One of the primary institutions which I support at my alma mater is the Notre Dame Writing Center. To begin to explain why, I will write a short ode to an inspiring family. Their kids might be considered a half-generation younger than I; the eldest are in their late teens, but the youngest is younger than my elder daughter. The whole family, including the young children, are cultured and well read and Catholic, in the best sense - able to see beauty in all of creation, generous, aware of the poor and marginalized, etc. They have homeschooled for that same rarer reason my parents also had: to ensure the quality of their education kept up with their intelligence, not to shelter them from the big, bad, secular world. Essentially, if my kids turned out like theirs, I’d be content.
These parents also believe deeply in the Writing Center (one is the director, and the other a member of the English faculty). Through them, I have come to see that the formation of good writers and good writing tutors can be essentially a Christian ministry, even if not explicitly so. (I was a tutor for the NDWC as a junior and senior.) A good tutor practices several skills akin to a pastoral minister.First, he or she must listen well.
Writing tutoring may be an intellectual ministry, but it is one that requires intense focus on the person, the author, before you. The Prayer of St. Francis says, “O Master, let me not seek as much… to be understood as to understand,” and this would be a worthy mantra for the tutor. Your job as a tutor is to bring out the best in what the author has to say, rather than what you think would be best to argue or how you might phrase it. The author is especially able to flourish in the peer tutoring at the foundation of centers like the NDWC, where there is less of an inherent power dynamic or knowledge gap.
In short, tutoring writing requires humility. It should not be your style (however delightful you may think it), but theirs that eventually runs clearly. To achieve this rhetorical invisibility, much of a tutoring session relies on asking questions once the author has read aloud his or her work, and asking more questions once he or she has answered. In between, the tutor listens.
Second, tutoring requires a discerning eye.
You are asked to be a tutor because you write well; you know some of what good writing includes, and what a clear argument requires. You become the person who finds the right questions to ask. While you do not want to impose yourself upon someone else’s writing, you do have something to give.
An author who takes full advantage of a writing center may develop a habit of thinking clearly through his or her communication, much as if he or she received actual philosophical training. The tutors’ clear thinking and fresh sight are often their gift to give.
The questioning process of a tutoring session might then be described as Socratic, but I think it is closer to Christlike. Christ’s questions, particularly to challengers like the Sanhedrin, weren't neutral; but he did genuinely want to listen. His questions are meant to open their perspective, change the nature of the game they think they’re playing. When a tutor sees where someone can improve, he or she asks a question meant to help them realize improvement is necessary or possible, but that question may (should?) not lead only to a single means of improvement.
In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis puts this necessary humility thus:
Making yourself superfluous is hard, but it is a skill well cultivated for the instances in life (and there are many) where you have no choice but to let go of control over the result."...The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love. It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” shall be our reward."1
Third, tutors learn to engender curiosity - the authors’ and their own.
My parish’s pastor wants to begin offering Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.2 His stated purpose is to direct children’s natural curiosity towards faith-related objects and stories while young - so then as the children age, they might maintain that curiosity about faith. The next step which immediately jumped to my mind was to include some form of peer writing tutoring in the school for the middle grades (and encourage the use of it particularly for writing assignments in their theology lessons).
At the NDWC, I learned about myriad interesting topics from students who were passionate about those subjects, and just needed some help conveying to others what was greatest about their interests. Now, I often learn interesting tidbits about saints when I read the essays of near-Confirmands.
Imagine if students were given a space to hear about faithful witnesses from a peer who already admires that person, or a new perspective on the Gospel from a peer who has seen something in a parable they haven’t yet? Imagine if students were formed to listen openly, understand their peers better, and advocate well for their beliefs?
To me, this sounds like the formation of an evangelizing Christian, but it is also the formation found within a writing center.
1 This quote is not entirely applicable, because until we reach the Kingdom of God, both saints and writers can benefit from another’s discerning review.↩
2 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is the Catholic faith formation edition of Montessori education, about which Jenny has previously blogged.↩
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