Gerald Graff's Hidden Intellectualism

“Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” This quote said by Daniel J. Boorstin, an American historian at the University of Chicago, is one way people may view the educational system in the United States. Getting an education is about learning things that one would have never studied before and improving one’s intellectual thought process. A similar quote my math teacher used to say: “It’s the same thang with another name,” brings out an argument that education is learning to think about what one knows in a different light. In Gerald Graff’s essay, “Hidden Intellectualism”, he responds to the educational system, arguing that street smarts are just as important as book smarts. He insists that what students know could help them develop stronger intellectual skills in how they process information. On the contrary, some educators disagree with this argument. …show more content…
They claim that works by intellectuals such as Plato and Shakespeare are more important than street smarts. I see the value in studying popular intellectual topics like the ones mentioned in Graff’s responsive essay: The French Revolution and nuclear fission. They make students “more aware of their history and educate them on how the world works. On the other hand, I also support the application of life knowledge to education. I believe that this adds more value to what one knows. While traditional educators may warn that the implementation of “street smart topics” may water down the education of students, I challenge that argument to say that it can help our students apply their learning to the real world as well as help them think critically about the subjects they are currently