Hidden Intellectualism by Graff Analysis Essay Example

We all know that there is a difference between book smarts and street smarts: one is more useful in school while the other is more useful outside of school. What if this doesn’t have to be the case? What if streets smarts can be just as useful in school as it is outside of school? Well Gerald Graff, English professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, believes that using a student’s own interests could be beneficial to their work in school and I certainly agree with him. I believe that Graff’s idea of incorporating street smarts into school is something that will help students grasp a better understanding of the intellectual process.

Throughout “Hidden Intellectualism”, Graff argues that schools should use street smarts to produce good academic work out of their students. He believes that schools, however, fail to do this because interests such as video games, cars, fashion, and TV are assumed to be anti-intellectual. While he thinks that students should still read challenging works, he believes that if students start with topics that interest them, they will be more likely to identify as intellectuals. Graff uses his past as an example and talks about his days as a teenager when he was fascinated with sports. He then refers to his preference of sports over everything as “intellectualism by other means”. Graff also recalls his early childhood and how kids only wanted to be tough, with many debates among his classmates about who was the toughest. As Graff reflected, he realized that those debates in fact had been intellectual conversations and that he had learned how to be an intellectual through those debates. Graff explains how the real world of intellectualism is very similar to the world of sports with its debates and competition. Graff notes, however, that only writing about topics that interest the student will not improve their writing abilities, but the improvement will show if a student sees those interests from an academic standpoint.

One of Graff’s main claims is that if students started with topics that interest them, the students would be “more prone to take on intellectual identities.” What Graff is saying here is that the students will be more likely to understand the intellectual process if they start with something that they are familiar with. I agree with this statement because I think students will be more likely to learn something once a personal connection has been made with the topic. I remember in my high school English class having to write about Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which confused and bored me as it did most people in my class with its outdated language. Aside from not knowing how to support my argument, I really wanted to be done with the assignment. What did the symbolism behind the ghost of Hamlet’s father have to do with me? In the end, not only did I do poorly on my essay, I gained nothing from doing the assignment. An assignment about video games would have made a better first assignment than Hamlet. I can argue about video games all day because I live and breathe video games. I think it’s because people will make better arguments about things they care about. If students can figure out what makes an argument strong, then the process will become easier over time.  I’m not saying that only reading topics of interest will help students write better because students will eventually have to write about topics that don’t interest them, but I think that beginning with a student’s interest is a great start, allowing students to a get a feel for and identify the components that go into an intellectual debate.

Graff also claims that street smarts are better than book smarts because they “satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which seems pale and unreal.” Graff is saying that the students will draw more out of street smarts topics than they would with book smart topics. I think that streets smarts have outdone book smarts because I feel that street smart topics are easier to relate to and that people have stronger opinions about street smart topics than book smart topics. I would be far more likely to have an intellectual conversation with someone about football than I would about cellular respiration or about the Battle of Hastings because not everyone has common knowledge of the latter topics. Since not everyone is quite familiar with those academic topics, there aren’t going to be very many strong opinions about them, resulting in very little or no debates about those topics. However, some very strong opinions can be found found in the world of sports. For instance, many people either love or hate Colin Kapernick. I don’t know anyone that feels neutral about Kaepernick’s actions. Some think he’s a disgrace to football and that he’s disrespecting veterans when he protests the national anthem, while people like me believe that he’s done nothing horribly out of line in his fight against the racial injustice present in society. When put together, these strong opposing opinions become the fuel for a very heated debate that sometimes can be taken too far.  I think that there is this intense desire to prove a certain viewpoint to be correct, which is keeping the debate in motion. Street smart topics are more likely to get people riled up while book smart topics are more likely to put people to sleep.

As Graff stated, “Schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study.” Topics like fashion should be used to reel in students’ attention so they can learn the process. Our institutions need to use these subjects to help students understand the basis of an argument and how to support that argument with valid evidence. With street smarts being more relatable than book smarts, it should be easier to debate about these topics. With all the perks of utilizing street smarts, why do teachers continue to waste their time with the boring outdated works of Shakespeare? Street smarts are the gateway to the world of intellectualism and if teachers aren’t showing their students how useful their interests are, students will continue to have a hard time understanding how to argue what they believe in. The future rests in the hands of our schools.