Happiness, safety, health, wealth, peace of mind, the students answer. Newell then introduces them to American philosopher Mortimer Ad—ler's list: liberty, justice, mercy, equality, beauty and truth — ideas that won't directly pay the rent but will definitely ruin a good life if they're absent.

In Cheney's writing class one night, the students debate Edward Abbey's essay "Down the River." Soon Moeller is taking issue with Abbey's motives, and several other students join in to defend the maverick author. When the class is over, on her way out of the room, Moeller is a little shaken but also astounded: She had dared to express an opinion, other people had disagreed, and she was still standing! The message was unmistakable: In a civilized society, it's OK to debate, to learn from each other, to have a voice. What's important to learn, Jack Newell says later, is that "if I'm going to have a reflective life, I have to understand what other people think."

There's such a thing as "cultural capital," argues Alfred Lubrano, author of "Living in Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams." Picasso, creme br$lee, Mozart, stock portfolios: These are the things a middle-class student might know about even before going to college. Lubrano grew up in a blue-collar family in Brooklyn and commuted to Columbia University. He was a senior before he knew what an internship was.

More importantly, middle-class parents are more likely to take the time to explain "why," said Lubrano when he spoke at Westminster College this past winter. In middle-class families, everyone talks more. If you counted the number of words spoken, there would simply be more of them.  · · · 

One night in March, Cheney leads the class through a discussion of a poem by Richard Wilbur called "The Writer." In the poem, the narrator is listening to his daughter write a story: from her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys/like a chain hauled over a gunwale; and then the keys go quiet, as if the whole house is thinking; and then the daughter starts typing again. The sound reminds Wilbur of a dazed starling that had been trapped in the same room two years before, how it tried again and again to find the right window to fly out.

The students talk about their own writing life, how they feel like that bird sometimes, flapping their wings trying to free some thought. "I'm thinking about it all the time, wherever I am, in the shower, everywhere," says Dot Richeda about the papers she writes for her classes. At 62, Richeda is the oldest student, a woman who grew up in a Japanese family that thought women should walk two steps behind. She works as an office manager in a cheese factory.