Only those who have power, for example, can define what is correct or incorrect. Only those who have power can decide what constitutes intellectualism. Once the intellectual parameters are set, those who want to be considered intellectuals must meet hte requirements of the profile dictated by the elite class. To be intellectual one must do what those with the power to define intellectualism do. The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as nonintellectual.
I am auditing a class this semester on Quantitative Reasoning with Prof. Marilyn Frankenstein offered through the College of Public and Community Service at Umass Boston. The above quote was mentioned in our first class and taken from Literacy: Reading the World & The Word by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo (who is also on the UMass Boston faculty). Connect this to the oft criticized communications of today’s youth despite the slowly emerging recognition of a New Literacy: > … young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.