grandforestlane

Intellectual-(noun) 1. A person of superior intellect; 2. A person who relies on intellect rather than emotions or feelings; 3. A person professionally engaged in mental labor

But to be seen as a “hidden intellectual”, that is hard to answer from a first person’s point of view. Almost conceited question, are you a “hidden intellectual”? Is there something within yourself that could be a powerful resource if tapped into and directed down the correct path? In the articles Hidden Intellectualism by Graff and In Defense of Literacy by Berry both showed their visions of the importance of self-standing and understanding of being able to use knowledge taught to them in school and what value it holds to them.

Through pages 26-29, Graff describes himself as he talks about how he grew up in an anti-intellectual childhood. If we follow his definition comparatively to his of an anti-intellectual childhood, I also experienced this childhood with small differences. One difference to start, was the time period. He grew up around the time of the Second World War, and while I attended school the day of the 9/11 falling of the Twin Towers the teachers kept the televisions turned off and didn’t discuss it in the days to follow deeming us too young to be able to understand the situation. The other notable difference, while we both shared the hatred of books, Gaff had a passion that allowed him to argue and express his intellectualism on an advanced level through sports. While Gaff had his sports passion, I didn’t have my own passion to argue about. I would follow others and parrot their interests in hope they would spark me but to no avail. This is a skill that allowed to get through middle school and my first couple years of high school until I developed my own interests to fill my head. Until then, I just filled my head with all the useless facts the teachers requested us to memorize and was able to recall them easily and throw them back onto sheets of homework and tests.

I retract one of my previous statements, I didn’t hate books or reading, I was simply stubborn and didn’t like to be held to higher expectations than necessary. I always refused to read books anyone recommended to me or required of me. I didn’t like being told what to do, and reading was no exception. I struggled with the expectations; frightened that it wouldn’t make sense to me and/or I would miss an obvious core lesson. This brought me towards books I would randomly pluck from shelves and start reading without reading the book synopsis. Because of this selection method, I read books far beyond and far below my reading level. But it allowed me to read books others had never even heard of, let alone read. This removed expectation and allowed me to enjoy reading without glaring at pages of text with scrutiny.

So it is to say, was or am I a hidden intellectual? I could honestly say I am not sure but I would lean more towards denying such a statement. I had very little intelligence to express, therefore there was none to hide. My mindset for school was a giant formatting of copy and paste until the teachers were satisfied. This was not intellect, this was memorization.

Intellect is not something you hold on only a particular subject though, it is a state of mind. A state of mind that allows curiosity to burn like an itch needing to be scratched, a burning for knowledge. “Bridging this gulf is not a matter of turning ‘them’ into miniversions of ‘us,’ or of asking students to give up their language in favor of our academic discourse. It is a matter of finding points of convergence and translation, moments when student discourse can be translated into academic discourse and vice versa, producing a kind of ‘bilingualism’ on both sides of the student-teacher divide”(Graff 23) what was just described was a way of coming together and being able to find a way to almost co-exist. We are simply speaking of different mindsets, but in some terms, we sound as though we are speaking of different species.

This topic could go on for hours and upon thousands of words, not even scraping the surface of the issues discussed and questioned in both of these opposing articles. We haven’t even discussed the topic of arguments. Graff describes how teachers often view those that oppose or argue with an authoritative figure as possibly violent and discourage them. But not everything is an argument, is could be a debate, a bickering, or a challenge. But not all arguments are early stages of fights, they could simply be healthy arguments. What is the difference between all of these definitively? Are they discouraging this because of possible fights or because of possible administrative uprooting?