Finally Elbow again!

I have to admit that I was starting to miss Elbow terribly, no offense to Williams! I know Elbow is trying to encourage us and enlighten us about writing without teachers, but this week's assigned chapter was hard for me to contemplate. Maybe because I work best under deadlines and authority. I do not know. Although what he says is quite fascinating, I find it quite unrealistic. It says that the teacherless writing class tries take you out of darkness and silence. It is a class of seven to twelve people who get together at least once a week. I feel peer review classes are the best way to improve writing without teachers. I have done it several times to know that it has definitely improved my writing quality.
These steps Elbow talks about is quite time consuming in my perspective. Especially if you are a college student, setting up the class to meet once a week for this many hours seem tiring for me. I would rather go to class, have a professor guide me, get in peer reviews and research on my own to make my paper better. The key is having a teacher who is smart enough to let us make decisions independently and treat us like adults.
I know that Elbow has some very strong points but it just does not do anything for me. There are so many steps and regulations to this process and I feel that would tire students at some point. And things could actually get chaotic among these 7-12 people.
Nevertheless, Elbow talks about some important issue that caught my attention. On page 101 he talks about trying to listen quietly as a writer. I feel that is the hardest thing to do for any writer simply because we get so defensive as writers, however in the long run if we try to understand how the readers tell us their perspective it will actually help us to improve our writing.
And of course we should not reject what the readers tell us. So even if the reader is wrong we should all take it in and reflect on it later.
Elbow wraps up this chapter well when he says its not a foolproof plan and that he has seen a teacherless class drift in the opposite direction. So at least he is being objective about it.