Gerald Graff

The general argument made by Gerald Graff in his work “Clueless in Academe How Schooling Obscures the Mind” is an evaluation on students and their ability to write- and to state their elaborate points on themes, criticism, and reflection-in a scholarly way that maintains and correlates their level of education over to a work of writing. Furthermore, he elaborates by stating that in using a template the student will demonstrate an ability to write in a scholarly way. Graff also argues that students do possess an ability to write in this type of manner(sophisticated and scholarly) and that it is merely through prompted writing that students obscure this ability. It is within the prompts that students fail- as it narrows their minds to conclude …show more content…
She introduced the article as a scholarly article- one to be looked at with criticism. It was clear it was opinionated. At first I didn't entirely understand Graff’s arguments nor did I understand what it was that he was speaking of, and how this correlated with my own struggles within my writing. I noticed in more classes that all writing was approached in this narrow minded manner. As a student, I was given topics in which to write about but never asked to develop my own topics. I noticed to that never once had a professor given me a template- an outline to develop- as effective way of writing an argument. Only was I given prompted writing. This wasn't of course until Graffs article was introduced. To apply this knowledge, I started by going against the grain in my courses- asking if I could elaborate on given prompt segments, even sometimes asking if it would be “ok” for me to write entirely new prompts. When I wasn't given the ability to express my own views in this way I started to reformulate the prompt for my papers, writings, and reflections. I started to use Graffs model that he outline in “Clueless in Academe How Schooling Obscures the Mind”. In fact, I used it in my opening statement of this reflection and will continue to loosely use the model as this paper progresses. Graffs reflection on this formula goes as follows “Birkenstein-Graff’s template gives students a …show more content…
I haven't found that my writing has dramatically been affected however. Meaning, that most of my grades maintained the same GPA, my grammar was still lacking, and generally my ability to construct sentences and paragraphs was for the most part were stagnant. The only increase in my ability to write- from my perspective-has come with my time in a University and my practice with writing new ideas. However, I do believe that my ability to construct ideas and the time in which it takes for me to develop and even write this ideas has dramatically changed. When applying these templates to my writing I have found that writing in general comes easily to me. My own ideas have to room to grow and creatively wonder without being bogged down by the idea of a prompt. When my thoughts are free flowing I find I am thinking much more about what I am saying and what I want to say rather than what should be said. I find this to be an extremely positive influence in my writing- all due to the ideas that Graff lays out in this article “Clueless in Academe How Schooling Obscures the Mind”. In relationship to this I have found that the time in which it takes me to create these ideas and even the writing process in general has decreased. I find this to be a direct