Khoury, 1

Michael Khoury
English 115 2 pm.
Prof. Altman
11-5-13
Anti-intellectualism
In this essay author Grant Penrod discusses the issue of anti-intellectualism
in the United States. He argues about how we as Americans glamorize those who
participate in unintelligible activities and earn rewards within these activities.
Penrod is saying that we as a country are glorifying the unintelligent and giving little
to no credit to those who are intelligent and have achievements in intelligible
activities. He offers the example of Mountain View High School, a high school in
Arizona, whos football team won the state championship in the previous year and
how the team was glorified in the school; while, at the same time, their science bowl
team, speech and debate team, and academic decathlon team also earned the same
achievements relative to their activities yet they only got about ten minutes of
recognition which was tied in to an assembly which was solely initiated to reward
the football team for their achievement.
He makes a valid point. I speak from personal experience when I say this. I
was apart of my high schools academic decathlon team for three years and was also
in close relations with members of my high schools speech and debate team. While I
was apart of my academic decathlon team I earned a total of three medals and
assisted my team in moving in moving from 50th place to 16th place and our speech

Khoury, 2
and debate team had three state champions on it. In total we all received a
total of about five minutes of recognition in our morning announcements and only
upper-level faculty members really knew who we were.
I do believe that intelligence does go unnoticed in our society while
unintelligible activities are rewarded. This is forcing our country to become more
unintelligent because we all yarn to be famous and recognized by our peers.