Reinventing the University: Finding the Place for Basic Writers

A poststructuralist critique of basic writing placement and pedagogy, this paper argues that our notions of good writing (i.e., the criteria by which we as English professors and compositionists authorize and place students) come not from some general or transcendent standards, but rather from the practices by which we self-authorize within our own discourse community. Using Bartholomae and Petrosky\u27s curriculum presented in Facts, Artifacts, Counterfacts as a point of departure, I propose a language-centered curriculum which uses discourse itself as the subject of the semester-Jong project wherein students eventually learn to critique our practices and create their own discourse communities. This modification, the author argues, comes closer to empowering students to be the agents of their own authorization and placement at the academy