Hit the Books or Hit the Road?

        In “Hidden Intellectualism” Gerald Graff takes on a controversial topic. What is better, being book smart or street smart? Graff’s argument is that being street smart is way more beneficial than being only book smart. A street smart person is liberated. People that are street smart are not confined solely to thinking about topics that they do not like or are not interested in. In his thesis he says, “I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are non-intellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which seems pale and unreal.” School tends to focus primarily on curriculum at times so it is easy to become robotic and not intrigued. Street smarts on the other hand allow a person to become a sponge, absorbing whatever they want from the world. Everything that surrounds them is their campus.

     To defend his argument Graff uses his personal experiences as examples to prove why they have helped him become an intellectual. As a child he hated books. He engrossed himself only with things he liked. Graff read sports magazines, sport autobiographies, and sports novels. At times he would debate about who was the toughest guy in school with his friends. Sports and his everyday conversations brought forth the skills of debate, and different types of analysis. He was becoming an intellectual without even knowing it. Street smarts taught him “how to make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the views of others, and enter a conversation about ideas.”

     Sports also allowed him to have a sense of community. Book smarts can isolate people at times because the community is just so big. Graff’s examples help reinforce his argument. I personally think his points are quite valid. He enforces how schools can  create grade competitions, while when it comes to street smarts the competitions differ and have the potential to create bonds.

      I have to say that I do agree with Graff. Like Graff, I believe that “we associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subject and texts that we consider inherently weighty and and academic” and that “real intellectuals” can turn anything into to something thought provoking. Street smarts allow everyone to contribute. They make us more open minded. Book smarts may make us well educated, but they do not always provide us with lessons on life. There is so much knowledge within what we can learn on the streets. Street smarts help us defend ourselves, and give us new innovative methods on how to live our life. If we found a way to integrate street smarts into schools along with book smarts, society would benefit immensely because it would be cultivated even more.