Students in a basic writing course at Ferris State University, an open-admissions, career-technical institution, are required to buy "The Family in America," a casebook in the Opposing Viewpoints Series. The book is suitable for a student who is struggling to write on a high school level and does not have the basic educational background to understand classic essays like, "A Modest Proposal" and "Politics of the English Language." When students complain, "I'm not interested in the family in America, the proper response (in more diplomatic terms, of course) is "What's your point?" From a teaching and work point of view, students need to learn that performance of a task and interest in it have no necessary relationship. On a strictly intellectual level, by the end of the semester, the students have learned, among other things, that: (1) regarding a particular issue, a conversation--a discourse--is always going on in academia; (2) an individual text does not have biblical status, it is just part of the conversation; and (3) to produce a good paper, writers need to see multiple parts of the conversation--the context. Casebooks can be adapted to a wide variety of teaching styles and writing courses and should be considered for use. (TB)