Are you smarter than a sports player?

                Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff, discusses the differences between street smart and intellectually smart. Graff says being smart is knowing how to: make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the view of others and so on. Graff is saying in his thesis above that being street smart is more important. He’s problem is that schools do not take these street smart into account while they teach.  

                Gerald Graff uses many examples to support his thesis. Graff manly uses his personal life and sports to support his thesis.  He believes that sports players have the attribute of being street smart. They have to move between particulars and generalizations, summarize the view of the players to become a good sports player. Graff thinks the world of sports brings stuff such as: arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics. However he undermines his point by saying the school doesn’t bring this attribute at all. He doesn’t consider the fact that schools can have debate teams, learn statistics, and also learn about arguments in English class. Overall in his writing he believes that sports players, magazine, articles are smart because there all have an attribute of street smart.

                I do not agree with his thesis. I do believe that having street smart is important, however I do not think one is better than the other. I believe that you should have a balance of both.  Having more of one side is not good.