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
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