Intellectuals are looked down upon and seen as insignificant in today’s society and one might wonder why that is. Grant Penrod explores this claim in his article Anti – Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids. In his article, he explains that there is a problem with degrading the smart kids and it needs to stop. Throughout his article, his argument is convincing due to his use of ethos, logos, and pathos.
He introduces the topic by describing a personal experience of his from when he attended Mountain View High School. Because he starts off with a personal experience, he has just increased his credibility in the reader’s eyes. He points out that only athletes get recognized for their achievements and academic accomplishments are simply …show more content…
Meaning that in today’s society, many scholars are bogged down for their intelligence and the idea of looking down upon academia is becoming a very popular trend. To back this up he takes advantage of the internet and quotes some of the negative opinions on intellectuals and how they are perceived by others. The intelligence of the smart kids enrages the popular kids and their threats are seen as jokes by our society. Although Penrod only gives one example of a threat in this paragraph, he emphasizes that there are countless more just like …show more content…
In this paragraph, he introduces the big problem that we are facing, the formation of the stereotype, which unconsciously turns into bullying. The common stereotype for intellectuals is that they are too buried in the books to have a social life and based off of that stereotype, a cycle begins. As he describes, the “’nerds’ are excluded from social activity because of their label, and that label, in turn, intensifies through the resulting lack of social contact” (W.W. Norton 760). This creates an unpleasant environment for the intellectuals because they are being trivialized. In contrast, he does consider the flip side that this does not happen to all intelligent people; a few can slip through the cracks into the popular