Response to Gerald Graff's "Hidden Intellectualism"

In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff talks about how educators are going about the wrong way in doing their job. They are so focused on academic intelligence that they completely ignore the values of being street smart. He believes that academic intelligence can be important, but students have things called interests as well, whether it is sports, fashion, dating or video games. If educators learn to incorporate these interests into academics, then students would actually be able to relate and turn it into something of educational value.

                The thesis is located at the end of the first paragraph. It states, “What doesn’t occur to us, though, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into academic work.” Graff supports his claim by using himself as an example. He takes us back us back to his childhood, where he spent a lot of time trying to balance himself between being book-smart and impressing the “hoods”. On one hand, he used correct grammar and punctuation, but on the other, he had to prove he was a fighter. He was really into sports, and he found his comfort zone in reading sports books and magazines, a combination of the two things that originally had him torn. It goes to show you don’t need academic excellence to do “educational” things like debate, if it comes down to the subjects that he actually enjoys.

                Graff also explains that unlike academic subjects like Plato, interests and sports “satisfies the thirst for community.” When a debate about sports kicks off, it’s really anyone’s game. Anybody can have an opinion and the opportunity to throw in their two cents. It’s all about culture, and even people you’ve never met can join in. It is much unlike schoolwork, which is extremely limited to those that have actually achieved academic excellence and know what they’re talking about.

Students get excited about things like music, cars, sports and fashion. So why not let them explore these fields? A subject that bores a student will receive lackluster responses and efforts. If an educator is going to force a student to write a paper, they might as well allow students to write about what they’re interested in, and save everyone’s time and effort. The results will be a passionately written essay with tons of facts and arguments behind it, thus meeting academic standards.