Summary Of Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism

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What is Intelligence? Does receiving a higher education or getting above average grades in school prove someone’s intelligence or their smartness? No. Intelligence is something people learn from their day to day life experiences, their actions on several activities and how wise their decisions are made. These people are generally known as “Street Smarts”. In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff puts his point that street smarts should not be taken lightly and should be valued equally as “Book Smarts”. The article also talks about how one can be prone to take on intellectual identities if encouraged to do so by first letting them work on …show more content…
In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff states “schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good academic work” (264). Schools these days tends to focus more on “Book smarts” than “Street smarts” because they feel these individuals will succeed scholastically and will most likely receive a higher education in their future. As Graff says that sometimes society associates the educated life just to the bookish knowledge that they consider to be the most important text to be learned. But the person who is enough intelligent to turn any subject into an interesting topic to be listened to is a “Street smart”. They are the people who polish their knowledge from their day to day life experiences and so are well aware of a wide range of topics. Whereas “Book smarts” are just absorbing what someone else experienced or discovered, and as a result they get one step down from the actual situation. Being in a real life situation makes one to think faster and get more knowledge than just a 300 page book. I feel “Street smarts” must be given equal opportunities to outshine with their own gained knowledge, as given to the “Book

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