Summary Of Gerald Graff

In his article Gerald Graff (2001) claims that by connecting non-academic interests to academic study students can become more intellectual and willing to involve themselves in intellectual study. While he doesn’t deny that academic subjects are important he believes suggesting students to analyze the subjects they enjoy they’ll gain more incentive to go into analytical thinking more often. “Students do need to read models of intellectually challenging writing […] if they are to become intellectuals themselves. But they would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us.” (Graff, 2001, p.380) He is not discouraging the study of
academic
writing, but is stating that these studies are made easier when applying the tools of writing to more entertaining subjects. I wholeheartedly agree with Graff’s claim due to both his convincing essay and my own personal experience.
Gerald Graff (2001) proves this claim by describing his personal experience starting as a
“non-intellectual” child and how he learned to become actively intellectual by putting into practice what he thought was an anti-intellectual subject.
During his time as an adolescent, when fear of bullying is high and peer pressure is starting to take hold he discouraged himself from appearing intellectual and concentrating only on subjects regarding sports. This lead to Graff concentrating on sports subjects over academic studies at every turn until he entered college.
“The only reading I cared to do or could do was sports magazines, on which I became hooked, becoming a regular reader of Sport magazine in the late forties, Sports Illustrate when it began publishing in 1954, and the annual magazine guides to professional baseball, football, and
Of Sports and Shakespeare 4 baseball.” (p.381) By Graff’s thorough list of his reading material one could tell not only was he interested in sports but was also willing to study sports over any other subject.
It was only in his adulthood that he realized by studying, discussing and analyzing sports he was already preparing himself to be an intellectual. “It was in these discussion with
friends about toughness and sports, I think, and in my reading of sports books and magazines that 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.” (Graff, 2001, p. 383) Through his passion for sports he learned how to be intellectual without ever intending to be intellectual.
He then goes further by describing how the intellectual world is very similar to the concept of sports. “For here is another thing dawned on me and is still kept hidden from students, with tragic results: that the real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school, is organized very much like the world of team sports, with rival theories of why they should be read and taught, and elaborate team competitions in which ‘fans’ of writers, intellectual systems, methodologies, and –isms contented against each other.” (Graff, 2001,
p.384) By given such thorough examples of how his interests gave him intellectual identity his argument proves sound.
While Gerald Graff (2001) admits that bringing non-academic subject into academic study won’t by itself convince students to more thoroughly examine these subjects he retains that by presenting students with the opportunity to learn and study more about their interest they have the potential not only to learn to strengthen their academic writing, but to also enjoy academic writing through their interests.