Intellectualism In Gerald Graff's 'Hidden Intellectualism'

In his essay "Hidden Intellectualism," Gerald Graff argues that intellectualism is not something that can only be taught through proper education like school or college, but with subjects that people consider non academics as sports, cars, or popular culture. The writer considers "street smart" to those people who learn things outside of an academic environment, for example in the streets of their neighborhood or their parent’s professions like being a mechanic. The writer argues that educators should let students decide on the subject that they are more interested to learn, this would open up possibilities for the student to excel in his academic environment as well as his own interests. I personally agree with this 100 percent this would

As far out as teaching kids things through popular culture and general interest is, it is in fact very possible. Now a prime example is when English teachers use the book of hamlet to teach the lesson of to be or not to be. Teachers could instead use a book such as Friday night lights. Graff himself stated “until I entered college, I hated books and cared only for sports.” A lot of kids fall into this category of only caring about sports while school is just a side show, why don’t teachers take this to their advantage and use books about sports fictional or not to start the path to liking books, Don’t get me wrong there is an important role of critically acclaimed stories, but the focus should be towards the student’s own interests. For example, a book

While in high school had a friend we can just call him Marshall. He was not the best student at school but he was pretty smart in other ways, such as he could never focus enough to actually study but was one of the smartest people that I have ever met in other ways. For example he could order new car parts off the internet and install them on his car from briefly looking over a handbook. Students like this are exactly who Graff’s essay is aimed at. One thing that my friend Marshall was known for is being one of the most competitive people in the world, in a head to head foot race Marshall would refuse to let anyone best him. In the essay Graff compares the real world to something similar “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, rival interpretations and evaluations of texts, rival theories of why they should be read and taught and elaborate team competitions.” Now teachers have never really taught high school students this sad but all too true reality it might be helpful to teach kids this lesson. For example take kids like Marshall who would cut his own arm off before