Re: colleague's skepticism

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

Happy New Year, James!
	I find several of my undergraduate tutors a lot brighter than 
some of my English Dept. colleagues when it comes to talking about 
language and writing, but I'm not sure that's gonna wash as an argument 
with your colleague ;-)
	You might, however, ask him what he's trying to accomplish by 
copy-editing a zillion student texts each semester, other than acquiring a 
great of copyediting experience for himself.  Ask him if he as any 
*evidence* to support his claim that students actually learn anything 
from this. I assume he counts as successes those adaptable/obsequious 
students who successfully mimic his idea of style, but can he imagine 
another semester, another class, and another instructor with much 
different ideas about language use? What's the successful student 
supposed to do then? Cling to your colleague's style as the universal 
truth, or adapt again?
	Now that I think about it, that approach isn't going to work 
either, but I'm gearing up for a battle of my own on the issue of editing 
student texts.  Next fall I'll be again team-teaching an ancient history 
course on Hittites and Mycenaens with a colleague from Classics who's a 
noted expert on ancient Agean writing.  With all of the best intentions in 
the world, Tom really goes to town on copy-editing students' texts, 
including spending a lot of time an energy "correcting" things that are 
perfectly acceptable standard English. Of course he only get through the 
first few pages of each text anyway. The part that was really 
irritating the last time we taught this class was that some students 
figured they were getting their money's worth from Tom, including the 
student who said he was giving his draft to Tom, because I just commented 
on content.  I was reduced to muttering things like "That's not true, and 
content isn't exactly irrelevant," or "Well, I've been teaching writing a 
lot longer than Tom."  Anyway, one of my goals for this summer is to get 
Tom to think out what he's doing.  Wish me luck, and good luck to you 
with your colleague.
Sara Kimball