My paper as of now

What a shame it is when a bright and clever child fails at school. If only they had the discipline to apply themselves, they could go far. But is that really the problem here? Is it the child’s fault for not being successful? In his essay, Hidden Intellectualism, Gerald Graff argues that it is t he school’s fault for the child’s failure. He claims that schools fail to attract the attention of certain students because schools do not teach things that students can relate to. He suggests schools should cover the “subjects that interest [the students] rather than those that interest us.” That is not to say, however, that academics should be thrown out the window and replaced by sports and video games. Graff urges that the use of a student’s interest “is not simply to exploit students’ nonacademic interests, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes.” What Graff is saying here is that schools should use a student’s interest as a gateway to link academics to life. Graff himself tells about how he, as a child, did not do well in school and was only interested in sports. It was not until later in his life that he realized sports hod taught him more than school ever did. “Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not.” Through sports, Graff learned many things that school intended to teach him, but never did. Graff believes that if schools were to realize the connection between a student’s interst and academics, and then help the students to recognize the link, the student will go farther than originally expected. To achieve this result, Graff suggest making the student’s interests a way of academic study. For example, give a student an assignment to write a paper about videogames. This will make the student interested in doing the work, but that does not mean the student will to it well. “As long as students are required to see these interests “through academic eyes,” that is, to think and write about cars, sports, and fashions in a reflective, analytical way.” Graff’s point is that it does not matter what the topic is, a paper can still be dry if it is not written in a well thought out way. Therefore it is the school’s job to teach the student to think and write that way.