Tag Archives: Graff

Comments on Graff, Part 2

My thoughts this week are a bit more disjointed and scattered than my past posts have been. I have been sick, so this may have something to do with it. On the other hand, I found the last chapters of Clueless in Academe much more of a hodgepodge than the first seven. That being said, I found these chapters much more engaging and practical than those we read last week. (I previously commented that Graff identified problems, and even suggested some solutions, but offered no practical way to implement them). Although these last chapters seemed more of a grab-bag, Graff does suggest some practical approaches to engaging students and bridging the gap between academic and student life.

As Graff points out, students are steeped in their own culture of argumentation. Students argue passionately with their friends about any number of issues (as Graff points out in his anecdotes about sports, nerds, and tough kids). This argument culture starts much earlier, though. As anyone who has ever stood in line behind a four year-old and his mom at the grocery store knows, kids learn how to make claims, counterclaims, and pre-emptive arguments almost as soon as they know how to talk. Young kids (and the students they become) simply don’t recognize that what they’re doing is in any way “academic.”

According to Graff: “schools should be tapping far more than they do into students’ youthful argument cultures, which are not as far removed as they seem from public forms of argument” (155). When I first read this suggestion, I was a bit skeptical. Sure, some students argue passionately and articulately about things that matter to them; however, there are just as many students who “argue” with adjectives, i.e. “that sucks,” or “that’s cool.”

The key, as Graff points out, it isn’t enough to simply teach a unit on popular music and expect students to jump into an academic conversation. (Additionally, if it’s not done right, students might react negatively to teachers “being fake” or “trying to look cool.” Teachers need to give students the vocabulary of argumentation, which they can then apply to classroom conversations about any number of issues. As teachers and educational scholars, we are steeped in academic lingo. We forget that even if students have the skills to articulate their position on an issue, they may not have the right vocabulary. Graff identifies modeling basic argumentative structure and clarifying key terms (such as “claim,” “counter,” “maintain”) as two relatively simple things teachers can do to help imrove students’ argumentative skills.

Another great suggestion comes from Chapters 10, “Outing Criticism.” Although criticism is often confusing (even alienating), Graff makes a great argument for introducing students to it sooner and more frequently. Of course, teachers need to pre-select articles that are written clearly and are not steeped in excessive jargon. Bearing that in mind, if used properly, critical writing could radically alter the way students think about literature. In addition to demystifying the academic world, it could demonstrate that literature is relevant outside of the classroom, expose students to the larger “intellectual conversation,” and provide them with a potential “naysayer” for future essays they may write.

As I finish this post, I am realizing that I have to retract (or at least qualify) some of my earlier comments. I initially said that I felt this half of the book was not as cohesive as the first. While the topics were more varied, there is a common thread running through the last seven chapters: taking students seriously. If we take students seriously, we recognize that their interests are valid. We acknowledge their pre-existing conversational and argumentative skills. This type of validation, from a student perspective, is priceless. It creates a classroom environment in which students feel at ease, and are thus more likely to fully engage and participate in the learning experience.

Pedagogic Treatise or Academic Discourse, or Teacher Talk:

“Not knowing to any degree of certainty, I decline to elucidate lest I should prevaricate.” This was one of my grandfather’s favorite expressions and one that I use on my composition students when we talk about word choice and voice. Do you know what it means without using a dictionary or thesaurus? When I my students what I just said, they usually answer, “I don’t know.” I tell them they are correct. Then they are really confused.

Do academics talk the way they write? I don’t think so. Several years ago my father went on a weekend trip with a group of men from the church we attend. Among the men was the pastor of the church. My father came home amazed at the sense of humor, down-home attitude, and genuine earthiness of the pastor. He was surprised that a man with his education and devotion to God would tell jokes in the ice cream store at midnight. I think academics are the same. When they are with a group of people they are not trying to impress with their erudite dialogue (I did not look up either of those words), they probably use slang and begin their sentences with coordinate conjunctions. They may even split their infinitives and mix their metaphors. It is only when they try to impress an audience (or scare them) that they resort to multi-syllabic words from the academic-speak side of the chart. They probably speak from the other side of the chart. This is not to say that a few words won’t eventually cross over from academic-speak to Realspeak, but most will remain enshrined on the academic side.

This type of vocabulary building and use engenders inert knowledge. Think back to the vide we watched on our first night of class. Inert knowledge is that information we posses but do not use. This is the same as dividing our words, or encouraging our students to, into separate lists, some to be used regularly and others to be saved for special occasions. This is not to belittle the use of a thesaurus or dictionary. A good vocabulary is a wonderful thing. But it only serves its function when it enhances communication, not when it obfuscates it. (Do you like that word? It is on my academic-speak list. I know it but don’t use it. Is it better than obscures? No. neither is it worse because both are clear.) While building a good vocabulary is to be admired, the goal should be to communicate, to share ides, to be inclusive. Otherwise we are writing without an audience.

To change metaphorical horses in mid-stream, I want to tell you about my literature class this morning. The students are each leading the class discussion one time over the course of the semester. The instructions state that the student does not have to come to class with answers, or explanations, or an analysis of the reading. They simply need to have done several careful readings of the text. The presentation this morning was about “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. As the student was finishing, he referred to a criticism he had read that alleged that the jagged form of the right had side of the poem on the paper was a symbol for the violence in the African-American community. The jagged edge represented broken class or the points of a knife while the smooth lines of the ending stanza represented a razor blade. The class was amazed when I disagreed with this interpretation. They seemed to be of the opinion that if it is published it must be true.

The people who are creating these long-winded, dense, bewildering articles are doing a disservice to students and young scholars. While I don’t think we want the simplified language if elementary students, and while I strive to achieve and use a good vocabulary, the words must be used to enhance the ideas, not to obscure them.

Here is a P.S. for you. Each time I compose any writing to be submitted as part of a class, I check the Flesch-Kincaid reading level. If it is less than 12, I am mortified and revise until it reaches at least 12. (Does anybody know how high this thing goes? I read a 15 a few days ago.) Can you guess what this writing earned? Do you care? Did it make sense? Do you care?

A Relevant Sunday Comic, and Getting a Clue Part II – Thoughts on “Teaching the Club”

Just wanted to share this link before I got into my post – it’s the April 6th strip of the comic Frazz and its take on school and intellectualism. I’m having a bit of trouble with the code side of things, otherwise I would have given a direct link. But in any case, here it is – sorry you’ll have to cut and paste:

www.comics.com/comics/frazz

And now, for my post…

246-255

What I am about to say is probably already evident from my previous posts this semester – I consider myself more of a writing teacher than I do a literature teacher. I do believe teaching literature is integral to a student’s development as a thinker, but the real thrust for me is literature’s role in a student’s development as a writer. My opinion regarding academic discourse versus more creative expression, then, is similar to Graff’s. There is no need for a sharply divided, contentious debate that one is superior to the other. Rather, students should be exposed to both modes just as they are exposed to multiple genres of literature. The key (as I have said in class) is to teach audience awareness and authentic voice, two elements of composition which allow the writer to walk the fine line between academic language and more personal prose. Jones provides a solid opportunity for his students to develop this sense of navigation, specifically in the way he asks them to evaluate their own writing and differentiate between the rhetorical requirements of various professors and assignments. This makes the idea of combining two voices more relevant to a student’s own academic achievement as opposed to reviewing samples of such work written by other (professional) writers. Once again, the student writer becomes more aware of what he or she already knows, an understanding of “discursive variations” that otherwise might not have been brought to the forefront. That Jones noticed his students still resisting the language while actively engaging in the process itself identifies immersion in an academic tongue and experience as fruitful pedagogy for the teaching of argumentation. It is somewhat like running in cooler weather – though the intensity of the act is still the same (or perhaps stronger) as it would have been in another climate, the reaction to such an experience is less exhausting and more effective (i.e., as a runner might push himself harder without noticing, so might a student adopt the offending discourse without as much opposition). As Graff points out, however, Jones does not go about this lesson in a secretive way. He is open with his students about the struggles they experience and places a name on a frequently ignored, esoteric quality of academia.

261-263

Meier’s theory is a strong one. Though I’m sure she would disagree with a number of educational theorist whom I hold dear (Peter Elbow most notably), I find the premise of her ideas engaging. She understand the reason why students gradually lose enthusiasm for school, turning into reluctantly shuffling automatons from the excited, “look what I did at school today, Mommy!” little ones who can’t wait to go to school every day. When children are young, school makes sense. They learn about the world through play (a relevant personal activity). As they age, however, the idea of school becomes more and more complex and disengaged from the lives they lead outside the building’s walls. The less sense education makes, the more likely a student is to shy away from it and find the experience pointless, if not exasperating.

266-267

I wonder what Meier would have to say about the current “unschooling” phenomenon in which children are left to do precisely what Meier says nonwhite teachers and parents find objectionable: find out everything they need to know on their own. Unschooling presupposes the idea that a child’s natural curiosity will lead to great discovery and learning as long as it allowed to progress unchecked. While homescholing families follow a traditional curriculum, unschooling families tend to eschew schedules and allow their children to do whatever they want, whether that means playing outside all day, devoting nine hours to online gaming or playing with a personal chemistry set just because the mood strikes. Parents who choose to unschool do so precisely because they object Meier’s strict adherence to adult authority. Many of them, in fact, are strong supporters of John Taylor Gatto and have probably read Dumbing Us Down several times, cover to cover. I am not a proponent of unschooling, and I find Meier’s premise intriguing, but I think there has to be a happy medium of sorts – an environment in which students experience self discovery under the guidance of adult authority.

270-271

I find it interesting that “staunch lefties” attack Meier and her schools for not removing the “wrong” beliefs from textbooks. I agree with Meier: if students don’t know that these debates exist, how will they ever learn to formulate their own opinions and be able to defend those positions in a public forum? The trend toward political correctness assumes that differences don’t exist, that all values in life are equal. Meier should be applauded for exposing her students to cultural debate.

Final Thoughts

Synthesis. It’s what we want from our students – and what we should expect from ourselves. Solid education requires cohesive instruction and inclusion in an intellectual community in which students are not only aware of cultural and academic debates but are guided in the process of such discussions and encouraged to take part in them as well. True thinkers flourish in an environment of thoughtful and engaging discourse. How much longer will it take for educators and policy makers to get a clue?

-Ginny

And the award for “least sexy description of sex” goes to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick…

Ok, ok. So this post title has little to do with the actual contents of my post. That being said, I had to point out the passage (p.143, paragraph 2) because in terms of unnecessarily obfuscated academic writing, Sedgwick really gives Frederic “The dialectic of desire is thus…something like a negation of a negation” Jameson a run for his money. Just reading the excerpts from Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet brought me back to some of the denser texts I “read” during the course of my undergraduate education.

I think at some point, most high achieving students have tried to mimic this “style,” and to varying degrees of success. They do it for several overlapping reasons: they think they have to, teachers expect it, and they want to sound “smart.” As I admitted last week, I have certainly turned in my fair share of papers steeped in words like “problematize,” “orientate,” and perhaps most embarassingly, “phenomenological.” It took me most of my college education to figure out that throwing around such words does not in fact make you sound “smart.” It just makes you sound like a show-off, and a boring one at that.

Graff’s assessment of the inaccessibility of academic writing is spot-on. He does a superb job of articulating the “so what” portion of his main thesis. The first several chapters of Clueless in Academe demonstrate in varied ways how disconnection within academia and needlessly arcane texts work to both alienate students and further confine academics to their ivory tower. My issue with Graff’s assessment is not in his articulation of the problem. As with with most academic writing, troubles crop up during the “now what?” portion of the work.

To be fair, I’ve only read half of this book. Perhaps his practical solutions to these problems appear in chapters 8 through 14. I’m only working with what I’ve read so far; but frankly, nothing I’ve read so far has even remotely convinced me that a grand restructuring of academia is either a good idea, or even possible. In fact, the very idea of “the gist business” (138) appalls me. That isn’t to say that academics shouldn’t do a better job of communicating their ideas to their students and non-scholars. Of course they should. But reducing academic discourse to reductive summarization seems to me a step backwards, rather than a step forward.

The other issue I take with Graff’s proposed solutions to “curricular disconnection” relates to his call for a more comparative curriculum. In Graff’s ideal world, scholars would still argue, but respectfully. Teacher swapping would help students form links between competing ideologies and create synergistic “learning communities” (79-80). Having attended a university where certain members of the same department could barely contain their mutual detest for one other (never mind their ambivalence towards students), I just don’t see how this Graff’s dream-world would have any chance of becoming a reality—at least not without a massive restructuring in the tenure system in most large universities.

I hate to be a cynic, and I hate to even describe universities as “businesses,” but let’s not kid ourselves. If universities are in the “business” of anything, it’s luring academic superstars, securing research grants, funding sports programs, squeezing their students dry, and pumping wealthy alumni for cash–and not necessarily in that order. Graff’s suggestions are certainly uplifting, but they assume that professors have the time, power, and incentive to redefine the structure of the academic world.

Getting a clue – thoughts on Graff

Page 25

As educators, we take academic discourse for granted. We expect students to care about the issues we bring up even though they are presented in an academic vacuum (for instance, Graff’s example of the views of love in the 15^th century). These ideas must be given context; students need to know why they should care. A working knowledge of courtly love is integral to studying the Divine Comedy, but that explanation isn’t enough for the average 16 to 22 year old. The trick is, this information must not only relate to their own lives but to the society in which they live.

Page 39

I find troubling Graff’s implication that academia must sell itself. Doesn’t this essentially debase the quality of higher education? College isn’t a television show or music video, though some of the pop culture courses showing up on university campuses might lead one to believe that is the case.

Student life offices and academic departments operate on two totally different wavelengths as it is – I will never forget the day that Mason’s “Take Back the Night” observance began right in the middle of my Literary Scholarship meeting with a local band playing outside our classroom. Professor Owens was livid that the band’s amplifier created an impromptu (and unwanted) soundtrack for his lecture.

Page 45

Academic problems are not seen as problems – there is a “who cares” mentality of “when will I ever need to use this?” Honestly, I’m not sure if the counter argument of “It will help you become a better thinker/express yourself better” is a useful one to high school (and some college) students. The current education system has become a series of hoops to jump through because courses are compartmentalized and irrelevant to one another.

Page 47

Crandus’ students see textual explication as pointless – of course they will, unless it is placed within a relevant context. Students have to see themselves as part of the world and the texts they study as relevant to that world, not just some confusing garble of words written by dead white men.

Students compartmentalize their education and we help them. Subjects are separated, so school is separated from life. It has no bearing other than the expectations of their parents and the ubiquitous college degree. Many adults still feel this way, especially when it comes to literature. We’ve talked before about how many of us have been asked absurd questions like, “What’s the point of English class?” or “Why don’t you study something useful?” from our own peers in the real world.

Page 49

The compartmentalization of schooling leaks over into categorizing life. The response “How would I know what the author would think? We’re not close friends” is an example of such grouping. Students feel so strongly about individualism that they have denied the universal experience of humanity. We are a culture of egos – it is almost impossible to identify or even empathize with others because individuality is king.

Page 56

Individualism has damaged students’ perception of why persuasion has value. Relativism states that everyone is entitled to his own opinion or set of moral standards, so what is true for “me” may not necessarily be true for “you.” Therefore, it’s not acceptable (or PC) to try and persuade someone of your opinion (much less present it on the chance you might offend someone).

Graff says this lack of interest in persuasion is a symptom not of relativism but of the collegiate generation’s lack of faith that their opinions matter in the democratic scheme of things. He misses the point – in a relativistic society, no one’s opinions matter because they are all the same. Without a standard against which to judge what is true and what is false, everything is true. Thus, opinions (and votes) are meaningless.

Page 68

Ignoring contradictions in text is another sign of relativism’s impact. Why discuss differing opinions (or even notice them) if everyone has them and they are (again) all the same where truth is concerned?

Page 85

Civilized debate requires that those who debate respect one another. Today’s culture dictates that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, and that only true intellectuals take or hold your position. Look at politics – liberals think conservatives are close-minded bigots; republicans think democrats are bleeding-heart socialists. Even members of the same political party slip into this (take Obama and Hilary, for example, who seem to revel in personal attacks rather than debating the issues of their campaigns).

Page 88

Tannen’s discussion of “debate/discussion” clearly illustrates the semantics/political correctness game. One is supposedly preferable to the other, because in a discussion you are somehow less likely to be violently affronted. I find this ridiculous – I have been violently affronted in many “discussions.” What it boils down to is an issue of respect for the person whom you are debating and the understanding that it is okay to present one’s own opinion even if it might be counter to someone else’s. Disagreeing with someone doesn’t make you ignorant.

Pages 122-123

Graff’s discussion of tone brings up the sense of superiority redolent in academia. Why must academic writing and discussion be so esoteric, so inaccessible? To me it almost feels as though this is a way of keeping the Ivory Tower ivory, despite all of its talk about diversity.

Page 126

Students are forced into split identities not only in courses and professorial expectations but in their writing as well. They are expected to walk a fine line between accessible and academic, leading a great number of novice students to slip into “I don’t care” mode – the same as that caused by the isolated academic problem.

Final thoughts:

Graff implies that closing the curriculum gap takes understanding on the part of the teachers and academic policy makers (70). I agree. They (we, really) are products of the same system and compartmentalize just as much as the students do, perpetuating the problem out of habit and comfort. Everybody talks about cross-curriculum mapping, but how many of us really want to do it? While we admit that good teaching is all about sharing and “stealing” ideas from other educators, we happily ensconce ourselves in our classrooms and go about our business, quite pleased to avoid outside interference in the realm in which we excel. In addition, we reinforce the relativist ideology by exhibiting the very same behaviors we eschew in our students. Like Graff points out, we don’t like to publicly disagree – we muzzle ourselves so no one individual gets their own way. God forbid we offend somebody, because what is right for me may not be right for somebody else.

Our attitudes are the reason why good English students don’t see that the skills learned in a Literature or Comp course carry over into writing clear lab reports or research papers for other disciplines. We are as much a part of the problem as the solution.