Gerald Graff: Them’s Fight'en Words

The fact that Graff publically disagreed in print with the New Critics in the 1960’s and 1970’s is enough to make him a person worth studying; however, what I like even more than a throwdown with an emerging juggernaut of criticism is his focus on argument as a basis of writing and of teaching in general.

While the idea of argument has an immediately negative connotation attached to it for most people, Scott points out that this negative feeling is self inflicted by our culture’s lack of experience arguing in an organized fashion. This concept makes perfect sense and can be support by a myriad of simple examples. How many students openly argue with their teachers, at any level, about what is being taught? I know from my own experience that skepticism is rarely expressed in the classroom unless it is the product of a student that simply wishes to be obstinate for the sake of doing so. The classroom is not the only place where Scott’s idea regarding Graff’s theory can be seen. When was the last time you (I am speaking to anyone here) have participated in an argument that had 1. a purpose and 2. did not escalate into a yelling and/or punching match? For me this is a rare occasion, even though I love to debate; the people I argue with end up yelling at me, or they feel I a bully and/or complete jerk. No one wants to be proven incorrect, and conversely, no one wants to be the person pointing out another’s faults.

Graff uses this simple idea to point out the flaws in our education system. As Scott tells us, we, as teachers and adults, should “teach the conflicts” in order to teach our students HOW to argue, so their fears about arguing incorrectly can be alleviated. The genre that Scott mentioned which seemed the most applicable to the classroom is cultural conflict. Most literature is rife with cultural statements that differ from those of the students; why not allow the students an opportunity to scrutinize the values being expressed and argue between each other which statements are valuable and which are not. Scott went on to point out that for Graff, this was not only an easy question to answer, but an obligation to our civic duty to our students. Here I think Scott brings our presentations full circle to our first example in Kinneavy. Both expressed a desire to empower young people as they entered the world, and we should be the facilitators of that empowerment.