Analyzing Gerald Graff's Essay 'Hidden Intellectualism'

The Working Man’s Intellectual
Albert Einstein once said “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it 's stupid”. As stated by one of the greatest minds of all time, every individual has the capacity to be an intellectual, but the way society currently measures intellect purely based off of one’s “book smarts” not everyone’s genius is fully realized. As stated by Gerald Graff In his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” Graff states that our current system of teaching does by no means try to foster the intelligence of street smart people who account for many in our society. In Graff’s experience he thinks that a style of teaching incorporating street smarts would have benefitted him and would benefit people today. If we tried to teach street smart people using topics they are interested they would be able to understand
Simply because of their innate interests street smart people are denied a system of teaching that can play on their intellectualism. Many street smart people who like sports and cars are truly intellectual, but without fostering their intellectualism, and looking down on their intelligence we are removing many intellectuals from our ranks. Many have the potential, a car whiz who knows the inner workings of a complex car engine would have no problem analyzing complex math equations. I believe that Gerald Graff’s idea that we should make it easier for the street smart population to learn is a great idea. We should alter how we teach students, some may excel with the current ways of teaching as some do. Other though who can not relate to shakespeare book smarts deserve a style of teaching that allows them to learn with the interest and vigor of book smart students. We should allow street smart students the equal chance to learn at the level of book smart