English 87

I found Shannon Carter’s article comparing writing tutoring to social work and coloring hair very practical. I like how she addresses the “theory-practice dichotomy” near the beginning, since that’s definitely something that I’ve struggled with.

Some of the comparisons she draws threw me a bit at first (hair coloring? what?) but I think we all unconsciously bring our personal experiences into our roles as tutors to some extent–it’s just interesting to contemplate doing so purposefully. Frequently in class, it will occur to me that this or that experience is influencing the way I view/implement tutoring strategies. This is very useful, but generally takes the form of a single, sudden revelation. What more could I glean from actually sitting down and intentionally reflecting upon my experiences with the things I’m most familiar with? Or maybe that’s something you’ve all done already, and I’m behind. Even the most “average” (and I hesitate using the term) person has an incredible depth of experience and a bag of tricks that they’ve learned to draw upon. There’s some degree of social experience we gain just from casual interactions with people, but I’ve noticed for me, it’s my experiences being taught or mentored myself, in school, in music, whatever, that shape how I in turn work with others.

Not every experience can be compared to tutoring, but I think we all have at least a handful that can be. Taking this idea a step further, one of our most important tools in working with students may be looking for something with which they can relate the writing process. They come in with their own sets of experiences and ideas–if we’re able to unlock some of those, even trivial ones, and use them to demonstrate things to the student, they’ll have a personal relationship to the process. If they’re a music major, say, perhaps relating it to how they would approach working on a new piece to add to their repertoire. We also enter into their language, their dialogue, and can use it as a way to introduce them to ours. Of course, this is easier when our realm of experience intersects with theirs, but at the very minimum, everyone we’re bound to encounter at the Writing Center has written before, and has gone through some sort of process to get where they are presently. We’ve also gone through some process in getting to where we are as writers today–this may be a place to start. I think this is another reason why I find establishing a rapport with the client to be so important– it gives us benchmarks to begin at when we’re guessing at just how to explain something to them.

I more or less agree completely with Steve Sherwood’s article “Censoring Students, Censoring Ourselves: Constraining Conversations in the Writing Center.” Perhaps, as he suggests, our journalistic endeavors have inclined us both toward a more ubiquitous application of the First Amendment. Consequently, my reaction to Sherwood was more tangential than critical.

In many ways in response to the arguments of those like Stacey Freed’s, Sherwood writes, “Another quandary comes when we play an ostensibly objective devil’s advocate role while responding to student papers, but in reality, are anything but objective” (131). Such a tactic seems to erode many of the potential advantages of the peer nature of the tutor-tutee interaction. Most students, if a tutor frequently asks him or her to consider other viewpoints, will realize that the tutor disagrees with him or her. By presenting these opposing viewpoints with such a thin veil of objectivity, the tutor acts paternalistically (or “parentalistically” as Jacoby would have it) – his tasks shifts from working on the student’s writing to – potentially – working on the student’s morals.

To return the tutor to the task he should be working on – improving the client’s writing abilities – the peer relationship must be re-established. I feel a critical part of this involves ditching any need to maintain a politically correct semblance. As mentioned in the “Everyday Racism” article, many people – particularly white liberals – keep their ideas about controversial issues to themselves from fear of making offensive mistakes. This often leads these issues to go unaddressed, or, in many cases, addressed only superficially. If a writing tutor were to try to “politically correct” the incredibly chauvinistic paper Sherwood uses as an example, most everything the student had written would disappear. More importantly, such tutoring would cover, but not address the writer’s sexism.

A Writing Center unbounded by political correctness would allow a student such as this writer to express his ideas as honestly and offensively as possible, and would engage with them on a serious level. In the absence of the student-teacher power dynamic, the writer would hopefully feel more free to express his or her ideas as they are, rather than as they are supposed to be. Clearly, however, this depends upon the extent to which the writer and tutor feel comfortable talking to each other. By thus allowing controversial viewpoints to surface, writing center tutors can approach them on a less superficial, more honest level. Although the tutor should not seek to rectify these views, he or she can certainly challenge them and introduce new, more varied dimensions to them.

          I agree with Rachel’s conclusion that the primary goal of writing center tutors is to be instructional and not to take on the role of a therapist. However, I think that Murphy argued persuasively for the therapeutic relationship that is inherent between tutor and client. It is proven that when a student has an understanding of his or her tutor’s “basic interest, concern, and desire to help another,” the student is more inclined to respond by changing his/her behavior (96). I agree with Murphy’s claim that “learning is not simply a cognitive process,” but rather, it is influenced by human interaction, self-perception, and various factors that affect one’s learning environment (97). In my opinion, the real act of learning is not only a processing of external facts, but it is concerned with “understanding the nature of internal events, and more particularly, processes occurring within the individual as he or she handles and organizes his or her experience” (97). Murphy connects writing tutors and therapists by linking the use of language as a symbol for the exchange between two people. As in therapy, when a client perceives empathy from another, he or she is less defensive and therefore more effective in problem-solving. Ideally, the client experiences an increased degree of self-regard, which allows for increased opportunity for creativity. In the position of writing center tutors, I think we must recognize the aspect of learning that is an internal experience and attempt to facilitate interactions with students that enable this development to take place.

            I think that the use of the medical metaphor for the writing center is an intriguing one, but agree with Jacoby that it can lead to “‘a pessimistic, even fatalistic, view of the student as a learner’” (143). Paternalistic views, that the tutor, like the physician, has better insight into what the student needs than does the student, are dangerous due to their motivation. Jacoby cites self-interest or the belief that as tutors, we know more than students, as a motivating factor as well as a reaction after having been “put down by a system attempt to gain power by adopting the mode and guise of authority” (148). Whatever the cause for motivation, Jacoby considers when a student’s autonomy should/should not be defended. Like the physician that feels obliged to force a patient to open her mouth in order to save her life, thereby harming her in the process, are their instances in the writing center when we should disregard a student’s sense of what he/she believes as a writer? or as an individual? In regards to the mechanics of writing, I think that the answer is yes, but as to the disagreement with one’s individual opinions, the answer is much more difficult. Jacoby offers the solution of “informed consent,” which also helps to determine difficult ethical questions in the medical profession.

            If a student agrees to engage in collaboration with a tutor, he/she demonstrates a degree of informed consent because he/she has made the decision to seek out the help of a tutor, hoping to benefit from the experience in some way. When students at the writing center do not seem to exhibit this consent – they have been required to come by their teachers, they are passive participants in the conversation about their writing, etc. – it is fair for us, as tutors, to question our own roles in the collaborative process. Jacoby reminds us that though writing center work involves collaboration, clients will ultimately make their own decisions. It is not fair to assume that clients always make mistakes in their writing because they lack experience and are not aware of what they are doing as they know the subject that they are writing about best. I think that the best advice is to give students that come to the writing center the opportunity to engage in productive, peer-based, intellectual discussions. These discussions are most effectively facilitated by demonstrating empathetic understanding; that like medical professionals, tutors “are moving away from a tradition of authority to one of guide or co-learner” (144).

While it’s unlikely that we’d encounter a paper quite so biased as that written by a young Hitler in the Writing Center, I think it’s inevitable that we’ll encounter ones with ideas or logic we may find questionable or offensive. What then, do we do about them? Students have a right to believe what they wish, as well as a right to put those beliefs down on paper and submit them, and I believe that we should not do anything that interferes with that process. That being said, though, tutors have their own perfectly valid beliefs as well, and making the student aware of other viewpoints and arguments that need to be addressed should generally strengthen the paper, or at least prompt the student to examine their ideas more closely.

We have every right to ask the student to defend their position, which is easy to do if the opinion in question is the primary focus of the paper. What’s more difficult is when it’s a pervasive attitude, perhaps not outright accusing an ethnic group of wrongdoing, but more subtly derogatory. I think Freed is correct in that attempting to address such attitudes moves us somewhat  uncomfortably close to a position of counselor or worse, an authority attempting to inculcate them with our own potentially offensive beliefs–however reasonable and progressive and valid we may personally find them.

I find it’s easy to think that we can/should just educate people into agreement with us. After all, it’s so *obvious* to anyone with common sense, and aren’t we doing them and the world a favor by overturning bias and stereotype? The Writing Center, though, is made up of individuals–individuals with differing agendas and opinions who have united around the task of working with students on writing. We each bring our own biases to the table–Tutor A may have an abhorrence of the passive voice, or Tutor B may believe that the thesis statement should always go at the end of the introduction, while Tutor C may disagree with both of them. Writing tutors have an obligation to work towards making the student and the assignment the best they can possibly be–which may mean confronting their bias with our own. But I think that our position of authority or expertise within the Writing Center lies in writing first, and so while we should feel free to express our opinions of the literary merits, we should not attempt to change the student–or even eliminate the bias from that particular paper. I think there’s nothing wrong with informing the student of what the possible effects on certain readers may be, but we shouldn’t push for our position. Bias of some sort is inescapable in all papers, but the bias that may bother us might mean nothing to another reader.

Prejudices may need to be challenged, but I think we risk losing students to allegations of hypocrisy if we try to do so within the confines of the Writing Center.

Each of the three articles that we have read deal in some way with the relationship between student and tutor.  For Murphy, the tutor is like a psychotherapist, developing a trusting, talk-based, and affirmative relationship with students.  For Jacoby, the tutor is a doctor, working with a patient to diagnose problems with a paper and to offer pro-active “cures”.  The doctor balances between the institution and the patient.  Freed doesn’t use broad metaphors like this, but instead focuses specifically on tutor-student dialogue and subjectivity.  What happens when we disagree?  Obviously the non-directive approach is the one we must strive for, but ethically, are there any situations where we can or must speak up?

Perhaps one of the most difficult quandaries a writing tutor can face is if a student comes to the writing center expressing blatantly prejudiced or hateful thoughts.  It is one thing to present a paper on war, like the one Freed cites on page 138.  In the case of this paper, the student is taking one side on a commonly argued issue.  If the tutor sees a gaping hole in the argument or wants to challenge the argument, fine–dialogue is useful for helping the student strengthen his/her own argument or rethink structure.  Often defending ideas out loud will help a student gain clarity.  Like Eric said in his post, this also requires openmindedness on the tutor’s part.  Our job is to strengthen writing, not enforce our own agenda.  Whether we like it or not, we take on this role professionally and it is our job to go about our work in a professional manner.  It is detrimental to berate or tear apart a student’s work unjustly if we merely disagree and it is more likely to hurt a writing center than to help it.  This should not even be an issue.  It takes a fine amount of discipline for a tutor to keep her own ideas moderated so as not to alienate or preach to the student.

What I do wonder, though, is where do we draw the line?  What would we say if we encounter a Hitler paper in the writing center?  In the case of extreme rascism, prejudice, or hate, is it not our duty to speak up?  Obviously, it is important to engage a student in dialogue first–maybe ask him to clarify his argument or explain a vague generalization.  Ask pointed questions (”Do you really feel that way about ALL Jews? “  “Really, are you sure that’s fair?”)  But if the student is resistant, or if the hate speech is so strong, what do we have an obligation to do?  What do we do in a world post-Columbine and post-Virginia Tech?  Unfortunately, there are crazy people out there and some may come to work on their writing.  I suppose I would try to help the student with mechanics or something, but I would probably express my disgust with their opinion first.  Do we report such papers to the administration?  To a professor?  In the case of hate speech, I would feel obligated to do this, as it could threaten student safety.  Sometimes speaking up is necessary.  It should be only in the rarest of circumstances, but I believe it should be an option.

What, then, do we do for papers such as the one in Jacoby’s article about “The Use of Force”?  The instructor gave the student a D- and referred them to the writing center for work on her writing.  When student writing suffers this much, how appropriate is it to take a directive-style approach to tutoring? Jacoby disapproves of slashing out sections of the paper.  I tend to agree and would probably try to coax the student into a critical perspective with fairly pointed questions.  But if the student objects,I would have to work with them.   How can we get the student to have a transformative writing process like Jacoby describes, though? I sometimes think it’s ok to express my own opinions about student writing.  After all, a student who recieved a D- may be completely clueless about what to do or where to go next.  We are peers, but we are also tutors and it is part of our job to help educate students about writing.  Sometimes speaking up has its place.

While I think it brought up some valid points, Christina Murphy’s article Freud in the Writing Center bothered me.  Stylistically, I found the article frustrating.  Murphy mixes rather dense theoretical quotations, like the one from C.H. Patterson (97), with lengthy and awkward hypothetical dialogue between average writing center tutor and client (96, 99).  Murphy’s voice in the bulk of the article is pretty casual, but also generally clear and straight-forward.  If she had only stuck with that voice and tone throughout, her article would flowed well and seemed cohesive.  However, by including hyper-casual and totally gratuitous invented dialogues, and then in the next paragraph integrating long direct quotations from formal theoretical texts, Murphy pulls the tone of her article in two opposite directions at once.  The result is a choppy and tonally confusing article, which feels forced and unnatural.

The second main thing that bothered me about Murphy’s article is her labeling of all therapy in her analogy as Freudian psychoanalysis, when in fact the kind of therapy with which she is comparing tutoring is not Freudian psychoanalysis at all.  The therapeutic theory and practice of “unconditional positive regard” which Murphy references heavily in her analogy is not a Freudian concept, but a humanist concept.  Humanist therapists are by no means Freudian psychoanalysts, in fact, they are in many ways opposites.  Where Freudians authoritatively judge what is “wrong” with their clients, and then seek to change the way their clients think by extracting and exposing (painful) latent content from the subconscious, humanists look to confirm and elevate their clients, focussing on positivity and full acceptance of clients as they already are.  The job of the Freudian psychoanalyst is not to support you and follow your lead, but to diagnose you and tell you the meanings of the symbols in your dream.  (I know that is incredibly oversimplified, but either way it does not describe a good writing tutor…)  Actually, Murphy doesn’t quote or even reference an actual Freudian teaching even once in her article.  She just drops the name a couple of times, and I’m not sure why.  It makes no sense, and adds to the lack of congruency in the article.  (Also, along with they hypothetical dialogue,  it makes me feel like the article was written for people who are not very smart.)

Finally, I felt like Murphy was generally just trying too hard, and casting around for anything to support her thesis, no matter how much a stretch.  The first paragraph on page 98 is overkill and totally random at the same time.  The minute you tell the reader that an article is “interesting” (98), you’ve basically let them know that it’s either inapplicable to your article, or really  not interesting at all.  And now traditional medicine men are Freudians?  OK, how?  She does not substantiate any of her claims about Freud with actual statements made by or directly about Freud.  It’s like “Freud”, “Freudian” and “psychoanalysis” are just variable-meaning words she chose, out of all the vague and open-ended words, to peg to her idea of therapy in her argument.

Obviously, I found the presentation and and hook of this article incredibly annoying, but under the surface I think Murphy made some good points.  It is true that writing center appointments can be compared to many kinds of talk therapy consultations, and that trust between tutor and client is key to success.  However,  unlike in therapy, where a client usually meets regularly with the same therapist over the course of months or years, tutors in writing centers often will only meet with the same student once or twice, ever.  The exception is writing partners, to which I think Murphy’s therapy analogy applies much better.

In many ways, Stacey Freed’s “Subjectivity in the Tutorial Session: How Far Can We Go?” reminded me of a discussion we had in class a couple weeks ago based upon one of Alex’s posts. Basically, his post presented the same situation as Freed’s article regarding how a tutor should approach a blatantly prejudiced text. However, Freed’s reflection upon grading an essay touting the benefits of war presents a more difficult dilemma. In general, racist arguments rely upon false generalizations (stereotypes) and therefore take little effort to debunk. However, there clearly exist many other arguments a writer may develop which may incense the tutor. When the writer structures these arguments well and uses sound logic and evidence, simply debunking papers becomes more problematic. In these instances, Freed suggests that the tutor act as “a foil, a devil’s advocate” (140). She writes, “We must make students aware of other points of view that may be ‘disturbing’ to them and may ‘distress’ them” (141). Although I agree with the notion presented by this sentence, it seemed to ignore the initial tension of the article. That is, the discomfort has been shifted from the tutor to the tutee. In this switch, Freed ignores or forgets that in challenging the assumptions of a writer’s argument, the tutor must also seriously – even if critically – consider ideas which challenge him- or herself as well.

Perhaps some of this somewhat paternalistic forgetting that the tutor must also be challenged derives from Freed’s use of Wilbert McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, a book on teaching, to develop her argument. As many articles have shown us, teaching is not tutoring. Although the tutor may aid the tutee in present him or her with new ideas, the tutor-tutee relationship occurs between peers, and thus this challenging of ideas ought not to travel in one direction.

Moreover, considering Jay Jacoby’s challenge of the tutor’s ability to interfere with a student’s paper in order “to maintain university standards and protect academic society” (145) onto situations presented by Freed, it appears that , in some cases, tutors’ repulsion from certain texts may be a result of these texts’ departure from certain established norms. If the tutor alone delivers challenging ideas, these norms – or at least the ideas of the tutor – will be reinforced. On one hand, this process prevents the establishment of the “postcolonial” Writing Center as an institute allowing students to address issues of acculturation set forth by Anwis Bawarshi and Stephanie Pelkowski in “Postcolonialism and the Idea of the Writing Center.” On the other hand, as postcolonial theorists like Edward Said have pointed out, the discursive norms of certain academic subjects are very often marked by more subtle, more “sophisticated” prejudices than student papers would probably present to tutors. In his seminal work Orientalism, Said examines an essay from 1974 in which Henry Kissinger asserts that the difference between “Western” and “non-Western” thinking is that the latter remains in a “Pre-Newtonian” state. Although my depiction of Kissinger’s argument highlights the essay’s prejudice, many essays like these similarly work to belittle and demean “the Other.” Given this tendency, and the potential that writers’ unique backgrounds may make them – like the tutor in Freed’s article – disgusted by certain established discursive norms, the multidirectional challenging of ideas in the Writing Center must be considered extremely important.

This week’s articles took the investigation into the role of writing tutor one step further by comparing it to additional occupations, such as a psychoanalyst and a doctor.

But I disagreed with the representations that the authors painted of students. First there was the image of the student described first by Murphy as resembling a “hurt” patient who the tutor must help achieve their full potential by overcoming mental blocks such as low self-confidence or anxiety (Murphy 97). Or, according to Jacoby, they are like “patients,” or invalids and sufferers. Jacoby does include the disclaimer that students or their papers are no longer seen as having a disease to be cured by the writing tutor, but the image still bothered me. I suppose there are some students who come in seeking help from an authority figure, but these articles neglect those students who come in bursting with confidence and who just want you to look at them as equals, and who see you as someone off whom they can bounce ideas.

I had also never thought a tutor’s role to be as significant as one from the medical profession—since to qualify for the latter takes years of schooling and, following that, hours of dedication and late-nights spent helping your patients—but I can see how we face some of the same ethical issues. Mostly, these issues revolve around boundary-setting and how much of ourselves and our own opinions we can reveal or impose onto the student writer. I especially liked Jacoby’s highlighting of other ethical issues that both doctors and writing tutors face: issues of confidentiality, non-compliance, and allocation of resources (Jacoby 154). I know our Pomona Writing Center guarantees confidentiality—which I agree with, since it ensures more confidence on the students’ part—and only imposes sanctions on students who miss 3 writing appointments or so, but the other issues raised were more interesting to me.

For instance, how do we continue to deal with those who don’t follow our suggestions? This issue of how much force writing tutors should use balloons into the greater issue Freed writes of: how far can we go? Do we tell ourselves we are working for the student’s own benefit when we follow the doctor’s actions from William Carlos Williams’ short story, “The Use of Force?” Do we slump back in our chairs and give sullen responses to pest-students, as Brooks suggested in last week’s readings? And do we voice our own opinions in the writing center, such as when a student comes in with a controversial argument within their paper?

The best thing to do would be to remain objective. I started to recognize how difficult this would be, such as when reading the excerpt from Freed that turned out to be written by Adolf Hitler; to remain objective in the face of this would be godlike. I myself would not be able to repress at least a, “Whoa…”

Nevertheless, we should present our opinions as objective possibilities for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, and so the student can further bolster their own arguments by seeing the other side of it. For example, with the Hitler writing, I would ask the student to be more clear about his/her rationale, and then present the consequences of what they are saying, just as a doctor under the Hippocratic oath would. I would not try to impose my opinion onto the student for their utilitarian benefit, but rather do my best to take a Kantian stance where I would try to get the student to see all the evidence on either side and make their own decision, while understanding the implications of either choice.

Because if a tutor is seen as an authority, even if only a minor one, voicing our own opinions may be accepted by the student for that reason rather than because the student understands it. Or the student might feel stifled and never want to come back to the Writing Center, because s/he sees it as a place where tutors try to push their own agenda onto students rather than support the development of essays they might not agree with.

Therefore, it’s probably best for the tutor to remember that a student’s argument voiced in their paper is not a completely telltale reflection of the student as a person. The student might have no idea how offensively they could be coming off, might have a cultural or personal reason for taking such a stance, or might even just be arguing this side for the sake of arguing. In order to remain objective and focus on better writers, not better writing, tutors should remember to distance themselves from the writing and turn to writers instead to find out if the argument should not be dealt with. And, if one must judge, to judge based on writers rather than their essays.

Although the title of Christina Murphy’s “Freud in the Writing Center: the Psychoanalytics of Writing Well” was originally off-putting (Freud is scary), when I realized that it was more about the relationship a tutor has to his or her client than about the Oedipal complex, it ended up adding a lot of valuable ideas to my conception of the writing center. Murphy discusses the vulnerability of students who enter the writing center, and describes how they have “insecurities about their abilities as writers or even as academic learners, express fear to the tutor that they will be treated in the same judgmental or abusive way that they have been treated by teachers or fellow students before, or exhibit behavior patterns of anxiety, self-doubt, negative cognition, and procrastination that only intensify an already difficult situation” (96). Our job as tutors, then, is to combat these psychological issues, much as a psychoanalyst does.

Indeed, Murphy goes as far as to say that “the tutor’s role often is primarily supportive and affective, secondarily instructional, and always directed to each student as an individual in a unique, one-to-one interpersonal relationship” (96). The contention that we should first be supportive and instructional second is one that could raise debate. Which is our priority: being sensitive and nurturing, or improving papers whatever the cost?

Personally, I’m a supporter of being sensitive and nurturing; or rather, I don’t think that there has to be a dichotomy between these two options. I think that being sensitive and nurturing IS the best way to improve student papers. Imagine that a student feels threatened by the writing center. They see it as a place where they will come under attack, be criticized, and feel belittled. This kind of perception is, firstly, unlikely to encourage students to come to the writing center in the first place. People generally do not seek out places that make them feel so uncomfortable. In addition to the experience merely being unpleasant, they may feel that it is not useful. The psychological connotations that they have with the writing center may affect their perception of its efficacy, and they may feel that they do not learn or improve there. If students manage to make it past this initial block and into the writing center at all, they are likely to put up resistance (especially once they are met by methods that attack their feelings of self-worth).

On the other hand, imagine a writing center where students feel comfortable. Here, they are welcomed and their feelings are carefully considered. They feel comfortable expressing their ideas, engaging with their own work, and pushing themselves. In an environment like this, students will be drawn to the writing center. They will enjoy the kind of experiences they have there, and thus have positive connotations to it. They will then be able to work more effectively within it, and reap a wide variety of benefits. Like the psychoanalysis patients Murphy describes, they will be more open, more effective in problem-solving, and more confident, and thus “more creative, more uniquely adaptive, and more fully expressive of his or her own values”; thus, the writing tutor functions “to awaken individuals to their potentials and to channel their creative energies toward self-enhancing ends” (98).

This view of the writing center leads me to another idea. Why don’t we have more training focusing on interpersonal interactions? We do a lot of training (before beginning to work, in our lunch meetings, through the readings for this class itself) focusing on the more theoretical aspects of tutoring: what to focus on when editing papers, what our priorities are, the history of writing centers, etc. We don’t focus as much, though, on practicing the social aspects of our job. Luckily, I think one of the important criteria for selecting writing tutors is how they interact with others, their methods for engaging in dialogue, and their skills overall in reading people and responding to their needs to make them as comfortable as possible. Hopefully, everyone who becomes a Writing Fellow has some innate or learned capacity to do these things and create a writing center that corresponds to the second view. I think, though, that in the same way that we are already fairly experienced writers but still learn about the process to add more tools to our metaphorical toolbox, it is useful to learn more about how we can better work with others.

Where do you all fall on the spectrum of sensitivity importance?