All outward appearance to the contrary, composition theory/studies isn't in much trouble. In fact it's a thriving discipline filled with dedicated practitioners and theorists who are working to keep the discipline one of rigor and compassion. I have faith in the knowledge that students are slowly but surely learning how to write and that teachers are constantly searching for new and better ways to teach (while retaining the pedagogies that have worked in the past). Postmodernism doesn't really account for faith at all except for the faith that if students only understood the social codes and semiotic structures of late capitalism, they would finally become well-developed human beings. 

So what might be done in a composition classroom to assure not only that students are becoming better students and critics, but that composition, especially the required composition course, is living up to its institutional responsibility to produce good thinkers and writers? In the words of Patricia Bizzell, one way is to "work collectively toward achieving consensus on a pluralistic grouping of ways to do academic discourse" (663). As I mention above, I have learned as much about writing and the teaching of writing from my peers and colleagues outside of the English department as I have learned from my brothers and sisters within. Despite the postmodern pretense to the contrary, "We may wish to do away with an oppressive academic discourse, but we cannot do without any academic discourse at all" (663). And although this may sound, to some, like a halfhearted Clintonian/Fallwellian call for "standards," it is apparent that many different groups have very particular "standards" or "expectations" about writing, and to not teach students how to work with/in those standards and expectations is irresponsible.

One of the most eloquent statements addressing this very issue comes from Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert Connors, who write that "It must be emphasized . . . that the disposition of one's material is not an indifferent matter". This means, of course, that others (i.e., the audience) have a great say in what student (and professional) writing ultimately does. The most compelling argument for studying, mastering, and only then, perhaps, subverting, the dominant discourse, for students, comes again from Corbett and Connors when they tell us that "a writer must be in command of a variety of styles, in order to draw on the style that is most appropriate to the situation. This is not to say that these several styles will differ radically from one another" (338 italics mine). And this is my point--writing is all about the dominant discourse, and most radical derivations or subversions are simply reinventions of the wheel--indeed, much of the socalled radical subversions that go on in the contemporary writing classroom are the same sort of poorly reasoned quasi-academic fluff that caused us to question current-traditional composition pedagogy in the first place.

No less radical an educator as Henry Giroux persuasively calls upon educators to [acknowledge] the importance of those diverse educational sites through which a generation of youth are being shaped within a postmodern culture where information and its channels of circulation demand new forms of understanding, literacy, and pedagogical practice.

By "diverse educational sites," Giroux cites "videos, films, music, television, radio, computers" as far more important than the traditional (composition) classroom tools of/for responding to essays. And he is right. But it is also true that outside of the composition classroom, in other classes, traditional, textbased teaching and learning are going on. And perhaps, more important than in school, once someone is outside of the classroom, the dissemination of information is still (and will be far into the future) text-based; the ability to create and produce this kind of discourse is the most important thing we can help our students achieve.

Philosopher Richard Rorty reminds us that "it is the vocabulary of practise [sic] rather than of theory, of action rather than contemplation, in which one can say something useful about truth" . I read Rorty's statement as meaning that we need to have students write from a position of what is, not what might be, and work at becoming better writers and thinkers using the kinds of writing that they will actually have to do as students, workers, and citizens--professional writing, scientific writing, technical writing, and legal writing are a few of the dominant professional genres. Rorty's argument that "the pattern of all inquiry--scientific as well as moral--is deliberation concerning the relative attractions of various concrete alternatives" (164) is compelling here. The idea that the freshman writing class deal with "various concrete alternatives" is far more interesting and responsible than the more postmodern idea that a composition course be grounded in the subjective/personal essay of discovery, even when this kind of writing is merely "a baby step on the road to wisdom" ( Schilb, Between172).

The area that Rorty is working can be the area where postmodern theory and a new pragmatic might come together. I could see, for instance, the creation of a web page not as a tool for socio-cultural critique (although it could be used for that) but as a way of working toward HTML or VRML or Java literacy where the student would have a marketable post-collegiate skill. The creation of a flow chart and a sketch (draft) version of the web site, the idea of useability and feasability testing, the process of feedback and subsequent revision strike me as distinctly similar to the idea of draft, write, revise that is with us today.

Although sketchy at best, the idea of a new pragmatics of composition theory is exciting. Composition teachers who are truly committed to making the classroom about their students would need to find writing projects that reflect this relationship between the students' lives and the world in which they are going to inhabit. A middle ground between the severe anti-foundationalism of postmodernism and the pseudo-objectivism of current-traditional theories is not only necessary, but entirely possible.