RE: An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"

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

There are a number of interesting issues here, not the least of which are
perceptions of writing centers, writing, and learning-disabled people.  So
here are some random thoughts from a somewhat dysgraphic Hittitologist
who runs a writing center.

1.  I agree with several other people who note that it's the
responsibility of services for disabled students to provide a scribe for
the student, if needed.  As someone suggested, it's analogous to providing
an interpreter for a deaf student.  If someone asked us for a scribe, I'd
point out that we have nobody with the appropriate training.  

2. It's important to distinguish between writing in the sense
"transcription" and writing in the sense "composing."  The two *are* most
certainly connected--and the medium in which composing is done can make
all kinds of interesting differences--but they're also separable.
Composing through dictation was fairly standard throughout history.
Although Quintilian disapproved (he thought composing through dictation
led to too loose a style), in many cultures for the past 4 millennia, the
author was the guy who dictated while scribe was simply the manual
laborer.I suspect the Hittite king, for example, would no more have
stooped to the grubby work of transcription than he would have hauled
stones for building a wall.  Dictation as a mode of composing shouldn't be
that foreign to our own culture; until the widespread
adoption of word processing
technology, business documents were often composed through dictation, and
nobody thought the secretary was the author. I fail, then, to see the
conceptual or ethical difference between dictating to a human being and
dictating to software.  I do, however, see some practical differences.  
Speech recognition software has improved in the past 20 or so years since
it was introduced, but it's never going to be as good as a human being in
interpreting language in context.  It also can't stop and ask for
clarification.  I sometimes work collaboratively with a blind writer who
uses what I assume is state-of-the-art equipment, and it still leaves a
lot of odd artifacts that might prove problematic for an LD writer to
untangle.  

3.  I get concerned at perceptions of students with LD as trying to put
one over on the system and at assumptions that reasonable accommodations
will somehow cripple them for "real life."  In fact, people with LD often
end up working harder than others on the things that cause them
difficulties. Sometimes, the frustrating part is convincing people that
you need help with things normally considered easy. As for "real life,"
people with LD usually gravitate to
activities and professions where they can exercise their strengths, while
avoiding, minimizing, or coping with their weaknesses--same as anyone
else. And it's easier in some ways, once you're no longer a student. A
business person who has someone checking her spelling or editing her work
isn't remarkable; institutional attitudes about what constitutes writing or
"doing the work" can make that problematic for student, even when the
point of the assignment isn't spelling or learning whether the commas go
inside the quotation marks or outside.  LD students do need to learn how
to analyze the tasks that confront them and to explain themselves and
advocate for themselves, and I'm not sure that disabilities services always
does a good job with that.  I do think, however, that one way in which a
writing center might help is in helping students to manage their writing
processes--again to find and maximize strengths and to deal with
weaknesses effectively.

Sara Kimball
UT Austin