You've Gotta Fight...

Brannon & Knoblauch: I'll start out with a quote this time around: "The more we know about a writer's skill, the more we have read of that individual's work or heard of his or her reputation, the greater the claim to authority. This claim can be so powerful that we will tolerate writing from that author which appears to be unusually difficult, even obscure or down-right confusing." (p 157) I agree with this completely. This explains why I forced myself through Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I hated it immediately but kept trudging through, just because it was Woolfie. What a waste.
I have to admit that I'm glad I read this before I started teaching. It's true that even when I peer review, I don't attribute much authority to the text of my peer and so I probably go in there with the preconceived notion that there are mistakes to be unrooted, problems to be solved. I would say that the descriptions of the Paternalistic teacher who swings to the conservative or the liberal is shockingly similar to the differing views that Bartholomae and Elbow have of student work. I would be so frustrated if a teacher gave me a bad grade and then told me that I really meant to say this or the other. I remember speaking to an unnamed student who had an unnamed professor who actually made a vocabulary change on the student's rough draft. It was something like changing the word "work" to "toil" or something as ridiculous. When things like that happen, the whole work stops being the student's.
The Lindbergh Ideal Text thing was crazy, but I can see people reading something like what that student wrote and making those comments. It's nuts, but it's happened before. What is profound to some is absurd to others.
I guess the answer to finding some sort of middle ground between the conservative paternal teacher and the liberal paternal teacher is really just that...take the middle road. Negotiate with the student. Talk to them about their work or better yet, ask them about it. Don't assume it's wrong if it doesn't neatly fit predetermined conventionality, but don't assume it's groundbreaking and has some sort of artistic agenda behind it.

Someone used the phrase, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" the other day and I thought of the Lindbergh baby. Maybe that's what really happened to him.