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Summary Of Why We Hate The Smart Kids By Grant Penrod

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In Grant Penrod’s “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids,” the reader is presented with a piece concerning the attitude of society towards the academically gifted and intellectually advanced. Throughout the piece, Penrod brings forth the general claim that intellectual growth has been forced to take a backseat to the growing mindset that heightened intelligence is now a faux pas. Society as a whole has become less supportive of expanding our knowledge, and has moved from nurturing those who lead a quest for knowledge in favor of hindering them through a slurry of verbal and mental trauma. Within the first paragraph, Penrod exemplified that one high school in Arizona glorified their football team for coming home with the State Championship …show more content…

The path to stardom, however, is not one that most of these “media-inundated”, as Penrod describes, youth will find to be a legitimate life choice (3). The downside to our culture’s fascination with celebrities is that an image has been implanted in the minds of their followers. This image, as Penrod states, has been “presented by modern celebrities suggesting that intellectualism has no ties to success and social legitimacy (3).” As quoted by Penrod, the 2000 census concluded that “People holding doctorate degrees earned more than twice the salary of high school graduates (4).”This set of ideals one of the hardest ideals to remove from the upcoming generation, as a mindset is often times cemented to the very core of a person. Sports are by no means a waste of time, however. Nothing can bring an entire town, state, or country together quite like a sporting event can. We’ve developed a sense of pride with our favorite teams, and we live vicariously through the victories and defeats of our beloved, modern day gladiators. However, winning the World Cup or the basketball game against the rival school has not, or will ever, produced a major breakthrough in the advancement of human life. Instead, those types of victories belong solely to the intellectuals who were pushed away by others for most of their

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In Grant Penrod’s, “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids” he describes to the reader why the majority of people hate the “nerds” and “geeks” in school. Penrod begins his argument by using high school as an example. The idea of anti-intellectualism is most commonly introduced in high school when the classifications of “geek” and “nerd” are used for the people who take academics seriously, and unfortunately get excluded from social activities. At the Mountain View High School the students and workers only recognized the football team for making it to state. Even though the school’s academic decathlon, science bowl team, and speech and debate team made it to state as well.

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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.

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In Grant Penrod’s Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, Penrod states his belief that we seemingly “hate” the brightest kids in school partially because of some of the most “noted dropouts” in today’s society. Additionally, Penrod claims that the perceived hatred of intelligence in a high school setting is causing actual emotional harm to the children who are labeled as the “nerds” or “geeks”- thus, the classic “smart kids.” If entering just about any of the several thousand high schools around the country, they will hear choruses of “Did you actually study?’ , “Why would you even bother studying- the game was on last night”, “Of course I didn’t study; I had football practice” or dozens of similar taunting phrases can be heard constantly

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