Intellectualism vs Academic Intelligence - Essay Example

Intellectualism vs. Academic Intelligence School Even though most people underrate the importance of so-called street smart and don’t consider such kind of knowledge as legitimate, still it turns out that in most cases being street smart is more important than having academic intelligence. The point is that often street smart people appear to be smarter than those who get good grades in academic activities. Thus schools should provide students with subjects that would consider interesting everyday-life topics and don’t refuse students’ striving to learn what they like, even though such topics might look not academic at all. Differentiation between intellectualism and academic intelligence is very precise in modern society. Thus such topics as sports and fashion are not considered to be serious enough to be analyzed in academic circles. However, Gerald Graff, a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago claims that the opinion that street smart is not a relevant kind of knowledge is wrong, because multiple live examples of it prove that being street smart is more practical and intellectually developing than being academically educated only (2004). At the very beginning of his article “Intellectualism” Graff gives an example from his own life, where he describes the situation when he realized that being academically smart contributes neither social connections nor analytical abilities. This point definitely makes sense for multiple reasons. First of all, much of academic knowledge is just not applicable to real life situations. Graff claims that being street smart doesn’t mean “anti-intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means” (Graff 2004). Thus the problem of inapplicability of academic knowledge often appears for young people. They get used to learning so-called classical knowledge in their academic institutions, which is some obligatory information that each and every educated human being should know. However, for instance, knowledge of Shakespeare’s poems and philosophical ideas of Plato are rarely discussed in ordinary conversations. It turns out that a person who has academic knowledge only often experiences difficulties while establishing social relations. Second of all, it frequently happens that students just don’t see any point in learning all the required academic information, because they can’t even imagine the real-life situations where they could be able to apply this knowledge, which is a great problem of usefulness of education. Still it doesn’t mean that Plato’s philosophy is no use, it means that willingness to learn it must be justified with life experience first, which in turn means that academic information should be learned by people who are being real intellectuals. Otherwise they just wouldn’t be able to evaluate the value of this knowledge for their intellectual development. In terms of intellectualism, Gerald Graff claims that in order to become a real intellectual, a person should be street smart first (2004), because street smart and concernment in ordinary information from any realms of human life develop a person’s intellectual abilities and analytical skills. Thus street smart people are often interested in sports or fashion, pop music and cinema, which seem to be not academic realms of exploration. However, Graff argues that when a person is deeply interested in some topic, one starts exploring it thoroughly developing one’s analytical and search skills. When this topic is also interesting for some other people, the person might join the community of the same interest and communicate with its participants concerning the topic they all are interested in. Thus street smart maintains people’s communicational needs and helps to develop social connections. One way or another, human interest in anything increases intelligence and evokes curiosity, which makes people look for answers and explore something, even if it is just sports but not some Plato’s lofty matters. Although academic intelligence is less applicable than intellectualism that based on street smartness, it doesn’t mean that academic knowledge is useless; it probably means that schools use wrong methodology during studying process. It frequently happens that teachers and professors forbid their students to explore the topics they are interested in during school studying, because they don’t consider these topics as serious and valuable. In turn, they force students to learn some information that seems to be valuable for them as for academics and which correlates with studying curriculum. But in fact it turns out that students can’t understand why these topics are important to be learned and just put up with this unpleasant aspect of their education. Eventually they forget what they have just learned right after accomplishing their academic assignments. However, such education doesn’t make rational sense, because it brings no information for its receivers. Graff notes this point and suggests implementation of street smart elements into classical educational system. The author notes that if students were allowed to explore the topics they are interested in within academic program, they would become more willing to learn all the other academic information; in addition, they would learn how to think critically and analyze not only what they are interested in, but any incoming information, including current events and even Plato’s philosophy. It turns out that intellectualism begins with street smartness and develops human ability to think (in general meaning of the concept of thinking), which eventually leads to obtaining of universal gnosis that is based on both academic and “secular” knowledge. Thus it is important to note that the main point of education in general is to teach students how to think. If assigning the readings and topics that are close to students’ existing interests would make it possible to develop students’ analytical skills and erudition, there is no point to tie education up with academic knowledge only. Furthermore, if a person learns how to think and becomes a real intellectual, some day one will feel that being street smart is not enough for his personal and intellectual development, so the person will consciously come to learning all the information that one was supposed to learn at school. Because the point is that indeed academic knowledge is useful and valuable; however, for some reasons young people just see no point in learning it, because they feel that they have some other informational preferences, which is good, because they have interest in learning at all. Thus eventually their street smartness will be complemented with academic knowledge. References Graff, G. (2004). Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. Yale University Press. Read More