Summary Of Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism

The topic of schools not being able to hack into the minds of young students and bring out their hidden intellect is a problem in modern culture. Gerald Graff writes about this subject in his article “Hidden Intellectualism.” He is professor at the University of Illinois and the former president of the Modern Language Association. He talks about how schools fail to gain students attention by making them write essays on the classics, like Shakespeare, instead of starting out with topics the students would enjoy, such as sports, video games, and fashion. He makes valid arguments about how the schools fail to tap into that hidden intellectualism of the students, and he uses pathos, logos, and ethos; and so therefore his essay is mostly successful.

He mentions that he hate books until he “became hooked, becoming a regular reader of Sport magazine in the late forties,[…] I was your typical teenage anti-intellectual—or so I believed for a long time. I have recently come to think, however, that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by the means”(Graff 695). Graff is saying that even though students are not interested in reading or writing about what the teacher assigns them, that even though they are reading sports magazines and etc. That they are still becoming literate by reading articles that they enjoy and that most people would not view as learning. He also writes about how where he grew up it was not as important as being intellectual. “On the other hand, I was desperate for the approval of the hoods, whom I encountered daily on the playing field and in the neighborhood, and

“I have recently come to think, however, that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means”(Graff 695). Graff is reaching into the emotions of students that also believe what he does, also what they like and want to read or write about. Also, it touches the emotions of parents who also believed this while going through school and believed that if schools used this method, that they could have become more successful. “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school. What a waste, we think, that one who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work. What doesn’t occur to us, though, is 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”(Graff 694). Graff is pulling into the emotions of people who did not do well academically or people who knew somebody like how he described in that quote. Throughout the essay, Graff pulls at the emotions of the audience and that is why his pathos is