Seven Events That Made America America: And Proved That the Founding Fathers Were Right All Along is written by Larry Schweikart. Schweikart is an American historian as well as a professor of history at the University of Dayton. As a child he grew up in Arizona where he would later attend Arizona state university. While there, Schweikart completed an M.A. and later earned his Ph.D. in history from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984.
“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.
Keith Shirey is a writer for The Spoof!, an online website that focuses on what the title echoes. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a spoof is a light humorous parody (Spoof). Most spoofs are only supposed to only be taken with a grain of salt, but some writers use it to add emphasis to their writing. When analyzing Keith’s article “College Football Teams Should Go Semi-Pro”, he uses examples of humor, ridicule, statistics, and emotional appeal to stress his argument to the typical person that college football has become so enormous that they could create their own semi-pro teams.
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.
Mark Bauerlein, author of ‘The Dumbest Generation’, argues that today’s youth has had a decline in academics due to new technology in today’s economy. In retrospect, we’re growing up in a different time than the generation before us; the world and it’s products are different as to be expected, and with them we must learn new materials than they did. Today’s generation isn’t ‘dumb’, instead we’re adjusting to the times and retaining different knowledge than the generations before us. Many older generations always thinks that the generation after theirs is ‘dumber’, and think themselves to be the superior one.
Ever wanted to throw down that textbook and read something enjoyable for once? Well, go ahead! Chunk that dull textbook out a window and pick up a comic; it will be more beneficial to your education than you think. The skills and values that liberally educated people should posses can vary from different views, yet the list of ten qualities that William Cronon created in his article, “’Only Connect…’ The Goals of a Liberal Education”(1998), is an inspirational goal for the liberally educated. Cronon’s list of qualities includes solving problems and puzzles, empowering others, and understanding how to get stuff done in the world.
Gerald Graff’s argument on how educational systems are missing a great opportunity to tap into “street smarts” and focus them into a path of academic work is indeed convincing (Graff, 198). After all, anyone who’s been through the American educational system knows odds are often stacked against the “street smarts.” This is especially true in english classes, where one is often required to read boring and somewhat heartless books like, 1984, Beowulf, and the majority of Shakespeare’s classics. This is not to say these books are bad or shouldn’t be read during one’s schooling years, instead, the problem is one of apathy. For instance, in my high school years I never even remotely liked to read books Othello, but I loved to read magazines and
In the reading, “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids,” Grant Penrod recommends that there should be a different way to socialize amongst other individuals. This entire description explains the personal burdens that the intelligent scholars undergo. The ideas are as follows: author 's guilt celebrates, ideas held as standard when communicating, and on the bandwagon to get smart people worn down by the individuals that are against smart people. The author is afraid that people would not take the time out of their day to read or study for their classes. Claiming that bad influence towards education makes it resistant.
The growing gap between the upper class and the lower class has been expensive. In “Biographies of Hegemony”, Karen Ho looks into the prevalent ideology named “culture of smartness” and explores the close tie between some of America’s most powerful and prestigious universities and Wall Street firms. Joseph Stiglitz, the author of “Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society”, is concerned about
Intellectualism is the factor of being intellect or intelligent. The idea of what it means to be educated can be interpreted many different ways by different people. Some think it’s having a 4.0 and going to Harvard, while others believe in the idea of having common sense. In the essay, “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff reflects how lack of education is viewed negatively in society. On top of that, a question also lies what it means to educated.
In the article, “Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America” Ray Williams discusses the increasing trend of anti-intellectualism in American culture. There is an anti-intellectualism that exists in American culture that is the result of the unpopularity of being smart in High School, the lack of the importance of teachers in the U.S. compared to Japan and the effect of reality TV and pop culture. Williams indicates that one of the reasons that anti-intellectualism exists is that education in the United States is not as strong as it once was. Williams says, “After leading the world for decades in 24-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations
The reading "Hidden Intellectualism" by Gerald Graff reflects views on being "street smart" and "book smart." He explains that society tends to associate people who are intelligent on solely being "book smart" and performing well in academics, rather than being street smart. He goes on to further explain that students perhaps can be intelligent on topics that interest them. Graff opens up the reading by giving his own personal experience on feeling torn between trying to prove that he was smart yet fearing that he was overdoing it. He was trying to prove that he learned just as much about the real world by reading his sports books and magazines as he would have if he had read the classic works of literature like most students in school.
“Intelligence is closely associated with formal education- the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long- and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose). What Rose is trying to infer is that just because you are labeled blue collar: meaning you have to earn your income from manual labor, and have lack of educational knowledge, does not mean you cannot earn the knowledge in your work career. There are many opportunities to learn from your job even if you are less experienced. “...One who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work.
The Rhetorical Analysis of the “America Needs its Nerds” The mental capacity is treated as a disadvantage in the America, despite the fact it already helped the country many times. This long-term problem became the main topic of the Leonid Fridman’s essay “America Needs its Nerds”. The work first appeared on January 11, 1990 in the New York Times as a part of the series “Voices of the New Generation”. The author spoke about the negative attitude the American society has to smart people and demonstrates it with the usage of words like “nerd” or “geek”.
The main argument is that perceived throughout the reading is that the schools itself is failing students. They see a student who may not have the greatest test scores or the best grades, and degrade them from the idea of being intellectual. Graff states, “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” (Graff 244). Schools need to channel the minds of street smart students and turn their work into something academic.
