Writing Centers as Training Wheels: What Message Are We Sending Our Students?
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Date
2005
Authors
Nicolas, Melissa
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Over twenty years ago, Stephen North began his famous essay, “The Idea of a
Writing Center,” by admitting that
This is an essay that began out of frustration [. . .]. The source of
my frustration? Ignorance: the members of my professions, my
colleagues, people I might see at MLA or CCCC or read in the
pages of College English do not understand what I do. They do not
understand what does happen, what can happen, in a writing
center. (433)
Like North, I began this essay out of frustration, but my frustration is with my
writing center colleagues. I have spent a good deal of my (albeit brief)
academic career thinking about and researching the marginalization of writing
centers, and I am tired of fighting the good fight for respect and recognition in
composition studies, English departments, and the institution at large when
writing centers sabotage themselves everyday by continuing practices that feed
into our perpetual marginalization. I am tired of running up against practices
that directly counter attempts I and others make to take writing centers
seriously. In particular, I am concerned with the common practice of using
“forced” labor in the writing center, especially when this involves using the
writing center as “training wheels” for new graduate students until they are
ready to ride solo in their own classrooms.