Entering the conversation: frameworks and approaches

¶ … Conversation -- "Undemocratic Curriculum"

This paper will argue that Gerald Graff is correct: the university and college system is secretive and vague. This secrecy, opacity, and lack of democracy ultimately contributes to the failure of students at the university level and likely in the professional realms. It is true that a portion of the responsibility to be prepared is upon the student. There is no doubt about that. Yet education, particularly in the 21st century, has increasingly failed students in preparation for and success in college. As Graff argues, there is a distinctive lack of transparency in academic at the university level and it is a problem with several systemic effects.

Graff writes:

"The college curriculum exposes students to a rich menu of disciplines courses, texts, ideas, and methods and says, in effect, 'Come and get it, but you're on your own as to what to make of it; and if you can't make much of it, it's your fault, not ours.' This state of affairs makes a travesty of democratic education, since it favors the few who come to college with some already acquired academic socialization that enables them to detect the tacit and unformulated rules of the academic game. It leaves the rest, including most low-income students, feeling that they somehow lack the mysterious quality possessed by the high achievers." (Graff, 2007,-Page 129)

This is the experience of most college students today. We are drawn to college because of the freedom and the exposure to new people and new ideas. Our professors are there for us to a limited or certain extent, and there are even administrators on staff at universities such as career services and guidance counselors of sorts to assist students, but mostly, students are on their own. Yes, independence is an integral part of the collegiate experience, but not complete intellectual independence. How many capable college students drown in the abyss of schoolwork? The failure of higher education lies in the student preparation and the lack of democracy and transparency by the academic industrial complex.

If universities keep knowledge mysterious to a certain extent, they will draw a consistent crowd of prospective students to them each year. People are drawn to mysteries and things that evade their comprehension. What is the magical draw of Harvard University that compels students around the world to contend for admission? What is about Duke University that produces ambitious, energetic graduates, primed and ready for the workforce? This is what the marketing departments in universities are for: to generate some kind of mystique around the school that initially draws prospective students and their families. Mystery is a part of the fundraising strategy for colleges and universities as more and more, universities and colleges are run like corporations.

Obviously, there is a necessity for business practices in colleges as the colleges need a substantial amount of administration just to keep them open and running. Yet, students, parents, and professors may sense that increasingly the mission statements of colleges and universities are more akin to those of major corporations while their policies, practices, and interests reflect a more corporate agenda as well. Ideally, education is not a corporate enterprise. Education is not a business. Education is, ideally, a civil or public service. Why are students encouraged, and let's face it, pushed and/or automatically expected to attend college? Those who argue that the voting process in the United States of America is a sham would also likely argue that the collegiate system in the U.S.A. is a congruous experience. Before students are fully independent adults in the "real world," they get a taste of false democracy in college.

Later, Graff writes:

"If I am right that curricular cognitive overload is a central cause of student cluelessness, then improving education -- and closing the achievement gap -- will not be possible until academic institutions get as good at pedagogical simplification as we are at proliferating multiplicity and complication. We cannot make the curriculum more transparent -- that is more democratic -- until we are willing to be reductive about how academics is played, and this means getting over our protective queasiness about totalizing self-characterizations." (Graff, 2007,-Page 131)