Analysis Of Gerald Graff's Hidden Intellectualism

Today, the high speed development of Internet technology allows people to obtain knowledge more conveniently than any previous age. The plentiful methods in getting knowledge cause some people to doubt the functions of the college, and claim that the college has been already not the best place in nurturing intellectuals. Gerald Graff expresses the similar idea depending on his childhood’s experience in “Hidden intellectualism”, and claims the “street smarts” can provide more benefits than “book smart” which we learn in the college. I would argue that the college is still the best place for students become intellectuals because of the unique benefits such as the open academic environment, professional lectures, and complete academic services.
It’s not only a quiet campus, but also an open, free, and academic atmosphere. Maybe we can simply find a public library instead of the quiet campus, but it’s hard to find another place allows students to discuss a topic as free as in the college because students are not necessary to concern about how popular or interesting the topic is in the college. In addition, a lot of topics we think that are in the non-academic area equally can be seriously discussed and researched by the academic methods, and can even be the topic of a published paper in the college. Gerald Graff claims that “sports is only one of the domains whose potential for literacy training (and not only for girls) is seriously underestimated by educators.” (385). Obviously, sports as non-academic subject in the academic world is equally underestimated by Graff. Physiology, statistics, game theory and many other academic subjects lectured in the college are regarded to sports. Meanwhile, hundreds of academic papers analyzing sports have been published by the intellectuals who works in the colleges. Most of these papers exactly are the evidences to introduce that it’s not a place where will concern about what your view is, but a place where will concern about how you tell your
Most of the students who are in college probably would have the same experience, using the computer in the college’s lab or library to research sources from outside of their college and request online tutoring from inside of the college. It’s too simple and costless for us to use these services to support our studying. Therefore, we get adapted to this convenience, then ignore that the college already paid a large bunch of money to subscribe the journals and hire the tutors. In fact, lectures, tutoring, library services, lab services, most of these unique supports only provided by the colleges are actually contributing in nurturing intellectuals by means of creating a convenient environment for the intellectuals to focus on their research. “Just following any one of the 1,651 road signs and pop your head inside.” (Addison, 212). Liz Addison uses her experience in the college to argue that the requirement to have college’s lectures sometime is as simple as a walk-in. So what happen if a person has to do the academic research out of college? She/ He probably has to spend tons of money and time in obtaining substitutes of college’s supports, such as subscribing journal, renting the lab and requesting help from other professors. Even though these substitutes aren’t as complete and