The authors argue that if basic writers are to affect social change through their writing, they must be taught how to read critically the range of social, economic, political, cultural, and ideological perspectives of their audiences—intended and unintended—and how to explore the limitations and benefits of textual forms available for response. Noting that basic writers are also basic readers who apply only a personal interpretive frame to texts, the authors analyze a deaf students failed attempt to affect social change on her campus and conclude that the students attempt failed because they, her instructors, failed pedagogically to move beyond a romanticized notion of affecting public change thorough public rhetorical acts.
Brammer suggests that basic writers are linguistic outsiders who lack the cultural capital for success in academe because they use oral-discourse patterns that reveal their ethnic, geographic, and economic backgrounds. She argues that instructors should accept Standard Written English as a dialect and mine second-language acquisition studies and literacy studies to better teach linguistic variations. Brammer contends that students need explicit instruction in language variation and in rhetorical strategies that are part of academic discourse but that might be different from students own oral strategies. She recommends that writing instructors focus on metacognitive activities; strategies at the essay, paragraph, and sentence levels that will support students; and critical reading and analysis, syntactic cohesion, and grammar.
Bruch and Reynolds examine two texts (Creating America: Reading and Writing Assignments, by Joyce Moser and Ann Watters, and Cultural Attractions/Cultural Distractions: Cultural Literacy in Contemporary Contexts, by Libby Allison and Kristine L. Blair) to assess the possibility for a "more just literacy" (par. 2) through the influence of cultural studies on basic English. Calling on the definition and discussion of critical literacy put forward by James Berlin and Michael Vivion in Cultural Studies in the English Classroom, they suggest that cultural studies' theory provides the means to discover gaps in cultural representation but does not automatically provide a satisfactory remedy. Turning to the two selected textbooks, Bruch and Reynolds contend that they and many others fail to examine "institutionally valued literacies and justifications for racial hierarchies" (par. 19). Adding material to a textbook is insufficient if literacy itself, or the valued forms of writing taught to students, remain unexamined. Thus, Moser and Watters's addition of minority authors, for example, does not change what counts for literacy.
Romy and Ivanic argue that written texts—whether produced in the classroom, home, or media—are political. Writing becomes political not only through the decoding and encoding of meaning of the written word; language itself is a social construct, and therefore is equally political. Language and literacy, then, describe and define the social world in which we live. Romy and Ivanic begin their text with the politics of writing, and from this basis they continue their discussion of the product, process, and purpose of writing in academic and nonacademic contexts.
Collins situates a study of two basic writing courses within the broader tensions surrounding the role of education. He begins by tracing the birth of the liberal arts curriculum as an attempt to inculcate students into the values reflected in the liberal arts curriculum and to stifle public debate. As a result of twentieth-century attacks on the original purpose of this liberal arts, universities have moved to "cafeteria style" approaches where writing is often the only core "skill" that runs throughout. Yet basic writing courses and programs disrupt the elite character of the university. Next, Collins describes two basic writing classes that reflect the "skill-based" nature of writing and basic writings potential. In one class, students wrote primarily from and about experience and were confused about vague assignments that provided little guidance about how to read "experience" within broader contextual frameworks. In the other class, the instructor developed assignments rooted in specific experiences of race and students became invested in the assignments and wrote copiously. This course was also challenging because of the limitations imposed by institutional constraints—both the instructors time and the limits of acceptable discourse within institutions. Collins then places both approaches within a broader context of literacy and literacy crisis, suggesting that instructors must be attentive to the institutional and social contexts that shape how literacy is defined and enacted in various contexts.
Deming views writing and reading as complementary components in basic writing courses. She contends that programs that eliminate the teaching of critical reading from their basic writing curriculum need to reexamine this practice. Drawing from Robert Tierney and P. David Pearson's "Toward a Composing Model of Reading," Deming applies their process model of composition to reading patterns by citing specific classroom examples. The four steps of this reading model—planning, drafting, aligning, and revising—illustrate Deming's argument that the structures of reading comprehension and process writing are too closely linked to be separated. True critical interaction between the students' lives and their worlds is a goal of a college education; for students to achieve this goal, both reading and writing instruction need to be expanded at all levels of college.
Basic readers in college already know how to read well for pleasure, but they lack the schemata and experience to read challenging nonfiction texts in a critical way. Dickson notes that since many basic college readers approach texts from the formulaic topic sentence/support structural pattern, they often misread or dismiss texts that rely on subtle organization or sarcastic tones. Dickson outlines typical problems basic readers have with text perceptions and lists practical teaching steps that can help instructors lead students toward more complex and critical reading comprehension. She also includes a helpful list of possible "nontextbook" reading texts and their corresponding classroom goals.
Farrell provides an overview of various theories of literacy that illustrate the erroneous thinking underlying the "back-to-basics" movement. While those who fear a decline in literacy suggest there is merit in a renewed emphasis on the basics, an examination of historical changes in the development of literacy shows that just as the conventions of regularized spelling, punctuation, and grammar were late historical developments, so too should concerns about these matters come late in the teaching of writing. Farrell argues that effective communication involves more than spelling, punctuation, and grammar; it requires fluency and detail. Instruction in organizing, writing with a purpose, audience awareness, and other rhetorical considerations need to come after instruction in fluency and development of ideas.
Fox frames his argument with the premise that composition—as a course required of undergraduates—has been embedded in the practices of remediation since its inception in the nineteenth century. Although the academic institution has defined students as producers of poor language and has positioned composition instructors to "repair" this language, Fox encourages composition faculty to resist these roles. He advocates building on institutional critiques to create practices of institutional change. He provides examples to demonstrate his own resistance to the "institutional state" of California, including dismantling a junior-level writing exam and ignoring the homogenous standards articulated for the state Writing Project. Fox argues that writing programs and their instructors can resist state mandates, like California State University's, that all students must complete their remediation within their first year by ensuring that writing curricula do not serve as gate-keeping mechanisms.
Goto contends that the argument over the place of basic writing programs in universities is the result of the disparate world views of supporters and critics of those programs. Each, he says, espouses a different philosophy of education. Goto suggests that until those who teach basic writing learn to use the language of the policy makers to convey the importance of basic writing classes, programs for basic writers will be cut. Through an analysis of the literature, Goto shows that basic writing critics believe it is not possible to maintain high standards while allowing open access. These critics view education as a vertical or linear construct where students master information at one level before moving on to a higher level of learning. Goto suggests that critics, believing that it is up to the student to adapt to the university, have not attempted innovative practices to help basic writers reach the expected level of writing skills. Equally important, these critics use statistical or quantitative methodologies to assess the success or failure of basic writing students, often analyzing any data they gather in terms of cost benefits. Supporters of basic writing, on the other hand, maintain that these programs maintain both access and standards. They see education as horizontal, as a matter of width, not depth. They have instituted new instructional practices because they see students who need remediation not as deficient but as requiring different strategies to learn. They use qualitative methodologies to describe the success rate of basic writing students. They present the individual success of students as the real benefit of the programs. This new method of viewing the critics and supporters of basic writing programs should be used to improve the discussion of the value of basic writing programs.
In her initial historical review, Hourigan demonstrates that the literacy crises of the 1970s and 1980s were not new phenomena and that paying attention to a history of literacy problems in America can help to avoid repetition of old remedies that did not work. She then argues that academe must more thoughtfully consider the intersections of class, gender, and culture when thinking of basic writers and their various needs. Hourigan explores the field of basic writing as a site where important work gets done in relation to the literacy debate. However, she notes that discussions of basic writers as outsiders often come from researchers at highly competitive institutions where basic writers, who would be mainstreamed in less competitive schools, are often admitted with "special" status. The result is a skewed portrait of basic writers. Hourigan advocates research at two-year schools to provide a more accurate profile of other basic writing students. Hourigan also examines gender as a marginalizing aspect of literacy crises. Here, she argues that pedagogies focused on gender often ignore and further marginalize nontraditional and non-Western students. She then focuses on intersections between feminism and basic writing pedagogies as well as pedagogies that give voice to students from a variety of cultures. She suggests that all compositionists should attend to intersections of race, class, and gender.
Despite the importance of Mina Shaughnessy's Errors and Expectations [113], Lu argues that Shaughnessy's pedagogical intentions would have been better served by a theory of language that eschews essentialism and the "politics of linguistic innocence" (27). While pedagogies motivated by the idea of an inherent deep structure of meaning successfully pose the dual challenges of becoming familiar with conventions and of gaining authorial confidence, they fail to offer students a chance to respond to "the potential dissonance between academic discourses and their home discourses" (27). Lu observes that the process of writing in a political and linguistic context of academic convention tends to determine the contingencies of meaning produced by a given student writer. Rethinking the essentialist premises of Errors and Expectations allows the possibility of extending Shaughnessy's original open-ended purpose of using the writing classroom to respond to social inequality and cultural marginalization. Therefore, the article goes on to criticize the uses to which Shaughnessy's work has been put by E. D. Hirsch in his New Right rhetoric.
Lunsford responds to the so-called literacy crisis with an overview of the history of "literacy crises" in American universities, a review of certain practices that Lunsford views as "unacceptable or harmful responses" (253) in the education of basic writers, and a review of the practices that she believes constitute a more appropriate response to the condition of basic writers. Lunsford explores the way that basic writing practices have, for more than a century, been overdetermined by "economic, social, and political power" (253) and that, indeed, the so-called current "literacy crisis" is hardly more than a historical practice of domination and hegemony. Her critique of "bad practices" focuses on a mistaken oversimplification of basic writing courses and an over-attention to correctness, error detection, and unethical labor practices. She endorses challenging students, collaboration, critiquing error within specific writing contexts, requiring smaller class sizes, and customizing the curriculum to learner needs.
MacDonald examines the differences between problem solving at either end of a continuum, with science writing at one end and literary interpretation at the other. Composition has taken little notice of the process of writing literary interpretation and its product. MacDonald describes problem definitions in academic writing from the perspective of several disciplines and how the differences impact undergraduate literature and composition assignments. Problems in science are clearly defined, of public interest, and limited in number. As a result of these factors and the communal interest in the problems, generalizations are possible and likely. In literary interpretation, problems are more particularized and limited to the insider. Lacking the shared conventions and protocols of scientific problem solving, literary interpretations follow less defined processes. Solving literary problems involves discovering problems for analysis within a text and has the preservation of the text's value, rather than reaching a solution, as its goal. Composition teachers, MacDonald suggests, need to be aware that processes vary in different contexts.
Writing programs need to rethink instruction in literacy and communication at all levels. Basic writing in particular ignores the complexity of literate activity in various civic and workplace contexts, assuming instead the centrality and value of academic literacy. Practices in nonacademic environments suggest that the academy's notion of literacy is too narrow (summarizing a text, mastering standard usage, etc.). Writing programs, instead, should be informed by an increased amount of research into the best literate practices from diverse contexts. Writing programs, Odell suggests, might then do a better job of preparing students for their lives as workers and citizens. Programs might also broaden their criteria for determining which students have the capacity to accomplish particular goals. He describes a third-grade classroom in which the students planned a children's literature symposium that included a well-designed program and invited speakers. Elsewhere, inner-city high schoolers revised a chamber of commerce handbook.
Describing differences between speaking and writing, Ong sets up a dichotomy between orality and literacy and uses this distinction to explain some of the challenges that students face when developing skills in literate practices. He describes oral culture as loosely structured and emotional and literate culture as analytical and logical. Additionally, Ong sets up a distinction between primary orality, which has not been affected by literate practice, such as the orality of nonliterate cultures, and secondary orality, which is not separate from literate practices but is dependent on them, such as radio and television. He argues that students must move from the spoken form of thought to the written form of thought and explains that because of the influence of oral culture, student writing might resemble the loosely structured form of conversation. Moving to the written form of thought, however, enables students to participate in intense analysis that is not possible in primary oral culture.
Academic literacy has become separated from the multiple literacy practices of everyday life. Educators carry in their minds a narrow, sociocultural model of literacy that determines what is required for outsiders to join the literate elite and also excludes anyone, particularly students labeled "at risk," who is unable to follow the formal, often unexplained model. To remedy the exclusionary nature of academic literacy, teachers can incorporate all forms of literacy into the classroom, from graffiti to junk mail. By examining the functions and forms of the written texts that students are already using, teachers then can put academic literacy into sociocultural perspective and teach it as an additional literacy rather than a replacement. In this way, students who have previously been marginalized in the classroom can learn the forms and functions of academic literacy.
Scott identifies two main factors that contribute to the perpetuation of deficit theories in basic writing pedagogy. The first factor is tied to traditional definitions of literacy that focus on the ability to communicate using certain types of privileged discourses. The result of this limited definition is often a pedagogy that oversimplifies content, is boring and irrelevant, and labels marginalized students as deficient. Scott maintains that a broader definition of literacy— one that allows for multiple literacies existing in multiple ways— protects teachers from bringing deficit theories into their instruction. The second factor involves the concept of "uncritical dysconsciousness" (46), the conscious or unconscious "acceptance of culturally sanctioned beliefs that, regardless of intentions, defend the advantages of insiders and the disadvantages of outsiders" (46). Scott argues that there is a resistance to change in pedagogical practices that stems from a lack of change in attitude toward marginalization. She concludes that a "higher level of critical consciousness" (55) can help bring about different approaches to teaching marginalized students that do not focus on deficits. She closes the essay with "think abouts" (55) for readers, intended as strategies for moving toward pedagogical approaches and writing programs that do not depend upon deficit models.
Based on the understanding that reading requires no exclusive cognitive functions, Smith summarizes theories of cognitive structure, aspects of receiving and producing spoken and written language, modes of redundancy in information gathering, and relations between the physiological processes of the eye and knowledge stored in memory. He then analyzes the processes by which grapheme recognition produces identification of meaning in chapters 6 through 9. The final chapters conclude with a discussion of reading and writing as inseparable cognitive functions that should inform conditions of learning and teaching. "The main instructional implication of the analysis of this book is that children learn to read by reading and by being read to" (4).
Taking an in-depth look at the history of remediation from the late 1800s through the 1990s, Soliday posits that remediation exists to serve institutional needs, and "to resolve social conflicts as they are played out through the educational tier most identified with access to the professional middle class" (1). For students, remedial programs provide extra reading and writing instruction, whereas for institutions, the programs assist with the crisis in admission standards and keep up enrollment when perennial budget problems tighten departmental belts. To illustrate this claim, Soliday constructs her arguments beside a chronological discussion of the transformation of educational institutions, providing relevant examples from her experiences at the City College of New York. In each chapter, she breaks down the history of a central issue while providing the conversation contemporary to each time period. Soliday also brings in other basic writing researchers work to illustrate the overarching argument that remediation is not new even when each time period reconceives it as such. Soliday ends the book by critiquing border pedagogy, raising several more questions to be considered in the field.
Stevens argues that mandates to reduce remediation rates at California State University campuses have been heralded publicly by administrators as a return to standards but that these mandates result in expelling basic writers. Detailing the local options facing these students, Stevens proposes that the lack of educational choices available to such students is analogous to the institutionalized absence of alternatives for basic writing programs. Moreover, Stevens analyzes the contradictory rhetoric of official policy, linking the elitist return to standards with the ongoing underfunding of public education in California that started in the 1970s and continues today.
Strickland suggests that all children, including those labeled "disabled" or "handicapped," can learn to read and write if they believe they can and are offered a supportive environment for learning. The whole-language classroom affords the greatest opportunity for learning to read and write because it allows teachers to support the needs of the entire class as a whole and the needs of students as individuals. In the whole-language classroom, teachers serve as literacy models and facilitators of learning by participating in literacy events that include: storytelling, reading silently and aloud, small- and large-group discussions, and written responses to student journaling. Students who have learned to fail in classrooms that define reading and writing as the acquisition of skills are taught to rethink literacy as a natural process of constructing meaning.