Street Smart vs. Book Smart

I have met some of the smartest dumb people in my life because they live their lives through what they learned on the street. This begs me to ask the question, which is more valuable in life: book smarts or street smarts?

 

Both cancel each other out.

Life experience vs Literary intelligence

I guess it really depends on the situation/context.

 

I agree with you to an extend, but I'm leaning more on the side of being street smart. Someone who possesses street smarts can also have book smarts, but usually people who have book smarts only rely on their intelligence.

Also, you can learn how to be book smart in school but even someone with a Harvard degree can still lack common sense.

 

extent*

And book smarts x100. A lot of people, some even my friends say they're street smart but not book smart. Well being street smart doesn't get you a nice job or money.

 

Book smarts aren’t getting me out of a speeding ticket, but street smarts are, as they have multiple times. Book smarts aren’t going to help convince your professor to round your grade up to the next letter but street smarts will.

 

The amount of advantages book smarts has outweighs the advantages of street smarts. A simple parking ticket is a small disadvantage compared to how much more smarter you'll be. You'll most likely already have a higher grade even with your grade rounded if you were booksmart.

 

Being exclusively street smart might be more fun or get you out of shit for an easy life but at most you'll be a minimum wage lower class in the system we live in.

Being book smart exclusively will usually guarantee a career and more of a chance at being very rich.

Book smart people can be very street smart though, only a small minority are stuck up and clueless.

 

It's hard to weigh the two. I like my balance which is like a 70-30 between book smarts and street smarts. If I had to choose between the two though being solely book smart with no common sense is better than being an uneducated "street smart" person.

 

Based solely on my one friend who is ''street smart'' and a high school drop out, I'm goin to have to say I'd rather keep my book smarts. My main pet peeve with the street smart is that they usually are arrogant and think they are very smart (solely going off my friend) when in reality, they can't even keep a simple garage mechanic job or a job at burger king.

 

It's hard to compare garage mechanic and job at burger king to be fair. Garage mechanics aren't street smart. That job requires a fair bit of knowledge and training meanwhile burger flipping requires well just hands really.

 

As a burger flipper in the local mechanics garage, this comment offends me.

 

This comparison has always annoyed me, it's like comparing apples and oranges. Both may be similar in that you call upon your either to handle situations, but both are so very independent of each other, and they're learned in such different ways that it doesn't make sense to expect one could only have one or the other. Or should only value one or the other.

They're learned in different ways, and you're capable of developing both knowledge AND wisdom at the same time.

 

As a mechanic at the local burger king this comment offends ME.

You're after my job and I wont have it!

Seriously lumping the two together or something like flipping burgers to any skilled trade is crazy.

Ones making minimum wage and the other is often making $20-$30/hr+ . Let alone takes skill and intelligence.

 

Street smarts goes a lot deeper then what you think. It falls under common sense and critical thinking skills. While someone with "book smarts" might figure out how much time it will take our train to get to our destination. The street smart guy will take into account the time of day, how many people might be there, and every other little factor that can affect our trip.

 

Firstly there is many kinds of 'Street Smart' Intelligence gained outside of school. Just as useful as book smarts, and in many cases more so. It can be divided into 4 categories.

1.Getting Along With Others- Knowing which questions to ask and not asking too many,being polite and friendly, but also being assertive.

2.Common Sense- Knowing who you can trust, which areas in town are good and which are bad, etc.

3.Self-defense-Knowing how to fight and fend off an attacker, especially if you are small.

4.BS-detection-Knowing when people are trying to mess you over, reading their intentions, and knowing that most corporate advertisements are complete bullshit.

If someone genuinely has all these traits then yes I'd rather be Street Smart but 9 times outta 10 their not genuinely street smart and just think they are because they can charm the police women or discover when the train arrives...

 

I pride myself on both. I understand street smarts, and to Zeus' comment, I have gotten out of speeding tickets, but I am both book smart and street smart so I don't get pulled over much as I can read the speed limit signs.

 

There's more than 2 types of intelligence. Street start and book smart are ambiguous.

 

You're all acting as if you can't have both sorts of intelligence. They're ambiguous terms anyway, but if you're referring to academia compared to life experience, it's a rather silly question.

EVERYONE gathers life experience as they continue living. Being academically successful is both a choice and a habit as an extension of that; it is also in turn likely to contribute to your life experience given you use your academics productively. Personally, I'd rather be a researcher than a brick layer or a factory worker, so this suits me perfectly.

 

Pretty sure everyone is aware of being able to possess knowledge in both. It's just the matter of one of the two outweighing the other. Think of it as a scale, while it is true that we gain life experience as we continue living, however it's the type of experience we are deciphering.

People who are generally book smart are stereotypically viewed as someone who lacks knowledge of the outside world. This is not always the case, but it is plausible to suggest that the percentile of people who fall in this category is over 50%.

Now onto street smart. What makes a person street smart? Being able to sense danger when approached to it? Or having common knowledge of the people around you in terms of repeated actions/mannerisms and the likely hood of their response? It's really hard to say as it can be interpreted in many ways.

This is what we are discussing.

 

I like how you are essentially saying everyone is wrong when the entirety of your response is off topic save the last sentence.

Just saying street smarts and book smarts are not synonyms with life experience and academia. Derp