Description: The issue of transforming knowledge lies at the heart of modern composition theory and composition studies. Tacitly or explicitly transformation is what is required and what is valued in student writing. This paper investigates this will to knowledge transformation in a rhetorical perspective focused on rhetorical ethos as a prism for the contemporary, cultural values, which tacitly guide our valuation of the writer of a text, in this case the student writer.The key question of the research project behind this paper is: What manifests itself in writing in the Danish upper secondary school at the present time? More specifically two questions are asked: What requirements are made with respect to writing in different subject? And what rhetorical expressions are manifested in student writing in these subjects? The investigation of these questions about requirements and rhetorical expressions is focused by two theses, namely:· That there has been a shift from an emphasis on logos to an emphasis on ethos in writing over the last 30 years. · With this shift a new ethos virtue has emerged. Whereas before you had to expose wisdom (phronesis), sound moral character (arête) and good will (eunoia), now originality must also be exposed. Methodology: Changes in the requirements are traced in an analysis of the rhetorical situation, which sets the pupil-texts. This involves a meta-discourse-analysis focused on executive orders and the literature on the teaching of writing, both the Danish and that part of the American, which has inspired the Danish discourse and politics in this area. The question of changes in rhetorical expressions is investigated through a close rhetorical reading of a body of student writing from three different subjects, namely Danish, social science and physics - subjects which refer to different ideals of knowledge. These texts are from 2001. A body of student writing from 1968 provides material for a historical comparison. Conclusions: When it comes to writing in school the hidden persuader of rhetoric - ethos - is allowed, or maybe even invited to call attention to itself, the same way it is allowed to in the epideictic genre. In this way ethos becomes the commonplace where the reader and the writer meet to celebrate common values through the exhibition of a writer's virtues (Sullivan 1993). An investigation into the demands for these virtues suggests that in some subjects like Danish and social science (in 2001) the transformation of genre and knowledge is valued as a sign of originality. And in the examples of student writing from these two subjects traces of an effort to transform can be detected. In the meta-discourse of physics and Danish in 1968 there are no signs of a will to originality (or a requirement for transformation), and no signs are evident in the student writing.The discourse analysis of the American composition studies literature as well as the theme of this conference suggests that, this request for transformation or this will to originality may not just be a Danish phenomenon. It might be a phenomenon which applies to other western societies as well. A discussion of these questions, which moves beyond national boarders, would enlighten us on the issue of what kind of (late-/post-/high-)modern ethos is at work and at stake in 'educational Europe'. It would hint at this ethos' (perhaps) transforming relation to knowledge.