As I’m beginning a new semester of teaching undergraduate writing, so also begins the task of responding to the written word on the page. I just saw an interesting thread on Facebook. The topic was, as usual these days, politics. The subject was an interchange between two people that knew each other in real life (which isn’t always the case on Facebook, of course) that had different political views. The embattled page owner, used to refuting political opposition, wrote a response to what the person wrote; the person felt baffled because he thought “you knew me better than that.” In other words, he felt that she’d taken the words out of the context of their long relationship, in which he was a “good guy,” not the opposition…anyway, he ended the exchange by announcing that he was going to close his Facebook account.

This is probably not an uncommon occurrence. I mention it because similar situations arise in writing classes, unfortunately. It bears understanding the position of a writing teacher, who may respect and like a student, but respond to particular passages critically. One always hopes that one can keep personal bias out of responses in a class situation, but sometimes even an unbiased assessment of a passage can sting like a personal attack. I’ve been a student; we’ve all been in that situation, too.

So, I brought up this example to a student from Facebook as a reminder that in a writing situation, we respond more to the words on the page than to the person behind them. Writing teachers develop a sort of unusual filter that allows them to do this almost continuously. If we are good, we also develop a dual sensitivity to the person behind the words, but sometimes need to be reminded.