North's Radical Vision

The correlations between the film Dead Poets Society and the North’s “Revisiting ‘the Idea of a Writing Center’” become increasingly apparent as North outlines the radical departure from what he said about writing centers in 1984 to what he hopes writing centers will become in 1994. Just as Robin Williams radically departed from the norm in teaching writing, North suggests a radical change in university writing requirements to create a society of writers who are motivated about and engaged in writing. Instead of core writing classes which “are nearly always taught by the underpaid, the overworked, and the undertrained” (86) and writing centers open to all the students in the university, he favors writing classes offered “over a four-year cycle” taught by “full-time tenure track faculty” whose students invest in writing and where everyone gets to know each other and a writing center in which teachers, students and staff constitute a community whose main goal is to talk about writing and whose resources match its mission. I wonder how he intends to fulfill the university’s obligation to educate other students who are not enthusiastic about writing. Is he indicating that writing instruction is not necessary for all students? How many times have we not wanted to take a class but discovered or developed an interest where none existed before?