Our discussion in class today made evident to me that I have fundamentally misunderstood North. The distinction we made in class seemed to be as follows:
- The "better writing"/fix-it shop approach, in which if the writer has problems with run-on sentences (for example), they are marked in the paper for the writer to correct, versus
- The "better writers" approach, in which the writer is taught to avoid run-on sentences.
I thought approach number two above was what North meant by fix-it shops. (The fact that I'm taking it for granted that writing centers are more than proofreading services may be because I'm reading a quarter-century after North wrote.) Even teaching students to avoid run-on sentences (rather than simply fixing them) is a fairly remedial correction of a mechanical problem. Is this really the extent of the goal to which North aspires?
And if it's more, what specifically, exactly,
rigourously does he want?
If this is all North means, then I have missed his point completely and my first memo is utter gibberish.
Wes, nice job on summarizing North for us. North indeed does argue that our job as writing tutors is to assist the writer and not the paper. As the people who respond to writing, our job is to assist the writer to develop their "writerly" knowledge and skills, not just to fix grammar.
ReplyDeleteNice point, btw, about reading North 25 years after the piece was originally published.