Teaching writing

Abstract

Who are our students? When they enter our classrooms, what do they need from us? When we read the newspapers on the state of education in the United States today, we often get a sense of disaster. The gap between the rich and poor is widening. The college students of the affluent come from private schools or well-funded suburban public systems, and they are receiving ever more elaborately enriched educations. At the same time, the poor and working class barely get by, often holding jobs for many hours per week and trying to squeeze their classes and their studies into the few precious hours left. Conservative commentators say these students are not ready to be in the university. But if the public schools and their communities have failed them, or if they are members of a different culture, speakers of a different language, and we bar the doors, then what happens? Our politicians declare that every young person should have the chance to go to college. If this is something we really believe, then how do we go about making it happen? And once they are there, what do we teach them?.