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[A rather longish post] Hi Tania, I've been following the responses to your question and I've noticed that this discussion comes almost ten years to the month after the Inkshed Newsletter published an issue (Inkshed, volume 8, number 2, March 1989) that asked the same question. The editors invited people to speculate on current issues in the teaching of reading and writing. What were the responses like then? In 1989, Nancy Carlman called for a greater communication between different academic disciplines interested in language, and between language teachers across all levels of education (elementary to post-secondary). Rick Coe highlighted a variety of battles between psychological and social conceptions of writing, and between liberal and radical conceptions of writing as a social process, and he called for a synthesized view. Even as he noted that "these disputes matter," he suggested that we were entering a time of consolidation. In the face of a paradigm shift, he called for a working through of what that shift might mean on every level and for every facet of writing and writing instruction. Heather and Roger Graves talked about the need to rid ourselves of a skills-based conception of writing and to define writing rhetorically. Anthony Pare called for a re-conception of the relationship between people and texts. Russ Hunt outlined the great debate between process advocates and genre advocates in Australia and he urged North Americans to pay attention. And, in typical form, Jim Reither argued forcefully that it was "time for the revolution" for compositionists and rhetoricians in Canada. So what has happened? What of Jim's revolution? Is it a time of consolidation, as Rick suggested? What are our grand disputes? Are they all between ourselves and our administrators? Someone suggested to me not so long ago that the field is moribund. I keep thinking, however, of Thomas Kuhn and the possibility that we have normalized the social paradigm developed through the 1980s and we are busy working out the details, finding out what's possible. Still, are there any closet revolutionaries still lurking about? What of the issues raised by those Inkshedders a decade ago? Sandy 425 Education Bldg. University of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2