Over the years, there has been an ongoing debate about “street smarts” and “book smarts” throughout the world. Many people side with either or for their own personal reasons. Although “street smarts” has developed a poor reputation which pushes people to neglect the positive aspects of this particular way of learning. In the article, “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff evaluates the structure schools use to teach literature. He explains that intellect is not only found in the academic form of thinking. And furthermore, comprehension goes far beyond academic learning and extends into the day-to-day world. It goes without saying that a lot of people know someone who is “street smart” but doesn't exceed in school, yet “street smarts” are just
The argument developed in Chapter 3 and 4 of the Outliers contends that IQ beyond a point is not a determining factor in success. Gladwell implies that a higher IQ to a certain extent is optimal but once a defined threshold has been achieved, having greater intelligence provides limited or possibly no additional benefits in the attainment of success. An analogy in the book that is used to convince us that opportunity matters more that talent is an example from the studies of Annette Lareau comprised of a group of third graders residing in lower and middle/upper income households. Her studies showed that the middle/upper class students were provided opportunities to cultivate their talent/abilities in a meaningful way along with support and
Malcolm Gladwell insists that IQ is not the determining factor in one’s ability to achieve success because he believes that opportunity and chance play critical roles in one’s journey to achieve success. In Outliers, Gladwell includes Christopher Langan story growing up. Langan has an IQ of one ninety-five, “The average person has an IQ of one hundred… Einstein one fifty” (Gladwell 70). Langan is considered “the smartest man in America” and sometimes “the smartest man in the world”. He is also a college dropout, due to financial difficulty and other factors. Langan has a special ability, but his circumstances held him back from graduating college. Living in a life of poverty growing up, Langan did not have such opportunity that Gates had due to his circumstances. Langan has one of the highest IQ and that did not determine his success because he has not reach the level of success with his ability. What Gladwell means when he suggests that IQ reaches a point of diminishing returns after reaching 130 is after reaching 130 or surpassing it, IQ stop mattering. Having a higher IQ does not matter after 130, having enough does because intelligence has a threshold.
In Thomas King 's autobiographical novel, The Truth About Stories takes a narrative approach in telling the story of the Native American, as well as Thomas King 's. The stories within the book root from the obstacles that the Thomas King had to face during his years in high school and his post-university life. These stories are told in a matter that uses rhetorical devices such as personal anecdotes & comparisons.
Malcolm Gladwell does an excellent job in taking the expected and making it the unexpected. He shows that although hard work and dedication are important to be successful, they are not the only determining factors. Each chapter started out with a story of someone who seemed to have risen from nothing into something, and he carefully broke the situation down and analyzed the time periods, what their religion/ ethnicity were, family life, and what was occurring in the world during their youth. In each part he connected back to previous stories/examples to continue making the point that it is almost impossible to truly make a successful career out of nothing on your own. By dividing the book into two parts he is able to really explain
The reading "Hidden Intellectualism" by Gerald Graff reflects views on being "street smart" and "book smart." He explains that society tends to associate people who are intelligent on solely being "book smart" and performing well in academics, rather than being street smart. He goes on to further explain that students perhaps can be intelligent on topics that interest them. Graff opens up the reading by giving his own personal experience on feeling torn between trying to prove that he was smart yet fearing that he was overdoing it. He was trying to prove that he learned just as much about the real world by reading his sports books and magazines as he would have if he had read the classic works of literature like most students in school. Essentially,
The first aspect that Gladwell introduces to support his argument is the importance of opportunity. One example that he talks about is “The Matthew Effect”. “The Matthew Effect” is shown through the Medicine Hat Tigers elite hockey team of Canada; if one was to look at the roster, which includes their birth dates, they would find something quite peculiar. Most of the players were born in the early months of the year, for instance, January, February, and March. The cutoff date for
Gerald Graff’s “Hidden Intellectualism” goes through many reasons why not being book smart could be a good thing. The sports world is a way of people connecting through the competitive sports that always lead to some sort of debate (268). Graff grew up always liking sports and being “street smart” living in Chicago. He always read sports magazines growing up and realized that reading magazines was a good tactic for schools to teach street smart kids how to write good essays based on their hobbies of reading magazines (265). “What doesn’t occur to us, 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”(264).
“Hidden Intellectualism,” by Gerald Graff starts off with an older argument between being book smart and street smart. Throughout the reading, Graff uses his own life experiences to critique the education system today. Points made focus on the idea of overlooking the intellectual potential of those who come across as being, “street smart”. Different authors cited in the reading to show how to accept another’s different intellectual. However, we realize that people who come across as being intellectual weren’t always labeled as that.
The book “Outliers,” by Malcolm Gladwell takes readers on a momentous adventure of twists and turns through life's most optimistic lessons. The aspiration of the book “Outliers,’ is a reflection of how the author Gladwell would like his readers to view and glide through the journey called life. Examples given within the book help to shed light on positive lifelong learning experiences. The key question in the book “Outliers,” is what makes people who are great achievers different from regular people? ” The term “Outlier,” illustrates phenomena’s that can happen apart from what is considered to be the social norm (Gladwell, 2007). As Gladwell explains what an outlier is, he explains an outlier to be a person who is out of the ordinary. According to Gladwell, successful women and men alike gain specialization, partnership, time, locations, and culture (Locklear, 2016). An outlier’s method for success is not personal beliefs but the synthesis of opportunity and time on task (Locklear, 2016).
Gerald Graff’s essay “Hidden Intellectualism” contemplates the age-old idea that street smarts are anti-intellectual. However, as Graff points out, “schools and colleges are at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into academic smarts.” (244). What Graff means by this is that being street smart does not mean a person lacks intelligence. Rather, educational institutions need to find a way to effectively ‘tap into’ this different format of intellectualism to produce academic intelligence. Graff goes on to point out that society associates ‘weighty’ subjects, like Shakespeare and Plato, with intellectualism, but not less serious subjects, such as sports and video games. In consideration of this overlook
Intrinsic factors critically considered when people think about the main components of success. However, Malcolm Gladwell, a famous writer, contradicts this tendency through the book, Outliers. The book, Outliers insists that extrinsic factors define success rather than the intrinsic ones. Nonetheless, Gladwell himself goes against the topic of Outliers in his assertion: “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires (Gladwell, 2008).” The assertion implies that individuals could achieve success only with those intrinsic factors. Gladwell’s assertion is wrong because people can’t achieve success without an opportunity of relative age, an opportunity to have practical
Malcom Gladwell, the author of The Outliers, analyzes the factors to success based on real-life example. Through statistical facts and logical reasoning, he attempts to prove how success is more than just hard work and being intelligent. He supports his arguments with accurately calculated statistical facts to gain the trust of his audience and to work towards 2proving his points. Gladwell determines the reasons of success by comparing well-known successful people and finding commonalities between those people.
Intelligence is what gets us by everyday; it gets us jobs and helps to provide for ourselves and others. I'm not saying you need to be the smartest person ever to be successful, but you at least have to be smart enough. Gladwell mentions that "Langan’s IQ is 30 percent higher than Einstein’s. But that doesn’t mean Langan is 30 percent smarter than Einstein. That’s ridiculous. All we can say is that when it comes to thinking about really hard things like physics, they are both clearly smart enough." You can be the smartest person ever about one thing, but you have to be at least smart enough to get through everyday
Two stories and two magical wishes. The Monkey’s Paw and the Story of an Hour share several similarities throughout the passage. In the beginning of each passage, the author creates a sense of mystery and curiosity for the readers. As each passage reveals the characters in the story, the reader begins to relate the characters role from each story and how they act towards the conflict in the text. These different events, conflicts, or plot in both stories connect with death and wishes. The message from the two passages are relatively the same based on the characters, events and plot. The main connections between the two articles are characters, theme, plot and authors point of view.