In high school we had a friend we can simply call Marshall. He wasn't the best student in school, but he was quite intelligent in other ways, for example, he could never concentrate enough to study, but he was one of the smartest people that I have never met in other respects. For example, he could order new auto parts over the Internet and install them on his car by briefly reading a manual. Students like this are exactly who Graff's essay is aimed at. One thing my friend Marshall was known for was being one of the most competitive people in the world, in a head to head foot race Marshall would refuse to let anyone beat him. In his essay, Graff compares the real world to something similar "for here is another thing which never occurred to me and which is still hidden from students, with tragic consequences: that the real intellectual world, the one that existed in the big world beyond school, is organized like the world of team sports, with rival texts, rival interpretations and evaluations of the texts, rival theories on the reasons for which they should be read and taught and team competitions developed. Now, teachers have never really taught high school students this sad but all too true reality, it might be helpful to teach this lesson to children. For example, let's take children like Marshall who would cut off their arm before