Summary Of Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism

What does it truly mean to be intellectual? Some may say that being intellectual means being book smart, while others say that it is being street smart. In an entry of “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, Graff believes that one can actually become intellectual if they start learning about topics they actually enjoy and then slowly start easing into challenging topics. While many argue that intellectualism is limited to the studies of school, non-academic activities such as traveling and truly experiencing these events can teach one about the history of a place, the culture, and how to solve problems. When asked why people decide travel they just say that they travel for vacation, but what they do not realize is that traveling is a learning experience. Whenever someone travels to a new location they may not realize how much history truly lies before them. Some students including myself would actually enjoy learning about the place they visit by taking a city tour and actually seeing all these sights instead of reading about it from a textbook in a boring classroom. For example, when I went on a family vacation a couple of years ago I learned more information about the beautiful city of Puerto Vallarta than I would have ever learned in a classroom. The information that I obtained from the trip varied from how the city was built all those years ago to how much the people of the city truly do respect …show more content…
The author of “Hidden Intellectualism” Gerald Graff has made a very strong argument that encouraging a student to learn about something they really enjoy can actually help them become intellectual when they have to learn challenging topics in school. Frankly what many do not realize is that to truly become an intellectual person is to have the right amount of street and book