Week Two Prompt

For this week's blog entry, I think I'd like to see you all continue the little debate we had in class on Friday.  The questions, roughly, were as follows: are we in the business of making the individual essay on the table in front of us better, or are we in the business of making better writers?  This is, of course, a false dilemma, but it's a crucial question/balancing act/issue/concern that we'll be talking about throughout the term.

How does this all play out, in your mind?  If a student were to bring in an essay that had, for instance, no coherence whatsoever—it was simply a pile of non sequiturs—would you be right to tell the student to start over?  Would you try to find something in the essay that might form the basis of a significant revision?  Are you more concerned with making that essay better than you are with making sure the student understands what went wrong and why?  Are there ethical issues associated with each position?  Almost certainly, a student would balk if you told him or her to start over.  But wouldn't a student also find it frustrating trying to wade through a tutoring session focused on global issues when the essay is incomprehensible?

What about a situation that's worse?  What about a student who brings in an essay that is broadly offensive (that is, it contains racist or sexist language that many people would take issue with)?  How would you respond?

Please post your responses by Friday.