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Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind
Reviewed by Shirley Brice Heath
Gerald Graff. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003
Books that include in their titles blanket indictments of the profession or of institutions of education have become fashionable. Readers drawn to such works expect the same messages to be repeated again and again: teachers and students do not connect; the inertia of schooling prevents change; only individual rebels and saints manage to make a difference in students' lives; and once burnout sets in for these pioneers, the institutions of education carry forward no evidence of their efforts at change.
Graff's book echoes all of these points, and like others who write with the passionate desire that schooling might change, he is eternally optimistic. Contrary to what Graff's title suggests (for it decidedly accentuates the negative), his book is often positive. He does not call for wide-sweeping structural changes in universities (or any schooling, for that matter), but emphasizes the small manners and means of possible difference. He points out the promise of having students learn to write across genres, bring their understanding of popular culture into classrooms, and take part in substantive discussions. He gets at the heart of an issue that escapes most academics: schooling prefers to give students problems to solve rather than to create situations in which students have the opportunity to detect and articulate problems. His chapter on "the problem problem and other oddities of academic discourse" is bound to stimulate some creative ideas for curricular rearrangement and performance of learning.
Graff urges that professors find ways to talk across their disciplines, audiences, and purposes. He speaks as a teacher of courses in writing and from a decidedly humanist bent; his perspective is therefore that of someone teaching a "useful" course whose content can reach beyond the usual boundaries of disciplines. The teaching of writing is quite different from instruction in biology, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, or engineering, for these areas must ensure at least some commonly held factual and procedural base to be grasped by students until they reach a level of fluency that allows maneuvering toward creative ideas. No such demand is made of the teaching of writing. The wide range of topics of first-year writing courses in higher-education institutions leaves little doubt that course content (as distinct from processes) depends more on the expertise and interest of the current crop of instructors than on disciplinary expectations of scope and sequence.
The heart of Graff's book is an examination of argument and its power to enable students to grasp "conflict" as a fundamental principle in academic learning. Graff desperately wants universities (and all schools) to motivate and prepare learners to engage with accessible ideas. He urges academics to collaborate with journalists and others who bring research findings (albeit often in highly simplified form) to the public. He suggests serious reflection on what may be the overvaluation of explanation and analysis by scholars and the undervaluation of such activity by students. Missing here is evidence that Graff sees the importance of explanation and analysis for the social sciences; pre-professional fields such as engineering, medicine, law, and business; and the hard sciences and mathematics, or that he understands how analysis relates to theory development and the advancement of information and knowledge. Humanists and those who are (often unfairly) labeled "armchair" thinkers may have little trouble with Graff's plea that those within the university move closer to popular culture, sound bites, and accessible prose. Yet for those whose research involves collecting data, systematically applying tools of analysis, and deriving theories, Graff's ideas may seem to reflect the great divide between them and humanists.
Graff's book points to another divide as well. There are those who believe that students observe, take in, and care about what happens in the world beyond their daily activities and plans, and those who believe that few students are concerned about areas beyond their special interests. Graff falls in the former group, apparently believing that students watch CNN, read about world affairs, and think about what they learn in school in relation to contemporary events. Sadly, many college instructors find little evidence of such serious engagement. Were intellectual curiosity and civic engagement the norm, students would be far more likely to come to classrooms prepared to argue, muster evidence, and take up a search for information to build knowledge.
In a section titled "The Application Guessing Game," Graff forthrightly relates a challenge he received from a teacher who critiqued ideas he expressed in earlier writings. The challenge asserted that application essays for college admission tend to be judged on their narrative and psychological content and not on their argumentative power or intellectual content. Graff examined this point and came to agree with the challenge. His response, however, is simply to suggest that intellectual engagement could be assessed positively in college application essays if secondary schools fostered positive interaction with intellectual content. He ends his chapter with the deadening statement, "whether America could handle such a thing remains to be seen, but it is worth finding out." The numerous barriers to such change are left for us as readers to sigh over.
In short, there is much to lament, cherish, challenge, and reflect upon in Graff's book. Few could challenge his primary goal of attempting to bring what he terms "academic and student cultures" closer to one another in the interest of making intellectual content and intellectual processes appealing and accessible. Teachers and students in universities, colleges, and schools could benefit by debating Graff's points and by considering the engaging stories he tells. However, the individuals most likely to enter such discussions are those already overstretched and weary from constant multitasking. Moreover, they and their colleagues will need to become even more adept at juggling as they face a growing number of chores created by the increase in micromanagement by administrators responding to accountability and cost-reduction demands from the public sector and government. We can all wonder when and if knowledge and learning can or will again be a primary focus of academe.
Shirley Brice Heath is professor emerita of English, dramatic literature, linguistics, and anthropology at Stanford University and professor at large at the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.
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