Gerald Graff's "hidden intellectualism" and the limits of street smarts integration

¶ … Hidden Intellectualism,\" Gerald Graff shows why \"street smarts\" can and should be integrated into traditional academia. It is possible to critically analyze elements of popular culture or daily life. Graff claims that knowledge of Shakespeare and the French Revolution are fine and good, but that not all students will be naturally passionate about these subjects, which can seem stuffy or boring. To stimulate the interest of students, educators should work harder to engage students\' natural sense of curiosity and their abilities to think critically and creatively.

Graff calls his approach to learning \"intellectualism by other means,\" meaning some students become intellectuals by means other than getting good grades in their math, history, and English courses (p. 61, para. 5). By referring to his own pathway towards intellectualism, Graff implies that students like him become intellectuals via a different path, such as developing a passion thoroughly to the point where they become expert at that subject and therefore engage in critical debates and thoughtful discussions about it, or contribute to the research in a meaningful way that fosters learning.

In describing his childhood, Graff alludes to his white privilege but does not call it such, and therefore does miss an opportunity to discuss structural inequities in education. He admits that he grew up in a white middle class neighborhood located close to a multiracial working class neighborhood. He also admits that he wanted to cultivate his book smarts while also appearing cool to the kids from the other side of the tracks, and being cool meant not caring about school. Because he was interested mainly in sports, Graff claims that it \"would be hard to imagine an adolescence more thoroughly anti-intellectual than mine,\" but he was able to transmute that passion for sports into an academic pursuit (p. 62, para. 8). He was shown the pathway to those intellectual pursuits, whereas many kids from the other side of the tracks might not have been able to see college discourse as an option.

Also, Graff is clearly biased toward the critical discourse that academia thrives on. There are many ways of developing intelligence, and many different types of intelligence beyond the simplistic binary of book smarts versus street smarts. Street smarts is not just about popular culture, it is about having social skills, wit, and the ability to handle interpersonal conflict in creative ways. These are not things that can be taught in books; they can only be learned the hard way: on the streets and by socializing. Getting students excited about The Federalist Papers is not going to happen by allowing them to write a term paper on Beyonce. The real key to integrating street smarts and book smarts is by recognizing that these are two vastly different types of intelligence, and one is no more valuable than the other. Street smarts can be far more valuable to a person who has social anxiety disorder but who publishes regularly in The Lancet.