Gerald Graff, in his piece “Hidden Intellectualism, argues that intellectualism is not only found in students that work hard in school. One of the examples that he uses is the difference between “street smarts” and “book smarts” (Graff 244). The students with “street smarts” are the ones that seem to know a lot about pop culture and daily life, but do not get good grades or work very hard in school. He explains that these students are bored with the material taught in classes when he says, “… [students] would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we [the teachers/academics] encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us” (Graff 245). However, Graff still believes that these students can become intellectuals, and to do this he offers up his own childhood as an example. …show more content…
He states that when he was a child, he would much rather read sports magazines and books than school books (Graff 245). He also grew up in a relatively dangerous neighborhood, where his block was middle class and the block next to his was populated by the people that he called “hoods”, or the working class (Graff 246). As Graff would go to school, there was a chance that the “hoods” would beat him up, explaining, “I grew up torn, then, between the need to prove I was smart and the fear of a beating if I proved it too well” (Graff 247). Because of this, Graff chose not to pay attention to schoolwork, and instead focus on something he enjoys, which is sports. When he got to school, he got into arguments about sports with the other students. When Graff was doing this, he was practicing key aspects of being an intellectual, such as creating an argument and analyzing an opposing source. As Graff said, “I was practicing being an intellectual before I knew that was what I wanted to be” (Graff