sometimes it's a bit eerie how alcott's "radical educational experimentation" of the 1830s has been reinvented in contemporary composition theory as original and progressive. here he is on student writing "children have a great deal to contend with, in the attempt to express their thoughts. In the first place, they find it more difficult than better trained minds do, to preserve their thoughts in their memory; while the mechanical labor of holding the pen, of seeing to spelling, of pointing, and of all such details, interferes with the purely mental effort." yikes. it's sounds strikingly similar to the way in which we're taught to teach writing, and this is where, i suspect, i become a bit of a conservative. the mechanics, the grammar, the penning matter to me. i remember the feeling of utter liberation when i received a copy of strunk and white's elements of style during my senior year of high school. the rules, in other words, freed me. but more on grammar later. for now, it's time to write.