Charitable Writing by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III

My Seminar team is making an intentional effort in the upcoming school year to inculcate "Intellectual Virtues" in our students. A helpful companion book was suggested by one of the teachers, Charitable Writing by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III. I found this book invaluable to our mission.

The authors begin by lamenting that writing is taught the same in public and Christian schools. They realized the error in this and this book is their attempt to correct that. The dual command to love God and love others should infuse everything a Christian does, including writing. Yet the current model of writing is hardly a model of love, but rather that of war. Arguments are made and the opposition is refuted. Someone wins and someone loses. While recognizing the importance of making an argument, the authors desire to infuse the search for truth through writing with love. 

Realizing that writing is truly a communal activity, Gibson and Beitler divide the writing process into three components: Humble Listening, Loving Argument, and Keeping Time Hopefully. I marked up particularly helpful advice that I intend to put into practice in my Rhetoric class. 

Humble Listening: After you've successfully grasped the argument's content (what it says) through paraphrase, turn to a consideration of the arguments form (how it says) and function (what it does). Don't evaluate at this stage; instead, attempt to describe how the argument is constructed and what the argument's parts--its paragraphs, sentences, and word choices--accomplish. By paraphrasing your peers' ideas and describing the form and function of their arguments, you'll be better equipped to offer them evaluative feedback and suggestions for improvement when it is time to do so. Humble listening, we are suggesting, begins the process of offering feedback not with a summary judgment about the success or failure of this or that. It opens like Alice Duer Miller's "Splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer." In humility, we can respond by simply offering back what we heard--describing what the writer said, how the writer went about saying it, and for what purposes. Giving your peers' writing back to them in this way will almost certainly be a revelatory experience for them, and for you. 

The authors propose a new metaphor for writing to replace the old one of war: a feast. 

Loving Argument: To recognize that writing not only can be but also should be a hospitable practice has profound implications for Christian writers. To write hospitably requires that we use words and genre conventions that our reader will recognize and understand. To write hospitably requires that we take the time to edit our writing so as to make it approachable. To write hospitably requires that we actually think about who our readers are in the first place. Above all, to write hospitably requires that we recognize writing as a gift. "And yet,; Gibson writes, "I know of few students who describe their academic papers as gifts. As "work' or products' or achievements' or 'projects'-but not as gifts." As Gibson perceives, our educations form us to understand our writing first and foremost in terms of our personal productivity or success. It's about us. That, of course, is not how a banquet functions. A banquet succeeds when the hosts and guests enjoy themselves together.

"Keeping Time Hopefully" is to say that writing needs to be a slow, savored process. A labor of love. The Gibson and Beitler compare it to the "Slow Food" movement which desires and intentionality and appreciation for the eating process. It is not procrastination, but deliberation. 

Keeping Time Hopefully: A second, related way to revitalize revision is by recognizing it as an opportunity to love our readers. Revision can be an act of charity. To recall several features of J. I. Packer's definition, charity involves giving of oneself and what one has, freely and without consideration of merit, to meet the actual needs of specific people and promote their greatness." Few of us understand revision in such terms. Instead of viewing it as a gift that promotes others' well-being, we see it as obligatory work we must do to strengthen our writing, earn the "A," get published, or win awards. We may have been taught to revise with the rhetorical needs of our readers in mind, but we typically strive to meet the needs of those who are in a position to promote us--professors, bosses, and other "higher-ups." The social position of our readers should matter to us because, if we're being honest, our desire is usually to make ourselves, not others, great.

This book is a fantastic wake-up call to me as a teacher to try to infuse love in all I do and especially to help my students to infuse love in what they do.