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Gerald Graff's Disliking Books

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Disliking Books Summary Carl Roger’s once said, “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” In Gerald Graff’s, “Disliking Books”, Graff describes his academic and intellectual upcoming through his experiences with literature in school. Graff, an English major from University of Chicago and Stanford, was not always the scholar that he is now. Growing up in an unforgiving environment like Chicago often threatened Graff with menacing situations including the risk of being beaten by fellow peers if he was perceived to be knowledgeable or involved in his school work. Nevertheless, Graff’s encouragement at home and latent desire to be well-informed supported him through his adolescence and through college …show more content…

For Graff, his inspiration came from the vast potential that he opened up when he finally appreciated what scholarship could be. “I had to be corrupted first in order to experience innocence (Graff 26)”. “Everyone is different. We all learn in different ways”. This has been cemented into the brains of every school boy and girl from early on and yet still, it has become prevalent to relinquish ones desire to be educated so one may conform to the habits of the culture around them. The corruption of mankind is the concept that being intelligent makes you arrogant and off-putting when in reality, becoming literate and informed can open more doors and present more opportunities than every before! In Gerald Graff’s, “Disliking Books”, Graff describes his academic and intellectual upcoming through his experience from literature in school. Despite his environment and the culture around him, Graff found clarity in class discussion and fascination in literature. Slowly, with the guidance of his father and his personal drive to rise above the conformity around him, Graff was able to overcome the corruption around him and find new meaning in being knowledgeable; proving to the world and himself that with the right mindset and determination, you can rise Per aspera ad astra (from the mud to the

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