Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism Summary

If there was a battle between street smarts and book smarts, who would win? Geeks or jocks? But the question is who is more intelligent? In the article, “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff , he argues that schools are not teaching students the right way of learning. He says that schools are to blame for being too broad with the courses that students are studying. Graff thinks book smarts are more knowledgeable and that street smarts are people who have situational awareness. His point of view is that any courses or subjects that aren’t showing intellectual should be a choice for students who are interested in those areas. Graff then connects himself using his childhood days where he says that his street smartness helped him shaped his academic skills. Therefore, learning from the subjects that you are interested in will shape your academic skills, get you further in life, and connect you to the community. Students who are encouraged to learn about their area of interest such as cars, fashion, or music and doing it in a reasonably and serious way are more likely to succeed in book smarts thus build up your academic skills. Having street smarts make you have situational awareness meaning you have knowledge about the environment around you and the people in it. While people who are book smart are those who are good at following the rules and have good academic grades. People want to learn about their area of interest because it is something they love to do. If you think about it, school and work takes up a very big chunk of your life. There’s no way of getting away from it. For example, achieving your dream of getting a job you love so of course you want to learn about something you have interest in. Some students who are street smart usually love what they do because they have the chance to explore things around them, but in school if you do not like what you learn, sooner or later you might really suck at the subject and want to give up. Graff says, “Real intellectuals …show more content…
Even if you can do a good job at something you do not like, that doesn't mean you will run into trouble later on. Letting people who have street smarts learn about their area of interest, their passion is most likely to show up and their academic rates will improve because it's something they want to take serious with or built the strong amount of passion for it. Graff says, “Only much later did it dawn on me that sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less.” (267). Since sports was full of challenging tasks, it made Graff more engaged into the intellectual way. Some people may believe that students who are book smart allows them to get a higher-earning job and work less. While people who are street smart do not receive a higher-earning job because they do not care about the education offered to them, but only care about what's going on from the outside instead of school. The thought process is like this, someone who is lowly-educated will get more workings hours, while the person who has higher-education will get less work