Fifty Years of ‘Students’ Right to Their Own Language

Fifty years ago, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a professional organization for writing professors, enacted a resolution titled “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” The resolution established that all English dialects were equally valid, and that standard English was a “white” dialect. What followed, says English professor Adam Ellwanger, was the most severe decline in writing competence educators have ever observed.