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Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate The Smart Kids By Grant Penrod

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Intellectuals are looked down upon and seen as insignificant in today’s society and one might wonder why that is. Grant Penrod explores this claim in his article Anti – Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids. In his article, he explains that there is a problem with degrading the smart kids and it needs to stop. Throughout his article, his argument is convincing due to his use of ethos, logos, and pathos.
He introduces the topic by describing a personal experience of his from when he attended Mountain View High School. Because he starts off with a personal experience, he has just increased his credibility in the reader’s eyes. He points out that only athletes get recognized for their achievements and academic accomplishments are simply …show more content…
Meaning that in today’s society, many scholars are bogged down for their intelligence and the idea of looking down upon academia is becoming a very popular trend. To back this up he takes advantage of the internet and quotes some of the negative opinions on intellectuals and how they are perceived by others. The intelligence of the smart kids enrages the popular kids and their threats are seen as jokes by our society. Although Penrod only gives one example of a threat in this paragraph, he emphasizes that there are countless more just like …show more content…
In this paragraph, he introduces the big problem that we are facing, the formation of the stereotype, which unconsciously turns into bullying. The common stereotype for intellectuals is that they are too buried in the books to have a social life and based off of that stereotype, a cycle begins. As he describes, the “’nerds’ are excluded from social activity because of their label, and that label, in turn, intensifies through the resulting lack of social contact” (W.W. Norton 760). This creates an unpleasant environment for the intellectuals because they are being trivialized. In contrast, he does consider the flip side that this does not happen to all intelligent people; a few can slip through the cracks into the popular

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...To Be or Not To Be One of the Smart Kids In the article, Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, Grant Penrod writes how society stereotypes intellectuals and how their efforts are trivialized. He states that the football players are held up on a pedestal and treated as if they are gods, that they receive all the attention. Intellectuals are on the other hand are treated as outcasts because they are smart. That they are left out of all social aspects of high school. Or that they are labeled as “nerds”. Although I agree with Penrod up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that everyone dislikes smart people and the media glorifies celebrities that have no education. Or that we all make fun of someone because they are smart. In the beginning of his article Penrod tells us of how a high school football team won their state championship and that the same high schools science, debate, speech and academic teams also won championships. According to Penrod no one will give the academic teams the recognition they deserve, but the football team will get all the glory, the football players get a “virtual barrage of praise and downright deification. As for the three academic teams, they received a combined total of around ten minutes of recognition.” I agree that in high school the jocks do get the attention and praise as where the smart kids don’t because in my experience in high school confirms it for me. I saw it so many times. Penrod’s use of a...

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