Many students occupy a minimal space between the profession of composition studies and larger social and institutional constructions of composition, writing, and literacy. For most people outside the field, writing is viewed as a set of skills, rather than a substantive area of study. If students would only learn the rules--and if composition teachers would only teach those rules--then students would write better (and be less burdensome to people in other fields). This is the perspective that typically informs the first-year writing requirement at most schools. For people inside composition, it is this institutional agenda and obligation that clouds their sense of the subject matter "as a subject matter" and promotes the idea that there is a split between theory and practice in the field. In this article, the aspect the author wishes to highlight is simply this: at the exact moment that disciplined knowledge making was introduced as a primary function of higher education, composition was created as a wholly nondisciplinary course. Born of a test, college composition was always imagined as preparatory to disciplinary work, but not itself amenable to disciplined inquiry. The corollary to this, of course, is that students became, in lieu of a disciplinary subject, the de facto subject(s) of scrutiny. This historical construction has left the composition professional largely unprotected by the tenets of academic freedom. Students deserve more than skills training; they deserve an education, and teachers deserve the right to teach them. (Contains 5 notes.)