These programmes most often taught writing skills through literature, and there was often wellfounded criticism throughout the colleges that English faculty were more interested in teaching literature than in teaching writing. That was not a surprise. Very early in the colleges' evolution, the English curriculum was criticized for lacking technical or vocational relevance. It was argued that students should be trained in the specialized literacies that would be required in the specialized vocational fields, e.g., early childhood education, or golf course maintenance, or business administration, orengineering technology. There is a limited place for community college students within the discourse communities to which they wish to belong.
Discourse communities have characteristic epistemic, rhetorical, and social dimensions.
They determine what their members recognize as knowledge, and establish conventions which govern the representation of that knowledge. The discourse community implies unity, identity and shared responsibility. It creates a hierarchy of relations for its members with respect to its body of knowledge, and thus determines whose words matter most in particular situations. Community college students, however, are not given an education that prepares them to become fully-fledged members of discourse communities. In part, this has to do with the nature of the occupations these students are expected to enter.