To disagree requires understanding the reasons that support another view. Students are challenged to inquire into and to voice their conclusions and reasons when confronted by the ideas of others in the form of diverse and compelling reading and writing. The writing course must have content, so that students are able to explore and express their ideas in response to the issues they encounter. The writing course cannot separate technical competence from content. It is misleading to teach writing as if the ideas contained in it do not matter.
Students write at their best when they have something to say and someone to say it to.
The writing class should be such a community, in which students are challenged and confronted by the opinions of others and are able to earn agreement or to adjust their conclusions in relation to available arguments and counter-arguments. Free and open, yet responsible, debate must go on in the composition classroom among the students, who provide the best audience for each other's writing. While a writing class for all students must respect diversity, it must also encourage competence in shared conventions and resources of language. Equity, as we understand it, creates new standards which accommodate and nurture differences. Equity fosters the individual voice in the classroom, investing students with confidence in their own authority.