In the Writing Center, we’re given a huge amount of instruction on how to critique papers, but we’re told (almost explicitly) never to grade or edit. It’s not considered helpful to give someone a grade; partially because every professor grades differently, but also because the way we grade thing tends to be too structured for the general touchy-feeliness that the Writing Center employs. “Don’t focus on fixing the document, focus on improving the students skill as a writer!”
In the writing center, that really works. We only ever work with one paper in a given session, and the student is always physically present. We can point at specific things, offer suggestions… there’s constructive criticism here.
In a classroom setting, though, things are very… faceless. Even though we have these much lauded small class sizes, things are detached. I found Faigley’s discussion of different kinds of papers here to be really telling. All of these individualized “autobiographical” essays actually have a profound psychological effect: they make you actually consider the student as human being, rather than the student as faceless writer.
Our current model; the one where we give students a single topic to write about, inevitably results in a homogeneous wall of papers. Students don’t know how to deviate from a prompt yet, which means that the majority of papers hit the same notes, quote the same sound bites, and use very similar language. If all the papers seem the same, it’s no wonder that all of the responses seem the same. I’m not sure if this is a flaw in our pedagogy, or a flaw in how we look at grading.
In a perfect world, I would love to take the UCEW’s approach of working one on one with people. There’s just not enough time.