The Work Cited for the Letter to the Friend

Hatt, Beth. "Street Smarts Vs. Book Smarts: The Figured World of Smartness in the Lives of Marginalized, Urban Youth." Urban Review, 39.2 (2007): 145-166.

Lagerfeld, Steven. "The Revenge of the Nerds." The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), 28.3 (2004): 28-34.
Bishop, John, Matthew Bishop, Lara Gelbwasser, Shanna Green, Andrew Zuckerman, Amy Ellen

Schwartz, and David Labaree. "Nerds and Freaks: A Theory of Student Culture and Norms." Brookings Papers on Education Policy, 6 (2003): 141-213.

Gerald,Graff. "Hidden Intellectualism." They Say I Say With Readings.

A Letter to the Friend

Dear Jenny Thang,

 

 

Hi, Jenny! How are you? I am Jenny Wang, I miss you so much. I am writing this letter to you because I read an article in a book that is fabulous several days ago. I think you should read it, it is

very interesting. The name of the article is Hidden Intellectualism from the book They Say I Say

With Readings. The author Gerald Graff argued that we generally associate the "book smarts" with

intellectualism and "street smarts" with anti-intellectualism, but that is not true from his point of

view. I feel like it is very interesting that the author Gerald Graff named this article "Hidden

Intellectualism", he explained and supported his own ideas about how the "street smarts" can still be

transformed and use their smart as much as possible in the area of study.

 

From his point of view, he thinks intellectualism is not just about reading or studying in your school.

Being intellecual still involved such things as fashion, sports, or what we determined as more like

personal interest. "It's not just the academic and media elite who worship smarts. In this nation of

casually anti-intellectual pragmatists, where Thomas Edison once brushed off the accolades heaped

upon him with the observation that 'genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,' it

has become fashionable to be smart."

 

In addition, I think students should be see the personal interests by using academic eyes. For

example, kids like to play video games. They usually only care about how fun is the game that they

choose to play, what is the type of the game, or Is it RPG or MMO? On the other hand, why don't we

try to play the video games by using your academic and intellectual eyes? Video games often

involved knowledges that people do not recognized, such as ancient histories or some moral facts. I

believe children can still learn something and become intellectual if they focus on the knowledgeable

issues and facts that are involved in their personal interest.

 

However, "To say that students need to see their interests 'through academic eyes' is to say that street

smarts are not enough." I think what Gerald Graff is trying to say is, people need to use a pair of

academic eyes to see through their personal interests. What is so important in those things that made

them still existing in our daily lives and we can not live without them?  "Street smarts" is not a bad

thing for anyone if they can correctly transformed that into what we know as intellecualism.

 

In the article "Hidden Intellectualism", Gerald Graff used his childhood as an example to support his

own ideas of "So it makes pedagogical sense to develop classroom units on sports, cars, fashions, rap

music, and other such topics." He mentioned his own experience as being the one who "hated books

and cared only for sports." He was a big fan of sports, but he successfully transformed into the one

that is intellectual by started to use the academic eyes to see everything that surrounded by himself.

He started to think logically about the connection and relationship between the anti-intellectualism

and intellectualism. 

 

Nevertheless, This article "Hidden Intellectualism" is all about being "street smarts" and "book

smarts" and the close relationship between them. The author Gerald Graff used a variety amount of

figures, examples and experiences to support and argue his own points and opinions. I think it is

really a perfect article for you to read especially before you actually get into the college and start your

college life. It will give you an advise about what is the kind of student that you should be and what

should you do maybe in your future. Hope you like it!

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Dan Yang Wang

 

09/11/12

 

A Letter to the Author

Dear Mr. Graff,

Hi Mr. Graff! How are you doing today? I am writing this letter to you because I am the big fan of yours. I read your book They Say I Say, and it is fabulous. Especially the article named Hidden Intellectualism, I read it so many times, but it seems that I do not agree with all of your ideas and opinions. In the article, you argued that people commonly associate "book smarts" with intellectualism and the personal interests such as cars, sports or fashion with anti-intellectualism; but actually "street smart" still has the chance of being intellectualism. I don't agree with this point.

 First of all, I think the basic facts of the intellectualism are knowledge, pure-reason, and rationalism. In addition to that, I think those things can be found only in the books and the process of study. Without the process of study and read no one is going to be able to get knowledge, especially there is no other way to let them become intellectualism.

On the other hand, from my own view, I think "street smart" is not useful. It may seems to be like they are smart in several area, but I believe that they are not going to be smart when they choose to use their smart in the area of study.  There might be some special examples of "street smart" who can finally can be transformed, but I think those examples do not have a great amount. 

For sure that I can not say things such as sport and fashion are not interesting, and also they are important as they are existing in our daily lives. Maybe you can find intellectualism in them for a few times, but it is also true that nothing can become intellectualism without any knowledge that came from the books or any study. So then how can you say "street smart" can still become intellectualism in someways? In my own opinion, Intellectualism can only be found through study, the regular, normal process of study. In the normal process of study, people can gain the knowledge from different areas based on the categories of the book they chose. After the process of gaining the knowledge we need, our own brain choose the knowledge that is needed and storage them.  Then finally the knowledge we gained from studying became the thing that we know as intellectualism.

Nevertheless, I still agree with some of your ideas or the opinions, such as "We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic." Sometimes we still need to gain some knowledge from the resources rather than just books, it is still useful that we gain knowledge from all areas. 

At the end, these are all of my personal opinions about your article. I really love to read it, it is very interesting, Thank you for your time reading my letter.

Sincerely,

Dan Yang Wang

09/10/12

A Letter To Bill Gates

Dear Mr. Gates,

Hi, I am Dan yang Wang, a college student that is studying in the California State University of Northridge. You are my role model, so I am writing to you and hope to get some advices from you.
I wish to be successful as you are, so I have some questions for you.

What was the first step you took to became a such successful person as you are right now? Have you ever face any troubles or problems in your life? What was the most important decision that you have ever made in your life that affected the way you live? I think that I am a little struggling on my future now, so I do not know what should I do for next. I really want to get to know you and know more things about you in order to get myself on the right track. I am big fan of Microsoft, and I am intersted in computers. In addtion to that, I want to say that I am still not clear about what is my major should be in college. My parents asked me if I have any ideas, but I can tell you the truth, my answer is I do not know.

I want to have your job, that is my dream, and I think that is also everyone's dream. How does that feel of to be the richest people in the world? I think that feeling will not be bad. This is my first year of college and I am a little nervous about the college life. I am afraid of getting any bad grades in the college. In addtion to that, I know that I will study harder and harder for all of my courses in order to get good grades. That is the first step that I am going to take in order to be successful. I really hope that I made a correct choice. Maybe I will spend some free time and think carefully about my future. That is my plan for now. At the end, I wish you can have a good day and I am appreciate for your time of reading my letter.

 Sincerely,

 Dan Yang Wang

"Hidden Intellectualism" Summary

   In the essay "Hidden Intellectualism" by Gerald Graff, he argued that people commonly associate "book smarts" with intellectualism and the personal interests such as cars, sports or fashion with anti-intellectualism. He also believes if the schools and colleges determine a good student by looking at their grades, then they will miss a chance to get those intelligent "street smart" students into their schools and to let them be involved into academic work.Gerald Graff supported his own arguments by telling us his own story of transformation, the transformation from a boy that only cared about sports to the one that is intellectual. 

Response to the second video

   In the campaign Ad " Mitt Romney: A Human Being Who Built That" shows how people don't suffer as much to be on top. We saw that Mitt Romney had it easy because of his father being the governor at the time. As George Romney being the governor, Mitt Romney was able to avoid the draft of the Vietnam War. It seemed that he was able to get away from things and go to best schools or places. We believe that he either took over or was pushed up in the coorperation bain and this got him money. The way he puts his beliefs makes him seem honest.



  Sergio Del Campo
  Calvin Copping
  Jaime Martinez
  Dan Yang Wang

Response to Video 1

   In the video we watched, " Paul Ryan's Misleading GOP Convention Speech", we learned that politics lie most at the time. Paul Ryan speaks about big ideas rather than focusing on the facts. This not only makes him look bad but also Mitt Romney's campaign. This forces people not to trust any of our "future leaders". Even big coorperations like Fox News don't believe Paul Ryan's speech. These lies also show us how important people lie to be able to win in big situations. Meanwhile, people are still waiting for their promises. Which by the video, they will never come true.


      Sergio Del Campo
      Calvin Copping
      Jaime Martinez
      Dan Yang Wang