Reading Response #2

Chapter 4

#1
AGREE
Paragraph 16: “The challenge, as college professor Ned Laff has put it, ‘is not simply to exploit students’ nonacademic interests, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes.’”

DISAGREE
Paragraph 3: “The trouble with this assumption is that…”
Paragraph 11: “Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less.”
Paragraph 13: “…the real intellectual world, the one that exists in the big world beyond school, is organized very much like the world of team sports…”
Paragraph 17: “To say that students need to see their interests ‘through academic eyes’ is to say that street smarts are not enough.”
Paragraph 18: “If I am right, then schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study.”

AGREE/DISAGREE
Paragraph 4: “Students do need to read models of intellectually challenging writing—and Orwell is a great one—if they are to become intellectuals themselves. But they would be more prone to take on intellectual identities if we encourage them to do so at first on subjects that interest them rather than ones that interest us.”
Paragraphs 14&15: “To be sure, school contained plenty of competition, which became more invidious as one moved up the ladder…” / “And in distancing themselves from anything as enjoyable and absorbing as sports, my schools missed the opportunity to capitalize on an element of drama and conflict that the intellectual world shares with sports.”

{some examples would have to be read in context}

#2
In the recent essay “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff points out that, “schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study”. I agree with Mr. Graff because my experience in school has confirmed it. Students are less likely to write persuasively and passionately about topics that are so outdated or beyond them that they do not know how to begin. If only teachers realized that by allowing students to write about a wider range of topics the students can achieve better composition and analytical skills. As Mr. Graff perfectly exemplifies, “it was in reading and arguing about sports and toughness that I experienced what it felt like to propose a generalization, restate and respond to a counterargument, and perform other intellectualizing operations…”.