Book Smart and Street Smart

Geral Graff's argument in "Hidden Intellectualism" was that many schools and colleges were not encouraging students to use their street smarts towards academic purposes. Graff felt that the education system disregarded street smarts as another type of intellectualism. According to Graff, "What doesn't occur to us, though, is 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" (Hidden Intellectualism, 380).

In my opinion, street smarts should not be looked down upon as something less than book smart intellect. Based on Geral graff's experience as a child, he was forced to either be book-smart or street smart when he faced the neighborhood kids. In addition, Graff was fascinated by the concept of sports, which was his primary topic in writing articles about.

If individuals were able to distinguish the difference between going down a shady alley at night or strolling through a more lit environment, wouldn't this be considered as having intellect? Although this might seem obvious enough that some might not even walk through that dark alley, there could be a slight possibility that a few individuals might be foolish enough to do that. However, other examples that would be more likely to happen would be avoiding contact with certain people or dressing in a specific way in a particular environment. For example, a person might see a lonely child on the street in the ghetto and comfort the child. On the other hand, several individuals could even ignore the child, fearing the child might have some sort of disease or might pickpocket him/her. (Or they might just be heartless.) And a person would not wear a bright pink tutu in Harlem, New York or in downtown Chicago. Whatever the reason might be, people have different perspectives on what intellect is all about. Personally, being book smart and street smart should be equally accepted as showing signs of intelligence.