Leonid Fridman Nerds Analysis
Well known article writer, Leonid Fridman, in his article, “America Needs Its Nerds”, describes the truthful idea that nerds and geeks, in our society, are ostracized while the kids who play sports and party are prominent. Fridman’s purpose is to impress upon the readers that nerds should not have to conform to society’s unimpressive values of what it means to be “popular”. He adopts an indignant tone in order to convey to his readers that the idea of nerds and geeks needs to fought. Fridman moves to the idea that children who would rather read and build model airplanes are the social outcasts compared to the ones who would rather play football and get wasted at parties.
“How long can America remain a world-class power if we constantly emphasize social skills and physical prowess over academic achievement and intellectual ability?” Leonid Fridman uses this sentence to finalize his argument for why Americans should stop alienating its intellectual citizens. Fridman uses a few techniques to build his argument including word choice, factual based examples, and appeals to emotions. The text “America Needs its Nerds” could be very relatable for some people.
“America Needs Its Nerds” an article created by Leonid Fridman, puts forth a pertinent issue in today’s society: intellectually adept students are ostracized. Fridman argues that smart, curious students need to stop feeling ashamed for being smart and curious. Society needs to change because their current philosophy towards intellect is one of pessimism. Fridman develops these arguments in his essay by utilizing the rhetorical strategy of parallelism, drawing conclusions, and through his use of diction.
For instance, he claims, “according to the Webster's New World Dictionary,” a geek “is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads off live chickens” (lines 5-8). Clearly, Fridman chooses to begin his argument with a shocking fact in order to establish an indisputable basis for his argument. Moreover, he maintains that students “ostracized for their intelligence” “are deprived of a chance to learn adequate social skills and acquire good communication tools” (line 23-27). Here, Fridman explains through a cause and effect relationship that students who pursue knowledge are excluded and therefore put at a disadvantage in personal interaction. By demonstrating his point in a cause-and-effect relationship, Fridman appeals to the reasoning skills of his reader.
A respected author John Green questions, "Why is being a nerd bad? Saying I notice you 're a nerd is like saying, ‘Hey I knows that you 'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you 'd rather be thoughtful of them be vapid, that you believe that there things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan and why is that?” Many people who are passionate about their studies question the same thing. Leonid Fridman wrote a passage “America Needs its Nerds” in order to raise concern that our society does not value intelligence. Fridman uses compare and contrast to get his point across to the readers.
Hidden Intellectualism is an article written by Gerald Graff on the school system and how being street smart is better than being book smart. Graff fills most of the article with stories from his childhood and relating the issue back to himself. He starts the article by asserting that “…schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good academic work.” Immediately Graff blames the school system for not providing a way for street smart students to be academically engaged. Graff goes on to talk about his childhood throughout most of the article and strongly relates his love of sports to how this love could be academically applied in a classroom.
When students are unaware of the history of social class, they begin to believe false information, such as, poor people deserve to be poor. Loewen does a great job of pointing out student’s misunderstanding of social status and strongly believes that it is the high school text books to
Sherry goes on and explains why we think it is right to sometimes excuse students who cheat the system because they come from terrible environments, but then goes on to conclude that “most kids don’t put school first on their list unless they perceive something else is at stake.” I think this is why there is a UIL rule at a lot of schools with a “no pass no play” policy. Students who are involved in extracurricular activities then have a reason to strive to pass. Sherry believes that “people of all ages can rise above their problems, but they need a reason to do so.”
Penrod’s argument may have several flaws, but overall it is effective because the reading he uses a few appeals throughout; however, not all of his appeals are trustworthy or objective at times, his appeals are still effective through the use of supporting sources, clear-cut thesis, and thought-provoking statements. Penrod claims that popular events are getting more recognition than needed compared to the intellectuals. From a personal perspective, this presents that there are still anti-intellectuals out there. According to a commentary by the screen name of “ArCaNe,” “Man how I hate nerds… if I ever had a tommygun with me… I would most probably blow each one of their… heads off.” In other words, the commentary has hatred towards intelligent individuals improving the point of anti-intellectualism.
Graff says street smarts offer more life skills than the education provided in school. In other words, you can be smart without being highly educated because knowledge goes beyond academics. He grew up thinking he was anti-intellectual because his writing skills were not great about the topics he’s expected to write in school. Graff describes how sports helped him excel in academics and discover his hidden intellectualism. He believes ‘’Making students’ nonacademic interests of an object study is useful, the, for getting students’ attention and overcoming their boredom and alienation, but this tactic won’t in itself necessarily move them close to an rigorous treatment of those interests.’’
He discusses two points while discussing hierarchy that convince the audience to believe that what he speaks about is the truth. He does tell “The most useful subjects for work are at the top within this hierarchy.” He mentions how children were conditioned to believe that those activities will not get them a job in the future and turned away from activities they enjoy. He specifies this when he says, “If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance.” Many students with different talents get rejected by the university because the talent they had was ignored in the school.
In today’s schools we have at least 5 hours of academics, but in Bradbury’s world, the students get a shorter time to learn unimportant material. “‘An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions... they just run the answers at you’” (Bradbury 27). Instead of being taught mathematics, English, science or social sciences, they learn about technology and sports, which won’t help them succeed in the future.
The Latino lifestyle creates a strong bond together, and most the time are all closely together. The positive side was well explained and described in the book. For example, whenever there is a need of an advice or counsel, a Latino would go to the family and ask them according to their experiences, an explanation on how they handled their issues. In addition, Schaefer said that most Latinos use their family as resources to support them throughout their lifetime (2014). Unfortunately, a negative factor that comes with familism is turning down opportunities, in order to not get separated from the family (Schaefer, 2014).
Therefore, students can infer that not all people can be “superhuman heroes.” For example, students of color might not believe that they can accomplish or be recognized for doing something incredible as a “white” student or an European person.
He was embarrassed of his parent’s lack of education, that “he cannot afford to admire his parents” (Rodriguez 20). He was embarrassed of his roots, his uneducated parents, and the fact that he received an education because he was a “scholarship boy.” When Richard found himself through books and the finest institutions, he gave up the little control he had over himself to every teacher he ever had. In the banking concept, Freire refers to students as an object, a puppet that can be manipulated by an instructor. In such a system students aren’t asked to exercise their critical thinking skills, because a teacher has superior and they are believed to hold all the knowledge.
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