Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind
by Gerald Graff
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gerald GraffEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-07-11
ISBN: 0300105142
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind
Book Review: Here's a clue for university professors
Summary: 4 Stars
Summary statement
This book offers a critique of academic culture--in particular, a critique of the role of argumentation within academic culture. Graff believes that a battle has been raging for the soul of academia between a view that sees academic culture as inherently esoteric and specialized and a view that aspires to "outreach" and greater influence within wider society. He sees university students losing in this battle as opportunities to be introduced into the conversations through which they might learn the life of the mind are increasingly few and far between.
Graff's solution to the crisis he pinpoints is in part the work of university administrators (he has some quarrels with the structure of academic departments and with the ways academics communicate with one another). However, he does offer some practical advice for teachers of composition. His primary argument is that students need to be invited into academic discourse, and that it is incumbent on those that teach composition to invite them in--using language they can understand and offering help with the strange structures that academic arguments can take. Graff's practical advice goes beyond the strategic level--he does offer some tactical ideas (e.g., creating argument templates to help students learn the rhythm of argumentation).
Here's a quote from the book that should give you a sense of Graff's style and convictions: "`Criticism' is just a fancy word for what any of us do when we respond to any text. Therefore, students are already producing a form of criticism as soon as they begin to talk about a text in class or write a paper about it. Now, it just makes no sense to ask students to produce a kind of discourse that they rarely see an example of. It makes no sense to withhold from students the discourse that we expect them to produce--and punish them for not producing well" (p. 175).
Summary of Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind
Our schools and colleges often make the intellectual life seem more impenetrable, narrowly specialized, and inaccessible than it is or needs to be, argues this eminent scholar and educator, whose provocative book offers a wealth of practical suggestions for making the culture of ideas and arguments more readily understandable.?Graff is reopening the door on a major debate. In the wake of theory, in the wake of feminism, post-colonial criticism and all the rest, what is a liberal arts education supposed to be about? How should teachers teach? What should students learn? Intelligently, humanely, Gerald Graff is bringing all of these questions back home to the classroom, which, at least for now, seems exactly where they belong.?
?Mark Edmundson, Washington Post Book World
?[Graff] writes with lucidity and charm. . . . A worthwhile work.??Steven Lagerfeld, Wall Street Journal
?Clueless in Academe is charming. . . . The reader chuckles in recognition over the tales told of scholars and students.??Terence Kealey, The Times Higher Education Supplement
Gerald Graff, professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of many books and articles, including Beyond the Culture Wars. He was winner of the American Book Award in 1992.
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