Diversifying Our Views of Argument: Dialogue, Respect, and Feminist Rhetoric

by Kathleen M. Hunzer

While teaching at a local community college one summer, I also worked as a writing tutor three days per week. The flow of students was light, as expected, so many days only one tutor had a student and the rest of us kept busy until another student came for assistance. One day a male tutor was helping a female student with an argument/persuasion assignment for her Effective Writing I class; sitting near the pair I could not help but overhear the session. The student had come to the center because she said she was not sure if her essay met the stated requirements, even though she said she thought it was a great essay, one of her best. The tutor read the assignment sheet, reviewed the essay, and then told the student that her main problem was that she did not persuade her reader to believe her point of view; rather, what the student had written about the issue was "too reasonable," which meant that the needs of the assignment were not met. The student insisted that she did not really have a firm opinion either way on the issue and consequently did not feel comfortable arguing for either side, as the assignment had required. In response, the tutor told her to "make it up" or she would get a "bad grade": after all, the tutor said, the aim of the assignment was to persuade the reader into abandoning his point of view while turning to hers. But, she restated, she did not really have a strong opinion either way on the assigned issue, which meant that she would not be arguing her real opinion. This did not matter, according to the tutor, because the teacher would never know it was all "made up." The student agreed to rewrite the essay and left. The tutor seemed proud of himself, but the session did not rest well in my mind.