Gerald Graff's Hidden Intellectualism

School has been around for many years now. Countless of people every year attend this place in order to gain knowledge and grow as a person. The education an institution provides can vary from literature, philosophy, language, and so on. Willona M. Sloan has done research upon the purpose of education and found that it has to do with “[supporting] children's ability to become lifelong learners who are able to love, work, and act as responsible members of the community” (pg 9). Although education serves a role in a person’s life, is the material provided to educate these students sufficient though? Gerald Graff argues in his article, Hidden Intellectualism, that if school systems would incorporate more youth culture into the lessons,
Despite the fact that those readings do give them the wisdom upon things they would never think of, it doesn’t interest them enough to think deeply about. Topics such as sports, fashion, will attract the young minds because “they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which is pale and unreal” (Graff 248). Talking about something a person has a strong passion about will help them create better arguments which is a skill. However, how is that possible if schools find it better to focus on subjects that interest them rather interest the students who are learning it (Graff 245). To do something like that is pointless because time and resource is being wasted on a group of people who have no fascination with what is being taught. If no one is paying attention, there is no way a person can be educated. What is being provided should result in mastery in that subject, not zone out the audience
Graff states that “there is no necessary relation between the degree of interest a student shows in a text or subject and the quality of thought or expression such a student manifests in writing or talking about it” (250). By that, he means that what someone may read will not impact how well they write, even if the passage was at a third grade level. The ability to think and express academically should be something a scholar should have already mastered. With so, it is not the materials that is being used in schools that’s making things difficult for the students, but it is their lack of ability to not be able to be proficient in these handy skills that commonly used in literature