essay by ED Hirsch in the Chronicle.

A familiar argument: that works by disregarding counter-argument. I also note that Horace Mann shows up–the patron saint of the ‘common’ in school. But no mention of Emerson–who is also thinking about a democratic education, but with a different view of the ‘common’ and familiar–one that is also invested with spirit and individuality and enthusiasm. Hirsch sounds here like Emerson’s formalist, forgetting the soul that informs. Or his Swedenborg, who makes the mistake of trying to get everything into the book. I presume Hirsch doesn’t cite Emerson for these reasons.

James Berlin, Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges (SIU PRess 1984)

A chapter on Emerson and Romantic Rhetoric: Emerson as his model of Romantic rhetoric (the three rhetorics of the century, after demise of classical: 18th century/belletristic; romantic; current-traditional)–and also, in his view of Emerson’s rhetoric as social and democratic (as well as individual–ie, not the emerson of mere expressionism)–offers an alternative to the current-traditional.

10: Romantic rehtoric places the composing process, the act of writing and speaking, at the center of knowing.