Summary 8

In Gerald Graff’s article “Hidden Intellectualism” it is suggested that everyone knows someone, a young someone that does badly in school but is very “street smart”. And how someone may think to themselves about how that someone can be so very wise about life but not able to apply the same energy into academics as they do street smarts. Graff argues that it may possibly be the schools that they are attending fault for not taking advantage of channeling those street smarts into better academics mainly because of how street smarts is considered to be “anti-intellectual concerns”. The reason for this thought, according to Graff, is due to the way that subjects and texts are related to education versus street smarts relating to things such as cars, fashion, TV, etc. Therefore, if you have a high interest in cars, TV, fashion, dating, etc, you aren’t looked at as someone that is or can be intellectual.
However, Graff tells us that although people make this assumption there has not been any established connection between subjects or text and the generation of a deeply educated discussion. He admits that before college he didn’t like books that well but cared for sports. He only cared to read sports magazines and sports novels, thinking of himself as a “typical anti-intellectual”. However, that was until he realized all his reading he had done about sports and the passion he had for it actually didn’t make him an anti-intellectual at all, but an intellectual in another form.