How would you define an intellectual, and what is intelligence anyway? These are questions often sought by struggling students who feel their schools are academically challenging due to uninteresting subjects. In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism” written by Gerald Graff, he believes that there is knowledge and intelligence beyond what can be tested through formal schooling. He exposes in his writing that knowledge can also take the form within what he considers “street smarts.” Graff ultimately makes an excellent point. He argues that schools ought to encourage learners to read, think critically and write about their fields of personal interests such as sports, fashion or cars. Those unfamiliar with this school of thought may be interested to know that it basically boils down to the student’s interest. By integrating students’ interest, they would be able to learn more about the subjects linked to their social lives in the real world, in addition to attaining the benefits of classroom knowledge, and further developing intellectual growth.
The author makes a great point about the student’s interest like sports and how it has a better grasp on what society is like outside of the academia world. “The real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school is organized very much like the world of team sports,” Graff explains, “with rival texts, rival interpretations and evaluations of texts, rival theories of why they should be read and taught, and elaborate team competitions in which ‘fans’ of writers, intellectual systems, methodologies, and –isms contend against each other.” This clearly indicates how the real world and sports are in fact very similar and replicates what real life is like. School work is often solitary and does not encourage communication, whereas discussing various aspects of sports is an important part of community and a lot