Last year was the best year in North Carolina's history with a graduation rate of “85.4 percent” (NC State Board of Education). The title of the article is “Hidden Intellectualism” from the book Clueless in Academe; How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind by Gerald Graff. The book was written in 2003. The purpose of this text is to teach people that people can be taught to use academic methods and thoughts for items in the domain of “street smarts” Graff tries to tell readers about different intelligence and how they could be reached. Often they are deemed street smart and told and treated as if it is incompatible with academics. To overcome this he tells about his experiences bridging both and how others can do this. In “Hidden Intellectualism”graff uses a unique style of writing to show how we can write about subjects usually considered non-intellectual in an academic way. he does this by mixing a professional style of writing with a simple and easy to understand style of writing using reminders of childhood and modern language. The book that the essay is from was released short after the passing of “No Child Left Behind”. This legislation was an attempt to …show more content…
on page 248 graff uses the word “can’t” this may seem irrelevant but its meaning is paramount. Most students have been taught to avoid contractions when doing professional works. it is seen as un-academic and unprofessional yet here it is being used in a professional work about academics. it shows how he feels that academics needs to accept some parts of the wider culture and ease out of its self induced isolation. Another part of the importance of the contraction is how it makes the read feel more like a conversation and reflects modern speech. In “They Say/ I Say” a central them is that arguments should be seen as part of a conversation and by using a contraction he reinforces this