Even though my last post complained that I was unsatisfied with Graff’s justification for plainer language, he at least seemed to be arguing for it. I felt that he agreed with my sentiment that academicease is not only a stumbling block for students trying to enter academia, but for academia to communicate within itself. I had hopes of solutions to come, of more on changing and improving the language we use to communicate our ideas. Chapter 13, however, made it clear that this, in fact, is not one of Graff’s goals.<\/p>\n
Graff starts chapter 13 saying, “It is not surprising if students feel ambivalent about talking the talk of the academic world, since this ambivalence is pervasive in the larger society in which academics’ funny way of talking is a common joke” (246). By the middle of the chapter, Graff has morphed the topic into bringing “students into a debate over the pros and cons of learning literate intellectual discourse” (257). By the last page, he discusses getting students to “reflect on their contradictory feelings about intellectualism and its talk” (260). What was seen as a joke<\/em> becomes literate intellectual discourse <\/em>becomes intellectualism and its talk<\/em> as if–despite all the earlier discussion of hidden intellectualism–in the end, for Graff there is no separating intellectualism from the way it talks. While my goal is to address the language we use, to address why this language is a common joke, clearly, Graff’s goal is not to change the language but the students. <\/p>\n It seems that all Graff is concerned about is a smoother method of introducing students into academia and academic jargon. He wants to make intellectuals of students, and he argues for a transition by gentle immersion rather than sink or swim, which is noble enough.<\/p>\n As we come to the end of the book, the solutions that Graff offers seemed to jump from too narrow to too broad. Graff concludes with Deborah Meier’s ideas, promoting the notion that “the world of school knowledge and ideas needs to be organized as a coherent and intelligible culture whose practices make sense” (263). Now I have to ask: Would anyone argue with that? I like some of her ideas, but it is too broad a concept to cover in one chapter. The middle chapters had some good ideas, but as Sara mentions, it is rather grab bag. Honestly, the best, most useful part for me was the epilogue. Ultimately, I finished the book feeling frustrated. I like the idea of the word of the day, where students and teacher alike try to assimilate the language of the other. But really? There’s a tremendous gap between students and academia; so, let them have a word of the day? Let them use quotes? I have to ask: Is this the best we can do?<\/p>\n Perhaps, I’m just grumpy because Graff abandoned the issue I want to battle against: academicease. But I think it\u2019s more his overarching goal that rankles me. Graff says, “I see my goal as a teacher, and the bottom line goal of education, as that of demystifying the \u2018club we belong to’ and breaking up its exclusivity. I want to help students enter this club” (24-25). Breaking up the exclusivity is nice, but is the goal really just to help students enter the club? If that\u2019s the goal of teaching, what’s the point of the club? <\/p>\n I have been grappling with the purpose of teaching literature, with our goal, from the beginning of this class. The more I read of Graff, the clearer his focus on “the club” became, and the more turned off I felt. Is Graff so emerged in the academic club that he can’t come up with any goal beyond the club itself? In the end, despite Graff’s call for breaking up exclusivity, he seems so very far removed from the real public discourse, so very Marie Antoinette.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even though my last post complained that I was unsatisfied with Graff’s justification for plainer language, he at least seemed to be arguing for it. I felt that he agreed with my sentiment that academicease is not only a stumbling block for students trying to enter academia, but for academia to communicate within itself. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}