Re: bawking

[Don Socha <347hqx7@cmich.edu>]

Of course it's been a while, but what bobbie silk wrote came up on my screen today
anyway, and I had some I think related concerns.  For example, when he states:

> I might accept an analogy between physical therapy and writing center work
> before I'd accept the medical analogy.

I wonder if the realm of physical therapy addresses questions of context in the
ways I am currently concerned with.  For example, when colleagues and the students
themselves use the medical analogy (and it is most important, I think, to address
the ways in which this occurs contextually on the subconcious level), though:

>  it serves their self-interested perception of the
> situation...

...in that

>  The faculty member wants someone else to cure this writer's
> ills so that s/he can be more efficient in grading what s/he thinks is
> important (the old misconception of separating content and articulation)...

Why "the student" is motivated to

> ...want a "cure" because it implies a "magic bullet," a
> simple and painless adjustment that doesn't take much time or tinker with
> the student's mind

has more to do with, or can perhaps best be addressed at, the initially
subconscious level of the context in which student writers first locate themselves
in the writing process.  What I think I'm getting at is something learned through
working with whole foods and macrobiotics for more than a decade, which may be
inadequately summed by the familiar expression:  'an ounce of prevention is worth
a pound of cure;' be it slash and burn or therapeutic.  --ds