Essay 1

Sydney Cox
Mr. Andy Smith
Writing 1020-015
28 April 2009
Where is the Fun in Intellectualism?
A very common misconception is that students cannot learn or become more intellectual if they are having fun. People think that it is required to read books that are considered to be academic in order for them to learn anything. Being intellectual involves being able to have intelligent conversations, ask questions, debate, and knowing what questions to ask. In professor and author, Gerald Graff’s essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” he talks about how schools and colleges should try to find a way to channel students’ interests into academics. There is so much pressure on students to get good grades and to also fit in and be accepted by others. Gerald Graff’s essay “Hidden Intellectualism” effectively declares that we can learn how to be intellectual from life’s lessons as well as from academic texts.
In high school, our teachers would assign us papers all the time. These papers had topics that were fairly easy to write about but would bore the reader to death if anyone actually had to read them and attempt to be interested. They would give us a sheet of paper with a list of the different subjects we could write about. Graff understands this when he points out, “We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, clothing fashions, sports, TV, or video games” (142). Writing papers about something that happened years and years ago is not very much fun and does not make me want to write a great paper. Your teachers tell you to write papers about intellectual books or subjects, but why would you want to write about something that has already been run into the ground by countless others before you? Those before us probably did a better job with Shakespeare than we ever will.
Most people are intellectual in their own way. It is just that certain people are classified as intellectuals because they are said to be smart, read intellectual books, and have intellectual discussions. We have always been told that school is where you learn things and become intellectual and that all other little things you do or focus on could never teach you anything. Graff mentions in his essay that, “Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not” (145). He explains how he thinks that schools and colleges should learn from and take after the world of sports entertainment in order to get students interested and want to learn about what they are saying, because obviously if you do not understand the intellectual books that you are forced to read at school then they are not helping you to be any more intellectual than you were before.
Also, there is the problem that our society does not accept people being smart or intellectual. Your teachers and your parents want you to be intellectual, but the people you want to be accepted by, like your peers and friends, will not think you are “cool” if they think that you are trying to act better than them. Growing up, Graff had to be careful about how he presented himself to each group of people that surrounded him. Graff explains that “it was necessary to maintain the boundary between ‘clean-cut’ boys like me and working-class ‘hoods,’ as we called them, which meant that it was good to be smart in an openly bookish sort of way” (144). He had to worry about his reputation with the hoods because if he acted or talked differently from them, then they would think he was trying to be better than them and beat him up. Students always feel the need to be accepted by their peers, so that is something that will interfere in the classroom and might affect their eagerness to learn things in class.
When was the last time you learned something? There is a big chance that you learned it from an experience you went through yourself. This may be the best and most interesting way to learn new things. There are a lot of teachers today that do not care enough about their teaching or their students. Teachers should try to find new ways of teaching their students that can get them involved and actually make them want to learn. During the time that I have been in school, there have only been a few teachers who have actually tried to make learning fun. One of these experiences was my first semester of college when we wrote and produced our own play. That was an awesome time, and it was so much fun because we got to plan out everything about the play and learn more about theater. It really showed us exactly what it took to put on a production. The only way that we were able to do that was because two of our professors wanted to do class a different way than just the normal, boring lecture. It is normally thought that if you are having fun, then you are not learning anything. Students often talk about things and learn about them outside of school with their friends. Graff recalls, “I was practicing being an intellectual before I knew that was what I wanted to be” (145). This shows how all the time, there are students that are practicing to be intellectuals because they argue and ask questions about things they care about, which shows that they do not necessarily have to read boring school books in order to learn things.
It would be really great if we could come up with ways for students to have fun and also learn without even realizing it. These days, college campuses consist of many different people of all age groups and ethnicities. With all of this new technology, we could have various different kinds of learning to offer. Some people learn better with more hands-on, fun activities, and some people learn better by being able to teach themselves the material. We do not have to do away with lecture classes because those are still beneficial, but there needs to be more done to encourage students to actually listen to what is being said in those classes. Universities could offer different types of classes, both hands-on and lecture, for students to choose from based on what kind of learning techniques they prefer. This could also reduce class sizes and produce more one-on-one time for the students with their professors in order for them to feel more confident in their class.
It is really disappointing that schools and colleges often do not try to target student’s interests in order to help them learn. A lot of people do not realize that school and learning can actually be interesting and not completely boring. Gerald Graff’s essay does a very good job describing his experience in high school where he was constantly battling being smart and also being interested in school. There are so many other ways to learn, like life lessons, rather than just reading books.







Work Cited
Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism,” They Say I Say. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 142- 148.

street preachers and street art

From street preachers and street artists there are so many different types of people who choose to express themselves in very different ways. I feel very strongly about the street preachers who are trying to teach people Christianity. Most of them are out there yelling at people telling them that they are doing everything wrong and that they are going to hell. They have only one perspective and are not open minded to seeing anything else. I think that there are much more effective ways of getting their message across to people. Many of these street preachers throw all the other Christians under the bus because it makes people feel like all Christians do is judge others and tell them what they are doing is wrong. Another way people express themselves is through art. These art pieces can be symbolic of something or have absolutely no meaning at all. Most of the time their canvas is a sidewalk of the side of a building, which is why they probably should not get caught in the middle of creating it. I think that it is really cool how they just come up with this stuff spur of the moment and they don't sit around for hours thinking about what they are going to do. Sometimes it just seems better like that and they don't have time to come up with some crazy meaning behind it. The poetic terrorism is a good idea like helping people to have a better day or let them believe something crazy for a while. Or do something completely outrageous just to get people's attention. A mock protest can also be a fun way of getting attention and getting people to look at things and realize how ridiculous they are.

Go Green!

I just attended “The Good Fight,” to listen to Simran Sethi. She is an environmentalist who has worked for MTV, MBC, and been on popular tv shows like Oprah and Ellen Degeneres. I thought that she was a really good speaker and really tried to tell us how we could relate being green to our lives. Simran understands that if we do not see how something has an impact on our lives that we will not see the need to do it. She really tried to show us how being more environmentally friendly affects our lives every day. Plastics can never be fully recycled, it just gets into tiny little pieces and goes back into our soil, which goes into crops and fish, and gets back to us. I always see the plastic recycling bins so I thought that was helping but apparently not. We use plastic for just about everything so it would be really hard to use less of it or get rid of it. I think it is really sad how some people have jobs that they have to have in order to feed their family but it is also a job that is hurting them and everyone else in the long run. I think that we need to find some way to give these people a choice in what they can do for our environment and not be stuck with their unsafe job. The reason that I think people do not always try to be green is because they do not think that it will make a difference. It seems like if you are the only one trying to be efficient then it will not do much good if no one else is making the effort. What people do not realize is that it takes one person at a time to make the difference so it would be helpful to everyone if people understood that.

Cell Phones

In the last few years I definitely think that cell phones have redefined public space. You hardly ever meet anybody who does not own a cell phone. It does not matter where you go, you will hear a cell phone or see people using them. They are invading our space more and more. Whenever you go to a public place you almost always have to hear someone’s cell phone ringing, or listen to their conversation, or be interrupted while they have to text someone. I know people who text constantly, even when we are having a conversation and that makes you feel like they are not listening and do not care what you are saying. I really like his metaphor that cell phones are becoming like cigarettes because cell phones invade people’s space much like cigarette smoke does. People do not want to smell cigarette smoke or be around it and they also do not want to listen to ringing phones and annoying conversations. The cell phone companies should care about their user’s using these products courteously because they may soon be banished from public places like cigarettes have and in some places cell phones have already been done away with. There are people who think it is acceptable to use a cell phone while in the car. When people use their cell phones in the car they are also putting other people in danger, like if someone is driving people around and texting that means they are not paying attentions to the road like they should be and putting these people’s lives in danger. I think it’s crazy when I go to use the restroom and hear people talking on their cell phones. It takes about 2 or 3 minutes to use the restroom and wash your hands so why can’t you wait until you are done to call someone? That is so rude to the other people in the bathroom because they are not very big spaces so you have no choice but to hear everything they are saying when all you want to do is use the bathroom and get out of there. Cell phones are very useful but people need to learn that when their cell phone rings that does not mean that the rest of the world has disappeared.

After reading the article about racism it really opened my eyes to a lot more about racism that I do not even think about. I have never considered myself a racist but after reading this article I guess I would be considered a passive racist. There are a lot of people that would be considered passive racists because I know I am not the only one. I think that there are a lot of these types of people because they do not know what to say about it or that they even need to say anything. There are a lot of people that feel that they do not have the power to do anything about racism and that even if they did try to do something, no one would listen to them. I have also never thought about the advantages of being white compared to the disadvantages of being colored. There are a lot of things that white women do not have to worry about. We are looked at differently and treated differently. I have never thought it to be very fair that only white people are called racist and there are colored people who act racist too. I have never heard the definition that only white people can be racist because in order to be racist you have to be gaining something out of it. I guess that would kind of make sense but not exactly. It is also sad that people develop internalized oppression. They grow up thinking they can never be as good as someone else so then they do not even try.

The Iron Maiden

After reading the article about the Iron Maiden it makes me even more disgusted with the advertisements in all of these magazines. These ads make women so self conscious about their bodies. Even the commercials on television make women hate their bodies even more because they are not flawless like the models they see. All of the images of these women are very damaging to women and also men. Women are constantly told that they have to look and be perfect in order for men to love them. Otherwise they will never find a husband or a boyfriend. Women are told that they need to buy all of these different products to prevent aging and flat hair, and also to lose weight or have whiter teeth. It does not even matter if you don’t care what people think of you. Wherever you go someone is going to be looking at you and judging every little thing about you and there is nothing you can do about it because everyone in America has been brainwashed by the ads that they see in the magazines and television and on billboards. Men may not realize it but they are also hurt by these advertisements of women. After seeing all of these perfect, flawless women, men expect that that is the way all women should be and will always compare women to these models. They will think that a woman is not good enough for them unless they look like one of these women out of a magazine.
I thought that the Reading the Gaze section was very interesting. I have never really looked at how the people in the advertisements are looking at the camera or away or even how they are looking at the camera. It is crazy how just a little bit of a different look can totally change the whole meaning of the ad and convey some underlying message.

They Say, I Say

I read the Hidden Intellectualism by Gerry Graff. This reading made a lot of sense and I really enjoyed reading his view on this subject. I totally agree with what he is talking about when he says 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.” He talks about how we think that we need to read and study books and subjects that are considered intellectual in order to become intellectual when the truth is that you can talk about anything intellectually, it just depends on the way you are looking at it. Graff says that “we assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, clothing fashions, sports, TV, or video games,” so it’s the way you look at it is what makes it intellectual, not just because it is a good subject or from a famous writer. The writer grew up in a neighborhood where he was constantly having to show how smart he was but not too much because he had make sure that the hoods would still respect him. He recalled endless debates about who the toughest guy in school was, and he was still learning how to think intellectually, just not the way the school had intended him to. He began learning how to think intellectually by arguing with his friends and through reading his sports magazines. The schoolwork did not interest him much, but the sports magazines could entertain him, and he was also learning, which he did not realize at the time. I completely agree with Graff’s theory that in order for you to learn it needs to be something you care about and not just dull schoolwork. The schools really do need to learn a little from sports magazines and other things in order to keep the attention of their students and also in order to teach them better.