Street Smart Versus Book Smart free essay sample

Street Smart versus Book Smart In his article Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff criticizes those that do not put value into street smarts. Graff says that knowledge goes far beyond academic learning and continues into our everyday living. He states, The need to prove I was smart and the fear of a beating if I proved it too well. Meaning that if the subjects he enjoyed the most became his main interest he would soon have to face ridicule for wanting to be himself (Graff).Graffs theory of street smarts is extremely useful because it sheds some light on the difficult problems of social life being excluded from academic situations. Although he’s not saying that street smarts are more important than academic knowledge, he is stating that subjects should be seen through â€Å"academic eyes†. For example if you give a college student an eight page essay to write on a topic interest of their own, not only will they understand it but can relate it to their everyday social life. We will write a custom essay sample on Street Smart Versus Book Smart or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Students do need to read pieces of intellectually challenging writing if they are to become intellectuals themselves.Overall schools have a stereotypical view of intelligence, but need to realize intelligence isn’t limited to book smarts. â€Å"They would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us†, Graff says. Students would start out on a better foot and acquire a substantial amount of motivation first by reading and analyzing subjects that inspire them rather than some boring subjects like Shakespeare or Orwell (Graff).Graff is absolutely right when he says â€Å"street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture†, because street smarts satisfy the intellectual craving better than school culture. In this day and age where our culture values sports and entertainment, Graff believed that knowledge would hold us back from a social life, yet he still argu es the fact that sports is a much better topic to be interested in more so then anything else. As a sports fan I know exactly what he is trying to get at. The sports world is much more interesting than anything that has to do with academics to me.Adding to Graff’s argument, I would point out that school work isolates you from others and the world, as well as limiting your full ability, whereas, sports is national and public. If you pass in sports debates, there are limitless possibilities and you arrive in a community involving different aspects toward people you don’t know rather than just friends and family. The sports world presented intense public arguments in a way that brought out someone’s individualism of intellectual identities.Close bonding and community is brought from sports such as high school football in a small town, everyone likes to go and watch the game and cheer for them or analyze the players abilities and how they could improve. Things like this are what bring up public issues and generates an environment chunk full of excitement and debates. Although some readers might challenge my view by insisting that students cannot become intellectuals by reading sports or fashion magazines alone. To say that students need to see their interests through academic eyes is to say that street smarts are not enough† Graff says. This means to think and write about cars, sports, and fashion in an interpretive, analytical way, a student that sees them as miniatures of what is happening in a broader culture or way of life. This interpretation challenges the work of those critics who have long assumed that an individual learns best by introducing academic representations such as Shakespeare or Orwell.If a student cannot get interested in Shakespeare or Orwell but will read sports or fashion magazines with absorption, it presents a strong argument for assigning these magazines over the classic boring tactics. Doing so should get them hooked on reading and writing by composing papers on those subjects and eventually get to the classics. But even if they don’t, the magazines or articles of personal interest will make them more literate and analytical than they would have been. If I am correct, then educators and schools are not opportunistic when they don’t encourage students to take nonacademic interests as items of academic revision. This tactic is useful for getting students’ attention and asphyxiating their boredom, and become more comfortable in their academic learning. My point is not to discourage academics all together, but to allow students to begin their intellectual journey by getting them caught up on reading or writing by means of personal interests then progressing on to academics to bring out their â€Å"hidden intellectualism† (Graff).