Harvey Graff argues for a clearer view of our sentimental notions
By Daniel Cattau
Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
Harvey J. Graff is married, with a dog, two cats and about 500 children.
A social historian at the University of Texas at Dallas and an internationally known expert on literacy, Dr. Graff has "adopted" these children for a scholarly new book that challenges many common assumptions
about growing up, both yesterday and today.
Elihu Hubbard, for example, was precocious enough to be admitted to Yale College at age 11 and graduated four years later. But that was only the beginning of his troubles. He was too young to enter law or medicine. Or, as the editor of his diary put it, "in no way equipped to be much of anything."
He eventually studied medicine without ever practicing it. He dabbled in literary pursuits. He squabbled with his parents and tired of living at home. He fell in love but never married. He had profound doubts about organized religion.
At age 27, Elihu died in New York City of yellow fever. His was a brief life filled with promise, largely unfulfilled.
The year was 1798.
Almost 200 years later, growing up is still hard to do.
It's difficult to talk about children today without using the word "crisis"--drugs, gangs, violence, sex, teen pregnancies, reading scores, divorce, single-parent families.
Politicians yearn for the good old days, when boys and girls respected their parents, followed the Golden Rule and generally stayed out of trouble.
Contrary to popular myths, says Dr. Graff, the good old days weren't that great and the present bad days aren't that dismal--at least not for everyone.
Dr. Graff uses his 500 young people in Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (Harvard University Press, $39.95) to show the rich tapestry of growing up experiences and how they were conditioned by shifts from a rural to urban population, westward expansion, industrialization, greater access to education and many other factors.
"Growing up and the place of children, adolescents and youth have changed, and not always for the better--nor for the worse," Dr. Graff writes.
"Have there been serious, large-scale problems and declines? Yes. Have there been crises for poor young persons, especially those of color? Yes. Have all young persons been in crisis? No."
The myth of olden happier times is hard to debunk when one compares them with our own troubles. But earlier eras, particularly the mid-18th century to early 20th century, had high incidences of parental and infant death, frequent ill health and greater prejudice against women and minorities.
"Time and time again," he says, "myths prove more powerful and more resilient than the only occasionally compelling facts, statistics or personal testimonies."
Tough prof
Who is Harvey Graff? And why is he not better known here? The answer begins at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Four years ago, a history doctoral student thought about taking a class with Dr. Graff, who has a reputation for being a tough professor, and a fellow student warned, "He is one of two people you should never take a class with."
Patricia L. Meador, who is finishing her dissertation in history while teaching at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, ignored the advice and took his seminar on growing up in America.
Now Dr. Graff is her doctoral supervisor. Ms. Meador and other students give him high marks for being devoted equally to his students and his research.
"His reputation as being very formidable and requiring a great deal of his students was well-deserved," Ms. Meador says. "But he is a very nurturing and supportive instructor. He pushes you to reach beyond your boundary, but he never pushes you beyond your limits."
In his academic and writing life, Dr. Graff also pushes boundaries of a different kind.
A Pittsburgh native and graduate of Northwestern University with a doctorate from the University of Toronto, Dr. Graff has taught 20 years at the Richardson campus.
An expert on Dallas history--about which he is currently writing a book--he has worked with KERA public television on projects relating to local history, families and literacy. But still he is better known nationally and internationally for his work on literacy.
A prolific author, he has lectured extensively in the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Mexico, Sweden and the Netherlands.
His reputation, in part, was established in challenging commonly held views about literacy.
In The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century City, first published in 1979 and reissued in 1991, Dr. Graff asserted that it's not enough to train people to read and write. There also need to be jobs that require literacy and equal opportunities for economic gain through literacy.
In his book, Dr. Graff said that literacy probably played less or a different kind of role in economic development and modernization than thought previously.
After the book was published and discussed in academic circles, "there was no point in making the argument that literacy itself makes things better," says Shirley Brice Heath of Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., an expert on literacy.
Dr. Michael B. Katz, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Graff's doctoral adviser at the University of Toronto, says his former student's work reflects wide-ranging interests, cutting across fields, disciplines and academic boundaries.
Says Dr. Katz: "Harvey is the foremost historian of literacy in this country."
Booked up
When not traveling for lectures or conferences, Dr. Graff, 45, shares a one-story East Dallas bungalow with his wife, Vicki, manager of editorial production services for the American Heart Association's national offices. They have a Cairn terrier named Harrison and two cats.
Even in academic circles, Dr. Graff has a reputation for being a bookaholic, owning 12,000 volumes. The house is actually more like a library warehouse: two rooms are so suffocated with books and papers that there's no space for desks or tables.
Dr. Graff speaks softly, a decibel or 12 lower than Mister Rogers. But that's where the comparison stops: He's Mister Rogers with an attitude.
As a historian and social critic, Dr. Graff would be the last to suggest that the solutions to today's problems with young people lie in a return to the past.
"We profess consistently a deep concern for young people," says Dr. Graff. "But across the culture we have a deeply ambivalent sense about young people."
This is particularly true of what Dr. Graff refers to as "other people's children," which may include children whose parents are on welfare, wards of the state or those in trouble with the law.
"These children differ, for example, by race, ethnicity, number and gender of parents, sometimes even by what part of town they live in," he adds.
Other people's children, he says, contrasts with the views the culture has about its own children, which it holds to be "private, sanctified, innocent, untouchable by the state or public sphere."
The contradictory nature of our feelings can be seen in two recent events: the outpouring of financial support for children who lost their parents in the Oklahoma City bombings and the attempts in Congress to cut school lunch programs for poorer children.
Some politicians have recently invoked images of kindly orphanages and Victorian mores. Dr. Graff says this sentimentalizes children and makes their problems seem more distant.
"The myth of a better past only contributes to negative, destructive criticism of the present," he says. "That in turn precludes fair evaluation of the diverse needs of young people."
Acceptance of these myths hurts our ability to effect meaningful social and political change, Dr. Graff says. It prevents the protection of the "truly vulnerable" and the realization of equal opportunity for all.
"The images of the past on which we base our judgments of the present are seldom the kinds of useful guides we need," he writes on Conflicting Paths. "Always emotionally powerful, they are often surprisingly fragile when examined closely."
Harvey Graff on American's Attitudes
What are the myths about children that substitute for meaningful ideals and so often block needed social and political action? Harvey Graff, University of Texas at Dallas social historian, lists these three:
That Americans love their children.
"Regardless of individuals' actions, the record of past and present is one of ambivalence, not love, toward the young. This is true for our own, but especially 'other people's children,' about whom we are insensitive, unprotective, publicly mean-spirited and cheap."
That our own families are private and sanctified, and other people's children are not.
"Only their families are open to public scrutiny, susceptible to intervention. Only their children are candidates for removal to institutions, foster homes or the 'juvenile injustice' system."
That there once was a time when children were truly loved and protected as compared with today's troubles.
"Exaggerated notions of teen suicides and superficial understanding of teen pregnancies join with evidence of poverty, immorality and abuse. . . . Evidence of the overall historical gains among the young in American society passes with little notice. Such gains include, for example, levels of health, longevity, wealth or material comfort and education."
