1 Well, to be honest, not all those epigraphed assertions about grammar are irrefutable. Take a second look at Ong, for example. . . .

2 All three terms are too large to lend themselves to stable definition, but Ann George defines critical pedagogy according to its concerns with empowerment, engaging students in cultural critique, and making change (92). Writing in the same volume, Diana George and John Trimbur say that cultural studies strives to "articulat[e] a notion of culture to replace the cultivation of sensibility implied in the high/low binaries of literary studies and mass culture critiques, on the one hand, and the reductionist sense of culture as an epiphenomenal superstructure of the economic base in mechanical Marxism, on the other" (73). Pedagogies of civic participation take a wide variety of potentially conflicting forms. When the College Board links English instruction and democracy, it aims to develop students' critical thinking skills so that they can participate in civic life (see National Commission), and Olivia Smith reports that nineteenth-century Sunday schools taught literacy so that the poor could read their Bibles and thus be good (i.e., orderly and obedient) citizens (Smith 12-13). Along those lines, Higher Levels, a widely adopted early-twentieth-century composition textbook, includes an assignment for a five-paragraph theme on the etiquette of men's opening doors for women (see Walker et alia). In most composition and rhetoric scholarship today, though, civic participation pedagogy is closely aligned with critical pedagogy. Interestingly, Ellen Cushman argues that a pedagogy of civic participation successfully addresses the shortcomings of critical pedagogy, which she deems too passive, and cultural studies, which she deems too judgmental.

3 For an overview of critical pedagogies, see George.

4 Pierre Bourdieu follows this argument in some detail, categorizing grammatical knowledge as a form of taste and explaining that taste is neither natural nor derived solely from direct instruction. Taste, he says, results from the combined influences of education and social background.

5 Keith Rhodes' personal testimony demonstrates how remarkable and rare these successes are:

I will never forget a time when, the muse being with me, in three minutes flat I got a state higher education official to shift his view of composition from a site of grammar drills and error correction to one of genre analysis and rhetorical strategies. As he said, he had simply never thought about it that way before, but it made sense once he did. Of course, he still thinks it can be tested in a universal, state-wide timed writing. There is more to be done, certainly. (57)

6 Applying Antonio Gramsci's theories of language and hegemony to the situation of English language standards, Tony Crowley explains that Gramsci saw language not only as a participant in "the formation of cultural hegemony" but also as a "blueprint for it" (Tony Crowley 42).