Teachers of writing struggle every day to help their students overcome the belief that they are “bad writers.” Teachers of Basic Writing struggle even more with this problem because of the stigma automatically attached to the class they teach. Students of Basic Writing register for a class that, I believe, should require a supplemental class in self esteem. These students pay for a class that they receive no credit for at most universities and yet a class they are required to pass just to become a “real” college student. I’ve always faulted K-12 education for this stigma; the students in Basic Writing, regardless of what we call the class, know they have now been relegated to the same status as the remedial students led away to separate math and reading classes throughout the K-12 period. I never thought I would find fault in the academic world to which I belong.

The problem started when the American dream entered academia. The Civil Rights Act, The G.I. Bill, the Morrill Land Grant and many similar programs all encouraged a different group of minorities and lower class citizens to include college in their American dream. Unfortunately, the elitists in academia did not feel this American dream belonged to everybody. Their response to the desegregation of American colleges in the 1960s was segregation. Students who failed to reach appropriate scores on standardized tests were segregated into a program segregated into its own “subdepartment” (McAlexander and Greene 4). The courses were taught in second class locations segregated from other academics and were taught by instructors segregated from the elite tenure-track faculty (McAlexander and Greene 8-9). As if this was not enough emphasis on the separation of academic and Basic Writing, students also had to grapple with the fact that even after paying the money and working hard to pass the class, there would be no credit for the class.

The problem has not stopped. Yes, there are tenured professors teaching Basic Writing and many programs have access to the same classrooms as regular composition classes. Yet, we continue to charge students for classes they will receive no credit for and we continue to grapple with segregation in the program. Now, though, the segregation has changed.  We concern ourselves with the question of separate writing classes for ESL learners and native speakers. We argue over the placement of Basic Writing within the university or the community college. We argue over the experience of the Basic Writing instructor. It seems that the issue of segregation is one that Basic Writing Programs cannot escape; there will continue to be problems of segregation at some level in the program.

At the core of the problem lies the question of marginalization or mainstreaming. Do we marginalize students by placing them in Basic Writing classes? Do we avoid the potential for marginalization by placing students in regular composition classes and hope for the best? I think that to place these students in traditional composition classrooms with a list of resources is detrimental to the student. Do we continue to stigmatize these students, as David Bartholomae argues, by marginalizing them into Basic Writing classes? Do we offer a hybrid system where students take a regular composition class and are required an additional workshop course that runs concurrent with the class? None of the solutions solve the segregation problem, nor do they remove the stigma from the Basic Writer.

I don’t think the solution lies in desegregating the Basic Writer; these students are in need of separate classes that help them prepare for their college writing careers. We cannot ignore the problem by mainstreaming the students. I think that we need to work to help those outside the Basic Writing program to realize that these students are not Basic Writers because of their affiliation with any specific minority group. Instead, I think we need to find a way to spread the idea of these students not as Basic Writers, but as New Students. Mina Shaugnessey maintains a powerful influence over Basic Writing programs today not only for her influence on the teaching of the classes, but also for her recognition that there are variant factors behind the student population of Basic Writing classes. To end the stigma of Basic Writing, we need a means of demonstrating this fact to those outside the department.