Social Conflict, Higher Education - General & Miscellaneous

Beyond the Culture Wars

Name: Beyond the Culture Wars
Author: Gerald Graff
ISBN: 9780393034240

by Gerald Graff

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Overview

Beyond the Culture Wars is the first major and refreshingly down-to-earth response to the torrent of criticism in recent years, mainly from traditionalists, of American higher education. Gerald Graff, a professor of English and education at the University of Chicago, argues that, far from being a sign of decline and disintegration. recent educational conflicts are actually a sign of the health and intellectual vitality of American higher education - but they need to be used creatively. A culturally richer curriculum and a more diverse student body have brought on the conflicts over multiculturalism, "political correctness," and which books belong in the canon. But we tend not to see these as strengths, the author argues, because we think of conflict as un-American and of education as an idealized conflict-free zone. Higher education should be a battleground of ideas. The real problem is that students are not getting more out of the battle. It is time, Graff argues, that we stopped lamenting the appearance of conflict in education and began turning our controversies to positive account. Drawing on nearly thirty years of experience as a teacher and administrator, the author shows how the conflicts now confusing students have the potential to help them make better sense of their education and the increasingly conflicted society in which they live. By teaching the conflicts even anger and hostility unleashed over the questions of "political correctness" and the humanities canon can be channeled into educationally productive debate. Graff points out that the most neglected party in the culture wars is the one ostensibly being fought over: the student. We tend to become so embroiled in the warfare between opposing lists of books, he argues, that we forget that for most American students the problem has always been books as such, regardless of which faction is drawing up the reading list. In lively accounts of his own teaching of the canon conflicts and a typical deba

By studying the debate over multiculturalism and the curriculum, teachers, administrators, and students alike can actually make good use of the crisis to tackle real problems, such as academic incoherence and student apathy. Excerpted in Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Decrying conservatives who claim higher education offers a choice between culture and barbarism, University of Chicago English professor Graff argues eloquently for a curriculum that includes political debates and multicultural texts. Though he brushes away charges of left-wing McCarthyism too easily, he skewers critic Dinesh D'Souza's claim that dead white males are being expelled firom required courses. Graff suggests that conservatives' only strategy to deal with conflicting views is to deny their legitimacy, and he wisely notes that the term common culture is always evolving. Using evidence from his own teaching, Graff shows how incorporating literary criticism written by the African novelist Chinua Achebe helped revise his teaching of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He suggests that the ideological conflicts that accompany the curricular problem are getting students to grapple with ideas. Observing that students often have teachers with conflicting beliefs and assumptions in different classes, Graff concludes by surveying current innovative attempts at curriculum integration; oddly, he doesn't mention his own university's Great Books program. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Graff (English, Univ. of Chicago) here addresses Allan Bloom ( The Closing of the American Mind , LJ 5/1/87), Dinesh D'Souza ( Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus , LJ 3/15/91), and other conservative critics of multiculturalism and political correctness in the schools. He believes that teaching about cultural conflicts is a sign of vitality and hope and that it contributes to the development of a common culture. He debunks what he considers to be the myth of the vanishing classics and argues that the ``course fetish'' and ``cult of the teacher'' exacerbate conflict. Graff instead touts his program for incorporating conflicting and variant ideas into the curriculum as the best insurance for a democratic society. This provocative and controversial book is an essential acquisition for balanced subject collections.-- Shirley L. Hopkinson, SLIS, San Jose State Univ., Cal.