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Sydnie Michelle Jordan Professor Alicia Bolton ENG 101 October 1, 2013 Hidden and Anti-Intellectualism Three important aspects used in college essays today are analyzing, evaluating, and arguing. Throughout many college students lives, they will find themselves doing each of these, if not all. Analyzing involves examining something carefully and breaking it into parts to discover the hidden meaning. Evaluating is simply to make a judgment based on a persons given criteria. Arguing is basically to convince others to accept their viewpoints based off of the reasons and evidence that you present. To do each of these things effectively you may use a clear and arguable position, use of logos, ethos, and pathos, and convincing evidence and reasons. Two argumentative essays that commonly meet those requirements are Grant Penrods Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids and Gerald Graffs Hidden Intellectualism. In Penrods essay Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids, he argues that the view of uneducated success getting people far in life is degrading the true meaning of intellectualism and intellectual people. To lay off the devastating best and brightest kids and to give the true intellectual kids a fair chance for they are more promising to our future (Penrod 757). On the other hand, Graffs Hidden Intellectualism argues that street smarts are not nonintellectual as some might suppose, but they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture (Graff 202). He also encourages schools and colleges to

Jordan 2 not miss the opportunity to encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study (204). Both Penrod and Graff provide interesting claims and adequate reasoning, but Graffs essay is a more effective argument because of its ethos, counterargument/consideration of others positions, and convincing reasons and evidence. First off, the convincing evidence and reasons of Graffs Hidden Intellectualism are consistently present. One point he makes is that our view of intellectual subjects is narrow minded and rules out subjects and texts that are not considered scholarly (198). In essence, someone who knows everything about sports is not considered an intellectual, but someone who knows everything about psychology is an intellectual. One of his strongest reasons is his explanation of a way to better encourage students to become intellectuals: But they would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encouraged them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us (199). Strictly speaking, if teachers made students read on subjects that relate to them and their interests more fittingly, then maybe they would be encouraged to follow an intellectual path. The use of convincing evidence and reasons in Penrods Anti -Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids is not as effective as Graffs. Penrod makes hasty generalizations; he quotes comments from online boards. One said, Man how I hate nerdsif I ever had a tommygun with meI would most probably blow each one of theirheads off (Penrod 754). He then says that it could be written off as a joke if it were alone in its extremism and that there are countless postings of similar fashion towards nerds, this is assuming everything on the internet is official and represents society as a whole. On the other hand, Graff only uses information he gathered from experience and published writers.

Jordan 3 Another strength of Graffs essay is his use of ethos. He presents himself to be a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois *in+ Chicago (Graff 198) making his information more trustworthy. He also quotes another college professor by the name of Ned Laff saying, The challenge is not simply to exploit students nonacademic interest, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes (204). Graff did not use any information from nonofficial sources. On the contrary, Penrod used a compilation of successful high school dropouts hosted from a website called Angelfire.com. Although the information is not false, it does not mean every high school dropout will be successful. The final strength thats noticed in Graffs essay is his use of counterarguments and consideration of others positions. For instance, a passage from his essay, What a waste we think that one who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work. What doesnt 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. (198) In other words, Graff is saying kids that have street smarts are not able to apply them in academic situations, because schools miss the opportunity to teach them how to apply their street smarts into their academic life. To recapitulate, Graff and Penrod had interesting arguments, but Grant Penrods AntiIntellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids isnt as effective as Gerald Graffs Hidden Intellectualism. Graff provides more useful ethos, counterargument/consideration of others positions, and convincing reasons and evidence. Penrod made hasty generalization fallacies in

Jordan 4 his essay by using information from unreliable sources on the internet through message boards and social networking websites.

Jordan 5 Works Cited Graff, Gerald. Hidden Intellectualism. They Say I Say. 2nd ed. Ed. Gerald Graff, and Cathy Birkenstein. New York: Norton, 2010. 198-205. Print. Penrod, Grant. Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids. The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. 3rd ed. Ed. Marilyn Moller. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. 754-757. Print.