It is difficult for an instructor to designate his philosophy in teaching composition when it is derived from a background in cultural studies at one school and from an "expressivist" program at another school. Furthermore, in naming his approach, he must take into account the influence of his feminist instructors as well as his own "spiritual" pedagogy, which he has been developing accidentally all along. Expressivism would seem to be the central term in his philosophy and yet at the hands of some practitioners it has become a double-edged sword, wounding some students to whom it is applied as a naive practice with poorly conceived narcissistic tasks, and likewise wounding theorists and teachers who choose to apply to themselves in a sort of rebounding backlash of poorly reasoned criticism. What links the triad of expressivism, cultural studies, and spiritual composition is the common assumption underlying all tenable education: namely that educators presume a reality, a world to be improved. All education is at base ethical. As it strives to smash notions of self-direction, even social constructivism asks the student to imagine a time when humankind can stand liberated of oppressive ideologies. Though starting from different assumptions, a spiritual pedagogy finds potential points of convergence with social constructivism when it asks how the individual connects with humanity as he or she negotiates certain material conditions which are not products of culture (physical laws, ecological environments and biology). (TB)