Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism Analysis

Gerald Graff's essay, "Hidden Intellectualism," is a critique on how schools are missing out on a valuable opportunity to encourage students to learn more academically. Graff feels that utilizing what he calls "street smarts" is an effective way to relate to students. I feel Graff's theory is an effective way to use student's interests to engage them in school. I agree with Graff because if a student is more interested in the lesson that is being taught, they are more likely to pay attention and actually learn something.
He uses the following examples to define topics that would be street smart: "cars, dating, clothing fashions, sports, TV, or video games" (142). These topics would interest most people more than let's say the American Revolution or Homer's Odyssey. Graff emphasizes his statement by saying, "Real intellectuals turn any subject, however lightweight it may seem, into grist for their mill through the thoughtful questions they bring to it, whereas a dullard will find a way to drain the interest out of the richest subject" (143). He is stating that real intellectuals can take any subject and make it into a well thought out
He recalls how he was the typical teenage "anti-intellectual", who hated reading books and only cared about sports. The only things he did read was sports magazines and autobiographies by sports stars like Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller. Even though all his reading was sports related, he states that, "In my reading, I began to learn the rudiments of the intellectual life: how to make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the views of others and enter a conversation about ideas" (145). What Graff is trying to say here is that he learned the fundamentals of an academic life style, not in a school environment, but by reading the things that he enjoyed as a