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Marcy et al:  I once read an essay critical of social work with the provoking
title "Can You Be a Professional Friend?"  I think something of this
conundrum is involved in your teacher vs reader response.  The goal of
professionals is to *be* professional, which means not to be personal coz
that's unprofessional.  So your personal response to the student's unethical
piece is ruled out of order before you begin, if you're not to betray
professional conduct.  But what *is* that?  In a current textbook on Social
Work Research the authors are very clear that anything not quantifiable,
following scientific method, is subjective, or a matter of intuitions, and so
unprofessional.  It seems that in our push for professionalization in
composition, rhetoric, and English we have impaled ourselves on the horns of
an old dualistic, Cartesian dilemma.  On the one hand, as professionals,
we have this ideal of objective, value-neutral advice about how to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of the student's argument; on the other we
*know* and profess that writing ain't neutral, and neither is language--we're
always positioned and positioning.

Maybe we need to cultivate an alternative to professionalism.  Someone once
said (anyone know who this is?) that criticism was the enlightened activity
of an amateur, or something like that.  Amateurism...hmmm.  The Olymics used
to be just that.  And it didn't mean throwing out standards, or succumbing to
intuition ("That certainly 'feels' like a gold medal jump to me Bill, what do
you think?").  Other words come to mind: tradition, vocation, commitment,
discipline.  There are grounds for telling your student that his view is
unacceptable, that you have it on good authority, and that it's those good
authorities that have contributed to your professing what you do.

By the way, this strand is fascinating.
L.


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  Laurence Steven                               Laurentian University
  [log in to unmask]                  Sudbury, Ontario
  Fax, English Dept. 705-675-4870; Fax, MA in Humanities 705-675-4887
  Phone 705-675-1151 ex 4353
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