What do you think?
Rate this book
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
“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
309 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
23 people are currently reading
403 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
March 26, 2009
Gerald Graff, a professor English and education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, takes universities to task for the gulf between students and teachers. Specialty areas of university professors strike too many students as a distant, impregnable fortress. This is not helped by the way classes are taught and students are treated. Very few leave their university years with an understanding of the intellectual life.
Graff argues that we must do a better job stimulating student interest in the things intellectual. One way to do this is by embracing debate and argument, rather than avoiding them in the interests of feeling good or upholding self-esteem. Young people naturally debate the merits of all sorts of things, from sports to popular culture. This approach needed to be cultivated rather than avoided.
Graff makes some good points, in a curmudgeonly way. However, much of what he writes as he diagnoses the dilemmas of university life comes off as shrill. The best parts of the book are not his diagnoses, but rather his solutions. There are some fine ideas about how to teach at both the university and the high school level. In particular, Graff provides the reader/teacher with a nice road map of how to instruct students in the art of persuasive writing by connecting with topics that are meaningful to students.
Graff argues that we must do a better job stimulating student interest in the things intellectual. One way to do this is by embracing debate and argument, rather than avoiding them in the interests of feeling good or upholding self-esteem. Young people naturally debate the merits of all sorts of things, from sports to popular culture. This approach needed to be cultivated rather than avoided.
Graff makes some good points, in a curmudgeonly way. However, much of what he writes as he diagnoses the dilemmas of university life comes off as shrill. The best parts of the book are not his diagnoses, but rather his solutions. There are some fine ideas about how to teach at both the university and the high school level. In particular, Graff provides the reader/teacher with a nice road map of how to instruct students in the art of persuasive writing by connecting with topics that are meaningful to students.
July 31, 2024
Clueless in Academe~~
I'm going to guess that most of us can unfortunately relate to Gerald Graff's persuasive argument defended in his still-relevant 2003 book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. While its subject matter is directed towards other university professors, high school teachers, and all academic critics, a good case can be made for it also being of interest to those poor, clueless dweebs trying to get an education. I present myself as one of those dweebs who was pretty clueless about what I was doing in college besides make new, interesting friends.
Graff has been trying to teach said life of the mind to college students for thirty-some years, getting more and more frustrated. I haven't read his controversial book before this one, but it sounds as interesting. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education got many educators riled up because they fear encouraging conflict in the classroom.
Such a fear, Graff contends, is instead keeping kids clueless in what they're learning besides accumulating information they probably won't use in life.
I'm reminded of a great, old movie called Teacher's Pet where a veteran newspaper editor learns from a Journalism teacher that besides stating who, what, where, when, and how in a newspaper story, you need to address why too.
If you don't answer the questions “so what?� or “who cares?� with what you're writing, then your reader will not care to read it. This goes for students' essays turned into teachers and learning to write the conflicts, the why of your piece, is crucial for all education for kids to learn and not be clueless.
Too much argumentation or debate is really just an exercise in contradiction. People don't make arguments, which requires considering another person's perspective, as much as stating an opinion merely. Students feel encouraged to become narcissistic and do not learn how to avoid conflict with others. This results in all the conflict and chaos we see today.
Graff brings up a writer I've read, though not this particular book. Deborah Tannen criticizes the idea of teaching the conflicts because kids just need to get along, basically. Graff believes students need to learn how to argue better by reading some professional criticism as guides. You don't just expect them to know how academics think, just like academics should also be able to speak more on students' levels.
As you can see, Graff makes a fine case for reconsidering how kids are taught how to write, indeed think,. I skipped most of a couple chapters that seemed repetitive, but enjoyed most of the book.
Teachers, especially, should read Graff.
POSTSCRIPT---I learned how to write much better after college when I began reviewing books and movies on epinions.com and taking other perspectives into consideration.
I'm going to guess that most of us can unfortunately relate to Gerald Graff's persuasive argument defended in his still-relevant 2003 book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. While its subject matter is directed towards other university professors, high school teachers, and all academic critics, a good case can be made for it also being of interest to those poor, clueless dweebs trying to get an education. I present myself as one of those dweebs who was pretty clueless about what I was doing in college besides make new, interesting friends.
Graff has been trying to teach said life of the mind to college students for thirty-some years, getting more and more frustrated. I haven't read his controversial book before this one, but it sounds as interesting. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education got many educators riled up because they fear encouraging conflict in the classroom.
Such a fear, Graff contends, is instead keeping kids clueless in what they're learning besides accumulating information they probably won't use in life.
I'm reminded of a great, old movie called Teacher's Pet where a veteran newspaper editor learns from a Journalism teacher that besides stating who, what, where, when, and how in a newspaper story, you need to address why too.
If you don't answer the questions “so what?� or “who cares?� with what you're writing, then your reader will not care to read it. This goes for students' essays turned into teachers and learning to write the conflicts, the why of your piece, is crucial for all education for kids to learn and not be clueless.
Too much argumentation or debate is really just an exercise in contradiction. People don't make arguments, which requires considering another person's perspective, as much as stating an opinion merely. Students feel encouraged to become narcissistic and do not learn how to avoid conflict with others. This results in all the conflict and chaos we see today.
Graff brings up a writer I've read, though not this particular book. Deborah Tannen criticizes the idea of teaching the conflicts because kids just need to get along, basically. Graff believes students need to learn how to argue better by reading some professional criticism as guides. You don't just expect them to know how academics think, just like academics should also be able to speak more on students' levels.
As you can see, Graff makes a fine case for reconsidering how kids are taught how to write, indeed think,. I skipped most of a couple chapters that seemed repetitive, but enjoyed most of the book.
Teachers, especially, should read Graff.
POSTSCRIPT---I learned how to write much better after college when I began reviewing books and movies on epinions.com and taking other perspectives into consideration.
November 1, 2011
This is a book that I would recommend to any present students training to be educators and also to any practiced educators that still seek to innovate and grow in their pedagogical methods. I especially enjoyed the book for its clear writing, sustained arguments, and self-consciousness. On the point of self-consciousness, Graff does an excellent job of not only arguing for a particular style of pedagogy that introduces students to past and present academic conversations, but also of trying to exemplify that method in his own writing. As such Graff not only advances a thesis, but also establishes a laboratory within the pages of the book by which to test his ideas. As a student training to be an educator myself, I found this book to be especially formative in tutoring my ideas about the so called "teacher-student" divide and what it means to be an academic/intellectual. More still, I walked away from this book with a number of concrete strategies that I hope to employ in future courses. Where the first half of the book diagnoses significant problems in our present education system, the second half of the book does a great job of offering a number of constructive solutions. The result is a well balanced, accessible, and compelling book.
January 2, 2009
As I was describing my teaching philosophy to someone, he asked me if I had ever read Gerald Graff because my philosophy sounded a lot like what Graff had written. I had not, so I picked up this book and he was right. I'm going to have to think more through what I read but I think that there are quite a few good ideas in this book that I can use to help flesh out my philosophy even more.
September 17, 2007
The basics of academic writing that I feel I should have been exposed to TWO YEARS AGO. Also, how English teachers are weird and what other people think of us, and how to let your students in on academic discourse.
September 17, 2012
Worth reading if you are on a Core Curriculum Committee and the college is overhauling undergraduate curriculum.
July 18, 2007
This wasn't exactly my idea of light summer reading. Heh. Save it for the schoolyear if you're a teacher or student. It's very dense with ideas. I wish all undergraduates could read this. This book kind of tells them their rights as students. Who would I recommend it to? Anyone who is a teacher, or anyone working on a Ph.D. or who is a professor, or anyone who loves intellectualism or who hates intellectualism, or hated college (like me), or anyone who was in any way disappointed with their college experience. It would be good for high school teachers to read because it will help illustrate what they're preparing their students for. I liked how the last chapter is about embracing the fact that no one will ever agree on everything, and it's in the disagreeing that students can find their voices and realize the intellectuals hidden within them. But really, I'd recommend this book to anyone. It's not just for the bookish or the erudite. That's the whole point that Gerald Graff makes in the book. Education itself is not for the bookish or the erudite, it's for everyone and too often, intellectualism, one person's idea of what intellectualism should be (such as a professor's), will scare off the students instead of inviting them to become intellectuals themselves.
Ooh, also the chapter about application essays is golden. It reveals a lot of secrets about how admissions offices really view essays. It reveals secrets about that topic that I haven't seen anywhere else. For example, he says that even if an essay is well-written, cerebral, and on an esoteric topic, Graff says that the student won't get accepted because they didn't let the essay speak for them as a human being.
The book is also very well-written and very well-focused. I don't think there's one glib sentence in the whole book. It was constantly stimulating and taught me so much. It was like a whole semester in one book. I could go on and on about this, but I'll just say that I recommend this to everyone.
September 14, 2020
Some of it was a little confusing, probably because I'm not a teacher. Occasionally I go back and read books about teaching just to sort out in my own mind how I was taught, and what was good and bad about it.
June 7, 2023
This book made me rethink some of my expectations of students at the early college level and how I go about helping them progress. He offers some good examples and practical advice from his own teaching. I've integrated some of it into my own teaching and found it helpful.
December 12, 2021
Really good explanation of the 'point' of education, and of academic arguments (and how to write them). I wish I had read this about 5 years ago. This book is pretty old now, but a lot of Graf's commentary on secondary, undergraduate, and graduate education still felt relevant to me. I was a little surprised when I noticed that this was published back in 2003 - I thought could have been written much more recently! 5 stars, especially for Graf's explanation of how students can write an effective argument and participate in intellectual discourse.
February 24, 2015
A book for those interested in "the life of the mind", Graff makes solid and lasting arguments for the importance of a culture of informed arguments, liberal arts education, and the risk of "silos" in Education. While not without flaw - anyone read in educational theory or the like may wonder about his thoughts on emotional intelligence, which he mentions once, but which studies increasingly link to educational success not only with grades, but also with true educational growth. Still, Graff is not writing a book meant to build in all the answers, but rather a book that starts the conversation - why is there a sense of division between the student and the professor which makes education as a field seem isolated, insular, and unobtainable - in a culture where diverse crowds often experience "impostor syndrome" or find that the field seems too obscured or esoteric to admit them as members, what needs to happen in education? This is what Graff addresses and, if he does not resolve it completely, he does start an informed argument that is proof that he does have merit in his point of view.
The education found in skilled argument does extend beyond just one field, so there is strength to this argument and I would recommend that anyone interested in education read this book in some detail as an idea of the challenges in modern education as a field and the realities or perception of the realities in current college education.
This was technically my second reading of this book, but I read it once as a graduate student and opted to read it anew as I approach the end of my doctoral work and found, as I myself struggle with elements of impostor syndrome, that this book still has merit after years of study in higher education. I do recommend it as an important work, regardless of your view on Graff's accuracy, as it will at least inform you on the perception of higher education from different views.
The education found in skilled argument does extend beyond just one field, so there is strength to this argument and I would recommend that anyone interested in education read this book in some detail as an idea of the challenges in modern education as a field and the realities or perception of the realities in current college education.
This was technically my second reading of this book, but I read it once as a graduate student and opted to read it anew as I approach the end of my doctoral work and found, as I myself struggle with elements of impostor syndrome, that this book still has merit after years of study in higher education. I do recommend it as an important work, regardless of your view on Graff's accuracy, as it will at least inform you on the perception of higher education from different views.
January 1, 2015
Sometimes you run into an intellectual companion who seems to say everything that you've been searching for ways to communicate. I've felt that way since "meeting" Gerald Graff in graduate school. I found this book honest, open, bracing and brilliant. It showed me ways that I fail to live up to my own standards as a teacher, it showed me ideas that I find exciting that I want to find ways to apply in my own work. And it did all of this while recognizing that intelligent readers may disagree, and that there is room for that disagreement. In fact, in many ways Graff sees disagreement as an essential element of any living intellectual community. I think he's right. In any case I loved this book. I think it's powerful, and deserves to be read, taught, and considered by anyone who cares about education, its purposes, and how we can improve it.
July 30, 2011
This is the second time I have read this great book. I learn as much from the way Graff writes about academics (which is very clearly with great examples and good support) as well as what he has to say. A key idea is that good academic writing always puts ideas in their academic context, which is the thoughts of other writers on the subject. We (Christy Karnes, Jon Bennett, Matt Bart, and I) had a great discussion yesterday regarding Graff's ideas about using pop culture in academic settings.
August 7, 2008
Intro makes sense and touches on a subject that needs exposure.
How to develop a logical and applicable argument in the academic world? getting past the obfuscation (ha) an intellectual dilemma.
Critical thinking versus real world/street smarts. to teach the first to those who think in the second.
looks like an interesting and appropriate read for me!
Didn't disappoint a must for teachers, students entering college and soon 2 b grad students too!
How to develop a logical and applicable argument in the academic world? getting past the obfuscation (ha) an intellectual dilemma.
Critical thinking versus real world/street smarts. to teach the first to those who think in the second.
looks like an interesting and appropriate read for me!
Didn't disappoint a must for teachers, students entering college and soon 2 b grad students too!
September 6, 2012
The most depressing aspect of this book is that while it is describing this fantastic phenomenon of the inaccessibility of academic discourse, it does it in such a way that emphasizes everything he is lamenting. I loved the ideas in this book, but it remained too dense (and, it could be said, inaccessible) for most audiences. That's not such a bad thing, but it resulted in making good ideas feel tedious and, dare I say it, a bit boring after a while, which is a real shame.
September 19, 2008
Graff's view of what education needs to do in order to stay relevant and be more attractive to students is interesting and revealing. While I don't agree with all his points (I hate the argument templates, for instance), I think he does a good job of pointing out some reasons why academia is considered to be so obscure and refuting those claims.
September 7, 2010
Maybe not very applicable to everyone, but to anyone considering going into a post graduate, academic field I highly recommend this. It has greatly helped me feel better about what's ahead of me.
In the end however, it just starts dragging and I started losing interest once I read the same thing several times. But good to have under my belt I guess.
In the end however, it just starts dragging and I started losing interest once I read the same thing several times. But good to have under my belt I guess.
December 7, 2010
I like this guy's mix of humor and idealism. Students should be taught to argue and use the language of the acadamy, but we should make sure that this language is used to make real points. Also, high schools are terrible and need mass reform. I love it. This is by far the best assigned reading I've done for this class.
March 30, 2009
Graff has some radical notions about changing educational institutions. I find it hard to disagree with him on most points, but I don't think our society is ready to take the nerd out of intellectualism.
August 6, 2009
Insightful into how students perceive the academe and how teachers may lose them in the process of teaching. A bit repetitive and certainly a bit egotistical in owning his approach as the best approach but provides a few good strategies.
November 25, 2009
This books is concerned with how to introduce students to academic discourse. A worthy subject, but I found the presentation rather dry, and well, overly academic. Very dense with ideas and many good points, but not a light read.
December 18, 2009
Inpenetrable, narrowly specialized and inaccessible describes intellectual life at collge adn why most students just don't seem to get it. Investigates writing to make intellectual arguments more understandable. Last chapter most helpful for those not involved in writing.
November 1, 2014
Graff will aid all the old school teachers and professors with their hangups over first person writing, etc. Students will always struggle with writing if we don't let them wrote about their own interests rather than ours.
Want to read
January 17, 2008The faculty book group on campus is going to read this book.
March 29, 2009
I can't remember the last time a single book affected my entire approach to education.
August 6, 2011
Refreshing thoughts on how empowering a demystified approach to argumentative writing can be.
Read
July 6, 2017I'll just go find something else for my whole life to be about...
February 17, 2013
WOW! Another five star book in need of a review. Get on this, Dominic!
August 5, 2014
This is a really interesting perspective on the collaborative conversations that need to take place in academe in order to show students the interconnectivity of all learning.
November 19, 2015
Available to borrow from Laren Hammonds
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.