ABSTRACT
Writing has been an issue in American secondary and higher education since written papers and examinations came into wide use in the 1870s, eventually driving out formal recitation and oral examination. However, neither the disciplines, on one hand, nor progressive education, on the other hand, explored in any systematic way the role of language in disciplinary learning to achieve such a balance. The disciplines, at the most powerful and influential levels of their activity, concerned themselves primarily with specialized, high-level teaching and research, turning their attention to secondary education and introductory courses only in times of crisis. In 1971, seven years after demise of the Prose Improvement Committee, the University of California at Berkeley began another developmental program to improve college students' writing, this time by focusing on writing instruction in secondary schools. In the highly charged political atmosphere of the new literacy crisis, Elaine Maimon and Toby Fulwiler began widely influential programs at Beaver College and Michigan Technological University.
