Black, White, and Shades of Gray

Sometimes I wish the world was black and white. If this was so, there would be a right way to do something and a wrong way to do something and there would be nothing in-between. The course would be set and there would be no questioning of the way things are done because it is only way to do something and must be the best way. This school of thought is very straightforward and direct and would be very simple and free of conflict.
Over the second course of this semester, I have been learning about the ‘gray areas’ of English and all its practical applications. Before, taking this class, my personal view of English was very black and white. I had been given the Standard English education, read the works required or recommended by the state, and passed reading and comprehension exams. Although I have met state and national regulations on these proficiencies, I feel terribly inadequate in the field of English theory. Now I know that there are several different positions and stances on a number of subjects related to the general field of English such as teaching styles, writing styles, theories of English, and qualifications of what is considered merit-worthy.
Learning about the various English theorists really opened my eyes to everything that I did not know. Before this class, I had never heard the names of modern English critics like Gerald Graff or David Bartholomae. It has made me question what I believe and wonder why the public school system has adopted a very ‘back and white’ view of teaching the art and science of the English language. But being exposed to the gray areas of the subject has not been a completely positive experience for me. Several times, it has been quite difficult to keep everything straight and not get confused in the different opinions and voices. Also the concepts being discussed by the various authors are sometimes in an abstract language that would almost mean the same thing to me if they were written in Greek. I feel what has helped me the most with understanding what the essayists are saying have been the peer discussions, guest lectures, and one-on-one discussions with the professor. I have managed to form some beliefs on my own about some of the issues discussed in class and in the assigned literature. I am anxious to continue to read more critical essays from diverse authors who have even more varied points of view.
A material that has helped me tremendously is something that I acquired my mere chance. I was having a last-minute progress check with my Reading and Writing Advanced Essays professor on how my critical essay was not coming along, while furiously trying to record every precious word that he said that could possibly save me on this assignment, when he reached over to his ceiling gracing book case to refer to something in one of his many books. After he had finished his thought, I asked to borrow his book. He agreed, and I quickly did a skim of the table of contents and saw two specific chapters that he had referred to most of the semester, quoting and summarizing. Immediately, I felt that this book would be a valuable tool in my critical essay writing process.
They Say/I Say by husband and wife duo Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein may not initially strike a person as being anything profound. The simple paperback copy I had borrowed was just under 200 pages, and seemed like an easy enough instruction book for such a daunting task as critical essay writing. So, I began to read through it at the late hour of 10:30 P.M. and actually found myself entertained. I had been secretly dreading the final assignment for this class of mine, because I felt I had nothing to really say on the subject.
When I was reading most of the critical essays, I found myself getting lost in them, like a small child wandering around in the woods alone. The wordiness of Bernstien-“I diagnose the problem as “frame lock” a kind of logorrheic lock jaw, or sandy mouth, or bullet-with-the-baby-not-just-quite-then-almost-out-of-reach, as a mood swinging under a noose of monomaniacal monotones, the converted preaching to the incontrovertible, the guard rail replacing the banisters, stairs, stories, elevation, denotation, reverberation, indecision, concomitant intensification system.” really did a number on me. Other times, I could not grasp the mental picture that Robert Scholes was trying to paint for me-“First we will locate the binary oppositions which organize the flow of value and power in our institution; then we will proceed to criticize or undo the invidious structure of those oppositions. Though there is much in structuralism and even more in deconstruction that I find misleading or unfruitful, this combined strategy of interpretation through the laying bare of basic oppositions followed by the deconstructive critique of those oppositions seems to me immensely rich in critical potential.”
I was beginning to feel that I had gotten in over my head in enrolling in the class, and began to feel like everyone else got the concepts and the message in the texts except me. I really enjoyed writing the personal essay, because I felt I could be myself and write from my own perspective. But when I started to study the critical texts, I began to feel very confined by the need to use the same higher English spoken by the different composers of the essays. The need to conform my writing style met with my desire for a decent grade and I began to attempt to do what was being asked of me. I understood the concepts of why it was important to present a strong argument contrary to the point I was trying to make because it is important to know the enemy, but I was having trouble mastering this and other skills. By using Graff and Birkenstein’s book as an instrument to help formulate my thoughts and feelings about an author, I now have more confidence in my ability to write a critical essay.
In Graff’s essay, “What We Say When We Don’t Talk About Creative Writing”, the author is addressing the current state of how English departments are run at the university level and is calling attention to various aspects of the field that are completely ignored. Graff is for professors being experts in their specific fields and wants to achieve department cooperation and unification instead of the great divide that exists between the kooky creative writers and the dry critical English language theorists and academic writing. He feels that by bridging that gap, students would get a much more richer learning environment and that professors would be helped as well. It certainly would be nice to think that critical essay writing did not have to be dreaded and could be a medium that I could express myself in freely, without having to change my writing style or acquire a whole new vocabulary of long, hard to pronounce words, just so I could write something that I feel would ‘fit in’ and be accepted by the university.
However, I do not know if Graff is being entirely realistic in his essay. While he does propose some solutions, such as discussions between different divisions of the English department where some may walk way with “seriously bruised feelings”, I think some professors will walk away and not be changed at all. To get the two possibly hostile groups of the English department to come together, first there must be some form of common ground between them, maybe a shared love of books or a passion for their specific subject matter. The next step would be to show how the departments already overlap. An example of this could be between the grammarists and the creative writers because what would creative writing mean if it was written in such a way that the reader could not understand in because of ‘artistic license’? Likewise, just because a sentence is worded properly, that doesn’t mean that each student will not interpret it slightly different depending on their frame of reference. I think what will ultimately make Graff’s dream of a united English department a reality is acceptance and open mindedness. This can be achieved by freethinking professors like the ones East Central has and I feel that eventually it may happen if students are taught early on that all aspects of English are equally important and can be enjoyable. With any luck, the love and passion of the professors for their subject would ooze from every word they speak in a classroom and the students would not only understand the lecture but come to love the subject too.