Hidden Intellectualism

Hidden Intellectualism

Have you ever been in a class that was so boring you were literally counting the seconds until your head explodes? Don't worry it happens to the best of us. Schools really shouldn’t be boring, but sadly that is the case for some people. Most of the schools today focus more on performance rather that potential. If you as a student can’t perform, you will not pass. This should not be the case, which is why I want to write about why the school system should change. According to psychology the brain works in many different ways and each brain has a different way of learning and processing information. Gerald Graff in Hidden Intellectualism strongly believes we are all stronger in some areas than others and schools should take note to that.

In Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff talks about the argument between “book smarts”(intellectualism) and “street smarts”. Graff states that intellect does not only come from “book smarts”, he believes that it can also come from “street smarts”. Graff goes on to tell us about how much he didn’t like traditional school subjects, but had more interest in sports. Graff noticed that during his arguments about sports with his friends about sports that “street smarts” overpowered “book smarts”. This is because sports was what he found most interesting. He comes up with the idea of bringing in these “street smarts” into schools and turning them into intellectual debates. I agree with his idea because of the fact that I myself love sports and would find more interest in schools if there was classes for just that. Psychology just helps to prove Graff’s idea of bringing “street smarts” into schools. The brain works differently for everybody and especially in the way we learn.

“Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience or practice”(Ciccarelli and White 178). This is the psychological definition of learning. According to the text there are many different ways of learning. There is classical conditioning which is a learning procedure in which a unconditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus to produce a conditioned response(179). Then operant conditioning which is learning voluntary behavior through good and bad consequences to responses(188). Lastly observational