Grant Penrod's Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate The Smart Kids

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In Grant Penrod’s “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids” he goes onto explain how as a society today we seem to have a built in hatred for those who are intellectuals. The main point I believe Penrod is trying to get across is that many people tend to overlook those who are intellectuals and tend single out and stop intellectuals. In Penrod’s essay he a great example of intellectuals being overshadowed by athletes by telling us how the Mountain View football team had won their state championship, it had been given the utmost attention by getting banners and assemblies, meanwhile the Science Bowl Team, the Debate Team, and the Academic Decathlon team had also won state but had only got a total for ten minutes of recognition. Penrod then goes onto show more successful examples of …show more content…

In many cases intellectuals are singled out and ridiculed just based on the fact that they are intellectuals, this leads to people becoming depressed and hating going to school on daily basis, it also leads to deep seated hatred for anyone who is not and intellectual which can lead to even more harm being done to more students in the long run. If the cycle continues all the negative actions go full circle to the point that at everyone at some point everyone becomes anti-something. Then to pile onto the problem you have your everyday bullying and also now we have cyber bullying, this means that nowadays you have a hard time escaping from all the anti-intellectuals at school because they can follow you right into your very home. Anti-Intellectualism can lead to some people losing interest in their schoolwork just because they want all of the hatred towards them to stop. You can have someone who is on the path to curing all cancer, but he gets bullied and ridiculed so much that he just gives up and does something that will more or less be approved by his

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