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. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------