Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), October 1989, Revised November 2013, Revised March 2015, Revised November 2023

Statement of Purpose

We writing practitioners, researchers, and scholars find ourselves at a juncture where foundational assumptions about the teaching of writing, its place in higher education, and its ability to help foster a truly inclusive democratic society are increasingly contested. Trust in literacy has been eroded over the past decades, coming to an acute crisis in the most recent years where basic facts are in dispute, meaning has been decontextualized, and information weaponized for political gain. Moreover, technology now threatens real human to human communication in the form of A.I. algorithms trained on Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Indeed, the very premises of what it means to be literate and to teach literacy are undergoing rapid change and it is in this moment we set forth guidance to postsecondary teachers, departments, administrators, policy makers and legislators on what our research expertise tells us about how to move through these changes responsibly, ethically, and with equanimity.

This statement is meant to help support and guide the careful work of professionals in their many different contexts and against many different assaults on higher learning. We know that writing, language, and literacy practices can exclude based on who is literate, which literacies count, and what ways of knowing are considered valid (Baker-Bell et al., “This Ain’t Another Statement”; Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice; Bell; Bonilla-Silva; Canagarajah; Gay; Gonzales and Kells; hooks; Hubrig; Kerschbaum; King et al.; Kirkland; Kynard “Oh No”; Ladson-Billings “From”; Ladson-Billings “Toward”; Love; Muhammad; Paris and Alim; Tayles; Wilkerson). The world looks and to some degree behaves differently depending on whether literacies are made for you or against you. Responding to texts like the Bible are not a pathway to clear guidelines but always situated within centuries of historical context. Inequities also abound in the labor of teaching and we note that the majority of postsecondary teachers nationwide are now adjuncts without tenure protection, and whose terms of employment rely on them delivering a curriculum in which they have little or no say (AAUP). On top of this, postsecondary reading, writing, and academic learning programs are under growing pressure to produce students who can simply “avoid grammatical errors” as part of occupational training, thus eroding the necessary civic aspects and democratic responsibilities of being literate, critical, and deliberative rather than illiterate, compliant, and passive. These erosions come as part of the many assaults on humanities programs in general: the separation of science and humanities education, the framing of educational outcomes in purely economic terms, and the increasingly precarious employment for postsecondary writing teachers (Childress; Hassel and Phillips; Jensen and Griffiths; Khan; Kezar et al.; TYCA Workload; Welch and Scott).  As such, we hope to respond clearly to this moment by recognizing the material inequities and disparities perpetuated by current conditions, and reaffirm the fundamental necessity for training literate citizens who will not fall for the assaults of the more powerful against the disenfranchised.

It is our hope that this statement can help affirm and support these ideals. We also hope this statement will be of value to those who teach across institutions—before, during, and after postsecondary education—because we understand how we are linked in a common endeavor. These institutions include community colleges, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), tribal colleges, and Hispanic-serving institutions. We deeply hope this statement supports students, from their right to their own language (CCCC, Smitherman, Perryman-Clark, et. al) to demands for linguistic justice (“This Ain’t Another Statement”; Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice). We do this in the service of sueños—pursuing the light, the many ways language is the tangible essence of human voice, agency, and identity.

Read the full statement.