Political-Ethical Implications of Defining Technical Communication as a Practice
http://www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/Text_articles/V10_I2_Sullivan.htm
  peer-reviewed

Sullivan, Dale L.
JAC
1990

Abstract:

Let me present one possible version of the history of teaching writing in the last century and a half. When the tradition of classical rhetoric was restricted to composition in the nineteenth century, teachers of writing found themselves teaching service courses, usually defined as skills courses. Furthermore, having lost touch with the classical tradition, they began to teach writing particularly suited to current needs and, by extension, to teach thought forms that imitate modern consciousness —- a form of consciousness largely molded by forms of production, or technology. As Richard Ohmann says, much modern composition instruction reflects this technological consciousness: it casts the writing process in terms of problem solving, stresses objectivity and thereby denies a writer's social responsibilities, distances the interaction between writer and reader, deals with abstract issues, and denies politics (206). As a result, teachers of writing indoctrinate students, turning them into the sorts of people who will fill the slots available in our technological society.