in academic area? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he accounts the idea that street smart students are way more smarted than book smarts. He explains that street smart student will be able to solve an issue much faster than book smart because of his/her previous experience. According to author, the problems with considering street smarts as anti intellectual are they are actually much smarter that book smart students, they don’t equal opportunity , and schools along with colleges never challenge their mind get them to succeed in academic work.
Street smarts are intellectual resources that are ignored by schools. It is the most informal version of intellect, generally relating to hobbies that seem anti-intellectual. Gerald Graff’s journal article Hidden Intellectualism shows that everyone is an intellectual whether they are aware of it or not. Using mainly ethos, he describes how sports can be a form of intellectualism because of the use of logic. He says it beautifully here, “I see now that sports provided me with something comparable to the saturation of life by argument… that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means.”
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 who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a life-less explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology” (205). Graff adopts a jovial tone to lure in his readers and describe how this overlooked intelligence can spark a passion in students to become interested in formal and academic topics. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos to establish his credibility, appeal emotionally to his readers, and appeal to logic by makes claims, providing evidence, and backing his statements up with reasoning.
(Graff, 245) So, we are trained to think that math, English, and science are the end-all of education and while they are important, they have the same basic lessons that we can apply to any other thing of interest. The general idea is to be able to analyze and think deeply, no matter the topic, so schools should offer students more opportunities to take classes that interest
As stated in my introductory paragraphs, both authors examine the academic motivation of student athletes, but focus their arguments on different aspects. Since both authors agree on the fact that athletics make big impacts, it makes it harder to choose one argument over the other. Both Flynn and Herbert D. Simon’s have similar ideas in which they discuss, but they add their own opinions. Both authors have a strong agreement but the way they present their ideas are completely diverse.
Sports programs have been an integral part of all schools. They support the academics of the school and therefore foster success in life. These programs are educational and help produce productive citizenship. They help students experience and build skills that may help them in their future, like interpersonal and time management skills. Education may kindle the light of knowledge, but sports help to maintain the proper physique. Sports are also an important means of entertainment and a use for energy after long hours of study. Sports increase a student’s performance not only in the classroom but also in their life.