In the current issue of PMLA is an exchange between Jacqueline Brady and Richard Ohmann on one side and Gerald Graff on the other. Brady and Ohmann object to Graff’s contention in his MLA Presidential Address and in an article he wrote for Radical Teacher that leftists in the college classroom push students into leftwing viewpoints. (I wrote about Graff’s pieces in an earlier Brainstorm post here.) Brady and Ohmann counter:
“We hold that the democratic teaching that most radicals do helps guard against pedagogical authoritarinism. If students have some control over curriculum and class discussion and in making sense of the ideas and texts they encounter, they are unlikely to be or feel bullied by the instructor.”
Later on, they say:
“So, ‘teaching for social justice’ (which indeed should be a chief goal of a democratic system of education, right up there with the enrichment of life and culture) requires critique, demystification, and teaching about power. We pursue these ‘radical activities’ as ethics, job rules, and the practical needs of our students permit. We do not need a David Horowitz in the classroom to make this effort fair, so long as we are honest with students about our own commitments and respect theirs, which means creating and maintaining a classroom where our students can comfortably question our ideas.”
It sounds open and liberal, but Graff doesn’t buy it. He cites Brady and Ohmann’s claim from the introduction to the Radical Teacher volume that the proper goal is “helping students become radicals” (which they admit now was “ill-chosen”) and replies, in essence, “C’mon.”
Graff: “Brady and Ohmann’s language did seem to imply that they see all students as latent leftists and that treating students as potential political converts is a legitimate goal of teaching. Though they admit their words were ill-chosen, they don’t quite reject the equation of education with political proselytizing. . . . Here they seem to repeat the argument that I attacked in my address that, given the powerful conservative forces impinging on education, it’s not only legitimate but urgent that we treat students as latent leftists who will oppose the conservative status quo. In other words, seeing that the right controls the rest of the culture . . . it’s only fair that the left get to use classrooms to even the score.”
I’ve heard the argument made before, once on a panel arranged by Donald Lazere in which one panelist said (if I remember correctly) in response to a young man who claimed he was bullied for his conservatism, “Oh please — the Right wing controls every other part of our society, and now they want to control the college classroom, too! Gimme a break.” It was a perfect case of a high-handed and dismissive professor claiming that he was the victim. (Donald nodded to me to reply, but I just shook my head in dismay — a mistake.)
Graff again: The we-don’t-need-a-Horowitz-in-our-classrooms-in-order-to-be-respectful “retort again simply restates the argument I objected to in my address — that it’s fine to push our political commitments in class as long as we are up-front about those commitments and encourage our students to disagree with us. As I put it, referring to a version of this lame defense Cary Nelson made to David Horowitz at their MLA convention session last year (Academic Freedom?), ‘The problem is that the fight is rarely a fair one given the differences between teachers and students in power, experience, and control of academic discourse.’ Or, to repeat what I wrote in the Radical Teacher forum, ‘Pick on somebody your own size!’”
13 Responses to A PMLA Exchange, Graff Once More
luther_blissett - March 7, 2010 at 1:39 am
I can sympathize with that panelist’s frustration: apart from college campuses and a few radical associations in a few cities, Americans could easily get through an entire life without being presented with any serious alternatives to fairly mainstream values concerning the free market, Judeo-Christian values, hetero-normativity, etc.And despite what the “anti-PC” crowd argues, high school textbooks might be fitting in a few darker faces, a few “other’s” stories, but it’s all still in the service of the typical narratives of the American Dream, the melting pot, and so on.For that reason, I don’t see a problem with a class that takes as its main goal the presentation of certain other ways of looking at the world. And I don’t see a problem with a class that approaches a set of ideas from a receptive, not a suspicious, angle. As Peter Elbow has argued persuasively, “the believing game” generates as much rigorous thought as “the disbelieving game.” Scientists testing a hypothesis are playing the believing game. They are not simply sitting around trying to poke holes in their own hypotheses. But that’s what some believe all college classes should be about: as Stanley Fish drones, it’s all about teaching kids how to think, not what to think. But it’s impossible to think about a complicated set of ideas — such as Marxist philosophy — without a receptive attitude at first, without living through them, without trying them on, at least temporarily. That is actually what scientific testing *is*: applying a model to reality and then seeing if it accounts for what it should account for. This is not to say that professors should be indoctrinating their students. But the idea that a student who reads a few pages of Marx or Hegel or Aristotle has paid the dues required to earn anything like a real critique of those thinkers is ridiculous. That’s time in class better spent mastering the ideas, applying them to real situations, seeing how your vision of the world changes in response to those ideas.
jffoster - March 7, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Quoth Mr. Blissett above: “Scientists testing a hypothesis are playing the believing game. They are not simply sitting around trying to poke holes in their own hypotheses.” Well, not “simply” but they in fact are trying to poke holes in their own theoris. You err on the side of the null hypothesis (unless you are trying to confirm the null Hypothesis in which case you err the other way.) That is, if a classification or interpretation of an item data is unclear and calls for a decidion, you class it opposite that which would support the hypothesis you want to “believe in”.
markbauerlein - March 7, 2010 at 4:31 pm
People who oppose political correctness include libertarians, the ACLU and other First Amendment groups, classical liberals, cultural conservatives, and many other groupings. They are hardly summed up as an “anti-PC crowd.”And anybody who wishes to see how it operates (with pressure from both the Left and the Right) should consult Diane Ravitch’s “The Language Police,” particularly her sections on “bias review” boards.Finally, it is not the duty of the college classroom to be an adversarial space. The university is supposed to incorporate the universe of knowledge and not define itself against the society beyond the walls. Do you really expect taxpayers and parents to support universties if professors assume that role, Luther?
luther_blissett - March 7, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Every research scientist I’ve ever met has been trying to prove something, not disprove something — especially not his or her own hypothesis. That’s not to say that they ignore contrary or unexpected results, but it is to say that the experimental process is *as much* about the believing game as the suspicion game.And Mark, you’ll notice I put “anti-PC” in scare quotes above. I was referring to those who get all worked up about Harriet Tubman’s inclusion in an American history textbook. My point, however, has nothing to do with the various political temperaments of that crowd. Most importantly, I love how Mark immediately assumes that any systems of ideas outside the American mainstream are necessarily “adversarial.” That’s just weird thinking. It is quite possible to offer students other ways of thinking without being adversarial — unless, that is, the mainstream is so insecure that it thinks that any exposure to non-mainstream ideas might convert kids into raving lunatics. So yes, the university should transmit “the universe of ideas” — mainstream, non-mainstream, etc. My point, however, isn’t that professors should be adversarial, but that they should be free to teach a set of ideas, not just some vague hogwash about “how to think about ideas.” That goes for teaching about Adam Smith, the history of early Christianity, Renaissance sculpture, or Sigmund Freud. Intellectual honesty is about more than teaching Hayek in a Marx class or Marx in a Hayek class. It is possible to approach ideas from a perspective that might be called “ironic belief” — a trial period, a test drive — without giving students canned critiques by all-star scholars (i.e., for every evolution class, a unit on intelligent design; for every Founding Fathers class, a unit on slavery; for every male-dominated lit class, a unit on women writers [or vice versa]; and so on).
suomynona - March 8, 2010 at 7:30 am
Should we dismiss the idea of an adversarial classroom so quickly? I wouldn’t advocate a professor being constantly and ruthlessly adversarial toward students, given the power, knowledge, and skill mismatches. But I do think that professors should set up adversarial positions in the classroom (it need not be only two opposing positions…it could be more) for students to negotiate. If students approach the material with certain overwhelming assumptions, as they often do, I don’t see anything wrong with the professor taking an adversarial position. Of course professors shouldn’t be using their advantages to bully students, but it’s actually quite valuable for students when professors push back against their assumptions. When students do enter the classroom with so many stock notions of value and identity from high school or from parents, it’s not surprising that professors will take on radical positions to challenge these ‘mainstream’ assumptions. Contained and civil adversarial ‘systems,’ for lack of a better way of putting it at the moment, are actually pretty fundamental to the way Americans negotiate difference. This is how jurisprudence and legislation work; I see no reason why classrooms shouldn’t encourage civl adversarialism, instilling the rhetorical and logical skills along the way that make students better participants in some of the more ‘material’ debates of their time. But if baby Winston can’t take heavy doses of Marx without crying liberal indoctrination to mum and dad, or baby Saskia can’t make it through Friedman and Hayek without running to the dean because she feels oppressed, how are they gonna make it when mum and dad are in the nursing home and there is no dean?
suomynona - March 8, 2010 at 7:36 am
This last bit above is directed at a phenomenon that I was (not so proudly) very much a part of as an undergraduate: conservative and libertarian students figured out that by adopting the mantle of the oppressed–the leftist mode of argumentation and rabble-rousing in the university–we could turn leftist “PC” arguments around on the leftists. Therefore we made central to our activism this notion of leftist indoctrination in the classroom. It’s predicated on the same bullshit that multiculturalist protectionism is predicated on; it’s just a switcheroo. I knew this then and I know it now; and I won’t tolerate it anymore. The bottom line for me is that students are actually very capable of thinking on their own, and they need to be pushed to do so, not protected from leftist profs or campus conservatives.
markbauerlein - March 8, 2010 at 8:04 am
When you refer to textbooks and “anti-PC crowd,” Luther, you include people who object to the extremes of bias review panels, not just to people who don’t like Harriet Tubman in the textbooks. In fact, I don’t know of any voice in the debate over textbook content who says, “Keep Harriet Tubman & Co. out.” In terms of scientific inquiry, the separation of proof from disproof is not so neat and clean. In fact, the proof of one thing usually, implicitly or explicitly, entails the disproof of another. Also, I don’t assume anything outside the “mainstream” is adversarial. In fact, I don’t much believe in a “mainstream” at all in matters of the education sphere or the cultural sphere. But you expressed sympathy for the panelist, who expressly defined the liberal space of academe in oppositional terms, and Graff provided a clear summary of that position. One weakness of it, apart from the ideological narrowness, is precisely that it reacts to a “mainstream” that is largely a selective construct derived from a swirling, heterogeneous society/culture at large.
marktropolis - March 9, 2010 at 10:16 am
Mark, I continue to find myself scratching my head trying to discern what message you are trying to relay when you make postings like this. In other words, from your posting, it’s hard to figure out which side of the debate you’re rooting for.I also find it interesting that for all the postings you’ve done about so-called “political correctness” in academe, more often than not, you get tripped up with your own rhetoric. Adversarial or not, should we be exposing students to alternate views of the world? What form does that take? If I’m a creationist, I’m complaining about being “indoctrinated” by those evolutionist crack-pots. If I’m a self-identified conservative (or libertarian) I’m complaining about being indoctrinated by a bunch of Marxists.Do we get to decide which one of those is “right?” In #3 you state that “it is not the duty of the college classroom to be an adversarial space. The university is supposed to incorporate the universe of knowledge and not define itself against the society beyond the walls.” And yet some of that “universe of knowledge” does in fact define itself as against the society “beyond the walls.” The vast majority of your postings are often (in my view at least) your way of lobbing rhetorical bombs over those walls (since you’re in academe, and much of your positions are not shared by so-called “mainstream America” – however you define that). And by the way, re: #7, perhaps you should check out what’s happening in Texas around textbooks. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do. The actually wanted to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln out of the early grades in order to foster more adherence to Christian principles. Don’t recall them talking about Harriet Tubman, but they did think Cesar Chavez has the stature or impact to warrant his presence.And let’s conduct a bit of an experiment, based on folks collective experiences: Your ongoing contention is that converatism is being shut out of academe. Or shut down. Can we look at it happening the other way? Can we talk about examples of “leftist” students being drummed out of classrooms for their views? What about leftist professors who didn’t get tenure because their work didn’t appear in the “accepted” list of journals? In other words, lets turn this around and see what still holds.Having spent more than a couple of decades in and around academe, I think I can say that I’ve seen it lean progressively to the right over that time. Interestingly at the same time that many of these institutions started to act more like corporations (as opposed to not for profit institutions of higher education). But that’s another conversation. I’ve been hearing these cries of leftist indoctrination in higher ed. But I haven’t (a) seen any detrimental affects in society, and (b) those institutions keep getting more conservative. Which can only mean one thing: all this leftist indoctrication isn’t working! There may in fact be Reds under the bed, but it appears they’re really just taking a nap.
markbauerlein - March 10, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Surely it isn’t difficult to devise a “form” in the classroom in which catholic discussions take place without falling into the adversarial set-up. And I don’t think “creationism” should be taught in science classes. Evolution, of course. And there is no problem with teaching Marxist texts and principles. I think everybody should read the opening 100 pages of Capital, and Hayek on social planning as well.But as soon as professors define their activity against the world beyond the walls, corruptions of intellectual life begin.As for universities getting more conservative, I’d like to hear more. I focus on curricula, not personnel policies, admissions, and the like, and there I see a steady diet of progressivist thinking in the humanities and “softer” scientific fields.
dlazere - March 12, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Mark, this is a good column and exchange of views. I just wish you would give more careful consideration to the notion of liberal arts education having an intrinsically adversarial mission, going back to Socrates at his trial suggesting that, instead of being executed, he be awarded a stipend to act as a gadfly to Athenian society.Or, as a recent Harvard faculty report put it, “The aim of a liberal arts education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and help them to find new ways to orient themselves.”Donald Lazere
22036873 - March 12, 2010 at 1:46 pm
“I don’t know of any voice in the debate over textbook content who says, ‘Keep Harriet Tubman & Co. out.’” Fair enough, I suppose — it was actually Cesar Chavez (as marktropolis notes @ 8) and Thurgood Marshall. Mark, meet the Reverend Peter Marshall, “expert” appointed by the Texas State Board of Education: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/evangelical_minister_expert_spars_with_board_of_ed.php. Then there’s TX Board of Ed member Don McLeroy, who seems to have two other interests — one, telling textbook writers to “read the latest on [Joseph] McCarthy — he was basically vindicated,” and two, insisting that textbooks make it clear that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church a few thousand years before God wrote the U.S. Constitution. Seriously, this “I don’t know any loony-tunes conservatives” bit is getting tired.
markbauerlein - March 14, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Of course there are loonies on the Right, as there are on every portion of the ideological spectrum. Marshall isn’t a “voice in the debate,” though. We need more than just testimony before a committee for that. I think that Marshall is flat wrong to keep Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez out. Do you think Marshall is wrong in saying this, however: “It is obvious beyond contradiction that [the founders] structured American government on the natural rights of mankind, which they firmly believe were the gift of God”? And do you really trust TalkingPointsMemo when it casts that statement as a “Christian-centric version of US history”?
markbauerlein - March 14, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Also, good point, Donald. We need adversarial thinking in college. But we need it to work in multiple directions. What I see is a frozen condition, with adversarial-ness working in fairly routine ways. What we need more of is a counter-adversarial thinking, too, especially as adversarial thinking in the value-heavy departments has become so monotonous.