paradigm shift

Hairston's essay raises some interesting questions that I had never really considered before. I liked the way she basically came right out and stated what was wrong with the system of teaching writing. For example, she very bluntly says, "they believe that teaching editing is teaching writing." I usually operate under a policy of, if it's not broken, don't fix it. Until I read Hairston's essay, I didn't think there way anything wrong with the way that composition is taught. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but certainly not worth completley overhauling.
Then again, I don't really know that much about either the process or the product model. Until a few weeks ago I didn't realize that they even had names. The main question that I like to think educators are trying to answer is, how exactly does a person learn to write well? This evokes some preconceived notions about what "good" writing is. I think we usually think of classic literature by Austen or Dickenson. While I don't think that reading these kinds of authors automatically makes a person a better writer through osmosis, I do think that reading, in general, helps give a person a better sense of what "sounds" right when they are writing. Familiarizing oneself with good grammar and structure is a good way to go.
Ever since hearing about it, I have become a huge fan of the process model. I think that in order to become a better writer, people should take a look at their process and figure out what is serving them and what is hindering them. And composition teachers should serve as a guide for helping students understand how to write better. I think that this goes hand in hand with learning how to edit well.