Street Smarts?

[Verisimilitude]

I have often been told my many people in my life that I am more book smart than street smart, but I've never been able to nail down a clear definition of what is street smart. How would you guys define what is street smart and how can I work on my street smarts?

 

[Oskar]

I think the distinction most people are making when they talk about street and book smarts is that street smarts is your social savvyness while book smarts is how knowledgeable you are. How socially savvy you are is much more dependent on your ability to act well immediately in different situations while your knowledgeability is more passive and intimately tied to what you learn from books; usually implicitly being perceived as theoretical knowledge instead of practical. From a social perspective, a book smarts person knows much but is less accurate in the way they apply that knowledge while someone with street smarts isn't necessarily knowledgeable but their use of what they do know is skillful and comes off as natural. But when a book smart person applies their knowledge and ability to learn in mastering the social arts, and succeeds in that regard by having a wide spectrum of experiences and developing killer instincts through them, someone like Chase is born.

Best,
Oskar

 

[Estate]

I'm trying to think of an example but not coming up with anything good...

Watch the show the Big Bang Theory.... all the guys are "book smart"... they really over-emphasise it with Sheldon... ridiculously intelligent but in so lacks much knowledge about social interaction or norms. Everything must meet a formula for him, which of course, is never true.

I guess the street smart person in Penny... she's not a college genius but she knows the ways of the world where the guys don't.

The problem lies here though... you can't really ask "What is street smart" and expect to read and answer and get it. That's the very definition of someone whos BOOKSMART!

You just have to live life man. Go out and interact with more people, live on the wild side a little.
Someone whos' street smart usually just knows the ways of the world and knows things don't always follow the rulebook.

 

[BlackBolt]

Street smarts are basically the unwritten laws of society. The way I understand street smarts can be summed up in Elijah Anderson's (a sociologist from Yale) article entitled Code of the Streets. Before going to college I lived in an urban area and these unwritten laws can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Now street smarts aren't always this extreme but they are pretty much the laws that aren't explicitly stated. A great way to develop street smarts is to just meet different types of people from different walks of life and accumulate reference points. That way you'll have the "street smarts" to thrive in almost any social situation.