Beyond The Culture Wars Analysis
From lacking appreciation for his school texts, to fearing being called names by his peers, Gerald Graff had a hard time with reading as a child. In Disliking Books, an excerpt from Mr. Graff's renowned book entitled Beyond the Culture Wars : How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, Graff shares his transition from being a young man that could barely get through a novel into a stimulated reader looking forward to the conversation that is literature.
Growing up in an ethnically mixed part of Chicago in a middle class Jewish family equaled a lot of pressure for Graff. Not only from his working class peers who may have perceived intellectual pursuit negatively, but from Graph's family, did this pressure descend. Graph's father was a well read man with a high expectation for his son to be the same. In fact Graff states,"... boys from my background would go to college," and from that point they would become a business, law, or medical major students. None of these professions applied to what Graff wanted for his future and he feared reading the books to get there.
Graff dutifully persisted to obtain good grades in school,
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He even chose the profession of teaching. Graff describes a traditional viewpoint of first closely reading a book and then having an intellectual discussion, but this isn't what happened to him. He needed a passionate conversation to give him ground to stand on before diving into a reading. He found this to be the case for a lot of his students as well. Graff suggests that being able to to discuss literature is a primary factor in being able to read well. He goes further on to point out that teachers that can relate to students that are intimidated by reading have a great advantage over teachers that may have forgotten what it's like to learn how to think analytically about writing, reading and intellectual
Summary Of Disliking Books By Gerald Graff
290 Words | 2 PagesIn “Disliking Books,” by Gerald Graff, three major components stuck out to me. In paragraph 3, Graff talks about that for some in the working class, education is a source of freedom. This was a freedom that he took for granted. I feel like I can relate to this because I come from a middle class family, and while most of the time, I feel like being stuck in school most of the time is a burden, it is a freedom and a privilege that I take for granted as well.
A Summary Of Gerald Graff's Disliking Books
543 Words | 3 PagesA Summary of Gerald Graff’s “Disliking Books” Gerald Graff’s disliking books starts off as him declaring that his early fear of reading made him a better teacher to his students. It seems he had a lot of pressure put on him to read from his father who would push him to read, but Graff never became interested in reading likely because it felt forced if he was to enjoy reading it would have to come naturally. And though he speaks of his childhood in a sort of rough manner being a culturally mixed neighborhood and that the rougher working class children might beat him up if he was too peculiar or different or intellectual. He enjoyed the more practical pursuits in math and science rather than literature, as they would apply to everyday life and would make a good career field to go into, and when Gerald was child, boys who were bookworms were deemed "sissies" and beaten up.
Summary Of Hidden Intellectualism By Gerald Graff
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Summary Of Gerald Graff Hidden Intellectualism
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Summary Of Disliking Books By Gerald Graff
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