ABSTRACT
So what happens to writing when you attach the word critical to it? Does anything happen at all? Is this another newfangled label that promotes a novel pedagogy or method for purely commercial reasons or other ulterior motivations without substantially affecting the writing activity? Or, on the other hand, is too much happening—far too much for our liking—shifting our attention to things unrelated to writing? Is this label bringing into composition something extraneous to the writing activity, such as political causes and social concerns that are the whims of one scholarly circle or the other? We in the teaching profession are rightly suspicious of anything that claims to be new, fashionable, or revolutionary nowadays.
