Occasioned by the recent epidemic of violence in schools and the author's m
emory of violent schoolyard rhymes, this essay explores the ways students e
xperience contemporary writing pedagogy. To do so, the essay ranges from rh
etoric's historical discussion of the pleasures of writing to composition's
more recent interest in academic professionalism to Gilles Deleuze's theor
y of masochism to the problem of teaching and learning in a consumer cultur
e.