Hindsight is 20/20?

I appreciate the interplay between Barnett and Blumner’s first three selections. Moore’s “The Writing Clinic and the Writing Laboratory” can be used to construct a narrative that describes the history of writing centers as a story of progress, Carino’s “Early Writing Centers: Toward a History” cautions against such an approach, and Summerfield’s “Writing Centers: A Long View” suggests that because the past is not an uncomplicated story of progress it would be a mistake to assume that the near future of writing centers must be a step forward. Another theme that connects these three essays is the potential for misreading our personal and disciplinary experience, the danger inherent in such a misreading, and the benefits of attempting to recover a more nuanced and complicated reading. People sometimes say that hindsight is 20/20, but that sort of misplaced confidence in our ability to interpret our past is probably as unhelpful as not looking backward at all.