Gerald graff pop culture in academics Essay

In Gerald Graffs Hidden Intellectualism, Graff argues that give instructions should encourage students to think critically, read, and write about atomic number 18as of person-to-person interest such as cars, fashion, or medicinal drug further as keen-sighted as they do so in an intellectually way. I happen to scoff with Graff and his perspective for many different reasons. I in person believe that students should be giving the opportunity to engage intellectually with set off cultural topics that interest them and get to apply their street smarts to their faculty member engage.Teenagers evict also affiliate to whats going on in their declare lives with the bag last world. both(prenominal)times its hard for teenagers to understand a legitimate topic but if teachers arouse explain it to them in a way that they fecal matter understand using vote out civilization, teachers should be allowed to do so. Pop close should be allowed in the fellowshiproom as pine as its used in an educational way and stooge serve up students learning. Graff talks a lot about street smarts in his essay. We all know someone who is street smart but they on the nose dont do to well in school and are unable to do well in academics.Some people may feel that its a waste of intelligence and knowing so much about life isnt going to help you academically. Graff feels that its not those students fault and those students force out be helped. He states that What doesnt occur to us, though, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to strike into such street smarts and channel them into good Gonzalez 2 academic work (pg. 380). Meaning schools and colleges should be held accountable for not being able to help those street smart teenagers and help turn their friendship of life into academic work.Teachers should help these students learn how to understand the academics their teaching them with examples of the street smart familiarity they a lready obtain. Personally, I feel that street smarts beat out account book smarts in todays world. Street smarts is something thats truly knowledge to me and can help someone in the future un similar book smarts where e genuinelything feels unreal. Graffs speaks of his own experience in school and how he matte up he was the typical teenage anti-intellectual. All through and throughout high school Graff hated reading and books.The yet thing he truly cared for was vaunts, and the only reading he did was reading sports magazines. Graff says I have recently go in to think, however, that my preference for sports over schoolwork was not anti- intellectualism so much as intellectualism by other means (pg. 382). What Graff is saying here is just because he had rather choose sports over schoolwork doesnt make him dazed it makes him smart but in a different way. I can ainly agree with Graff. Im not very interest in academic work but I grew up observation sports.Sports are full of ch allenging debates, arguments, analysis, and statistics. You can debate which team is unwrap so why not use that same tactic but a different topic. I remember being in class not doing my work and talking about football or basketball. If a teacher was to explain reading or writing to me with using sports as an example I probably wouldve understood what they were saying and succeed in school. Have teenagers analysis sports topic and have them relate to them and see if they agree or disagree with that sport topic.Schools should create debates or arguments that teenagers can relate to. It give get teens to feel more involved and they might really engage in the Gonzalez 3 conversation. We should be able to incorporate sport topics in school because not many students demote educational topics very mind or interesting. Teachers can easily use sports as a topic in every classroom discussion. medication in pascal culture today has such a big influence on students. Everyone listens to a t least some type of music any play of the day they get.One of the main influences is hip bound off music. Hip hops is all over the radios and you can find it in at least the majority of students phone players, iPod, or level(p) CDs. melody has a huge influence on myself, personally. Music helps me concentrate and heretofore helps me learn academic material better. It even helps my mind grow and give out better. Music actually improves communication between the right and left sides of the brain, allowing you to make better comprehension and memorization skills which develop your brain to a high level.Music has so much to do with metaphors and understanding lyrics and truly understanding the meaning of a song. It even helps to improve reading and comprehensive skills. bugger off Tupac Shakur for spokesperson, his rap music has such meaningful metaphors which should be used in the classroom because they can truly help teenagers understand the meaning of a metaphor and stude nts testament actually be interested in the topic. Music is such a complex verbiage that even incorporates mathematics, science, history, physical education, coordination, and even mental ability. more or less teenagers find hip hop artist like Tupac interesting because they can relate to Tupacs music about nonchalant life struggles about gangs, drugs and growing up in the ghetto. Since teenagers go through these struggles we should help give them something to relate to so they can know the real world isnt perfect and a lot of people can be going through the same struggles as you. Gonzalez 4 virtually people leave alone disagree with the fact that schools should allow pop culture influences in education.That schools are made for learning academics and nothing else, like pop culture, should influence anything not academic. An argument could be that pop culture is a bad influence and can send the wrong message to teenagers. For instance that sports can send the message of promoti ng violence and that teenagers should stick to their own personal friends and not communicate with other groups of people. It can cause tension in the classrooms over debates because not everyone has the same notion about a certain team.Or the simple fact that not everyone is interested in sports or have knowledge of sports and they dont want teenagers to feel as if they dont fit in. A lot of people will have negative comments about music in education and academics. Most will argue that music send the wrong message to teens. Some can even say rap music like Tupac exploits women and uses staring(a) language. It promotes violence and criminal like activity. Which in some rap music and even Tupacs music is true. He uses extreme vulgar language and talks about the thug life.It even includes sexual persuade in his rapping. Some can even say hip hop music period is distracting and if we promote music in schools. Like this, it will promote teenagers to get the wrong idea about school an d education. That teens will go out and join a gang, become sexually active, and do criminal like activity. Even though some teenagers have a hard life and can relate to this music we should not motivate them of their personal lifes and keep everything strictly academic.In conclusion, you can see that in that respect is a positive and negative to having pop culture in todays education. I personally feel that there should be a connection to education which Gonzalez 5 teenagers like I should be able to be interested in as long as its educational. Not everyone will have the same opinion as Graff and I so there should be an option to be able to take classes which you can use pop culture in your learning process or if you want to keep it strictly educational you should be able to as well.Either way pop culture is huge to teenagers today. Everything from music, fashion, sports, TV and celebrities. Teenagers world revolves around pop culture and if we want to keep teens interested in lea rning we should find ways, like using pop culture, to keep them interested. Works Cited Graff, Gerald. Hidden Intellectualism. They Say, I Say The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Eds. Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russell Durst. New York W. W. Norton and Co. , 2012. 380-87. Print.