Hidden Intellectualism In Rose And Graff's Blue Collar Brilliance

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The 21st Century Model of Intellectualism
Imagine you are driving along the highway when one of your tires go out. As you drive to the side of the road, you have a paining realization that of all the thousands of hours you spent memorizing presidents, finding adjacent angles, and writing theses in school, nothing prepared you for a situation like this. Perhaps changing a tire isn’t the only pitfall of your knowledge; never were you taught how to pay taxes, paint a room, or cook a decent meal. The current setup of the American education system is not wholly fit for preparing students for life, something Mike Rose, author of the essay Blue-Collar Brilliance, and Gerald Graff, author of the essay Hidden Intellectualism, can agree upon. Both Rose and Graff show how the intellectualism taught in schools is …show more content…
According to Graff, being intelligent helped him make friends. As a child, Graff felt his analysis of sports helped him “satisfy [his] thirst for community” by entering cultural debates with “[communities] that [were] not limited to [his] family and friends, but was national and public” (268). To Graff, his childhood discussions prepared him for the “the real intellectual world” (268). The intellectual world that Graff believes in is a world full of thoughtful analysis and topical or occupational discussions. Rose would have no choice but to disagree with Graff. Rose’s mother and uncle, who he praises for being intellectual, were still a part of their respective waitressing and G.M. communities, but they both had jobs that did not call for any analysis. The factor that brought Rose’s mother and uncle close to their coworkers was through their shared experiences and similar occupational duties. In other words, Rose’s mother and uncle satisfied their innate “thirst for community” by being physically adept, not analytically smart like Graff’s model on intelligence
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