For this essay, the authors provide an "introspective retrospective." A senior scholar of basic writing provides his views on the development of basic writing as one who began graduate school in rhetoric and composition two years after Mina Shaughnessy's 1977 Errors and Expectations. That perspective carries us through the discussions…

Identifies two factors that contribute to the recycling of deficit pedagogy in programs targeted for marginalized students: traditional, technocratic definitions of literacy; and "uncritical dysconsciousness" (the acceptance of culturally sanctioned beliefs that, regardless of good intentions, defend the advantages of insiders and the…

Argues that the "failure" of traditional writing instruction is actually its success, protecting the elite and maintaining inequality, which requires mass failure and illiteracy to preserve the unequal hierarchies now in place. Argues that bogus testing should be eliminated, basic writing mainstreamed into an expanded and untracked form of…