Intended for composition teachers and researchers, as well as those involved with educational issues apart from the writing community (legislators, administrators, researchers in other fields, parents), this book contains essays that take a critical step beyond the standard arguments of the profession, pushing hard for example, at some of the complacencies of the "process approach," putting "writing across the curriculum" in historical context, bringing basic questions into specialized discussion, and looking at the political implications of presumably "neutral" uses of writing. Following an introductory chapter by David Bartholomae, the titles of the chapters and their authors are as follows: (1) "Why Write?" (J. T. Gage); (2) "Teaching Writing: The Major Theories" (A. R. Gere); (3) "Composing Processes: An Overview" (P. Bizzell); (4) "The Writer's Knowledge: Theory, Research, and Implications for Practice" (G. Hillocks, Jr.); (5) "Problems in Process Approaches: Toward a Reconceptualization of Process Instruction" (A. N. Applebee); (6) "Evaluation and Learning" (R. Brown); (7) "Learning to Write and Writing to Learn in the Elementary School" (M. E. Giacobbe); (8) "Teaching Writing in Secondary Schools" (M. Myers); (9) "Coming of Age in College Composition" (P. Kameen); and (10) "On the Road to Shanghai: A Three-Year Project with the Public Schools" (A. R. Petrosky). (HTH)