No, we don’t want to discourage people. The question I have to Robyn and Carrie and others is this: is it a matter of content or of tone? We have noted all along that certain members tend to swear and punctuate their posts with cuss words and express rage at the machine, etc. Is that the problem?
Or is it that we should allow people to “experiemnt”? My problem with that is that it can be very misleading to people who do not read the Big Book, etc., don’t go to workshops or even sessions at conferences. They see someone say, “I find that bubblegum wrappers make for great CI” and then three or four others chime in with “that sounds so neat!”, etc. and that leaves a newbie with the impression that there is no principle to tprs.
And I guess here we go back to that old sophomore college argument about theory I don’t want theory, just give me the facts, not realizing that the facts are determined by the theory. And I have to repeat myself and say that someone is making up a tprs/CI principles list to post every month, one that does not require going to other sites to get the basics. I’m going for an adendum of what tprs is not, but I don’t know if the person doing this wants that included; it may clutter the thing up too much. The whole idea is to have a check list with which people can see if what they are doing or suggesting fits into the CI theory and tprs practice.
Somehow, maybe it’s the way some of us are raised, it comes out that if someone says that’s not tprs, they are saying we can’t do it. Again, if you like using bubblegum wrappers, fine; but if your students don’t acquire, you can’t blame tprs when you are using other methods’ methods as Lance pointed out. To me, the best way to check out tprs is to use tprs period.