I finished reading the journal article for the critical review and did a little bit of research.

In the early 1970s, the American government started the open admissions policies in colleges - non-discriminatory admission policies to reach out to disadvantaged groups to enter college. In response, academia started the basic writers' movement which tried to train students with below-average writing skills. The thing is, traditional academia had a certain format that the students had to fit into - and there was only one correct way of writing.

David Bartholomae said that these students were "uninitiated" into dominant academic culture and are social/political outsiders. These students who would just be called to "lack the writing gene" in the 21st century, were called "stunted" or "underdeveloped" back in the 1970s. Mina Shaughnessy tried to do more than just label these students, however. She said that there was pressure from government to increase teacher-student ratio and quantify students' writing performance. In this Orwellian education system, students lost their confidence, motivation and intelligence seemed to be standardized. Thus started the negative writer identity.

Negative writer identity seems to have been handed down to their children. The journal article recommends reflective writing practices, where students can explore their identities as writers and the article concludes that increased writing skills will decrease the class gap in America due to better communcation skills.