In the classroom, sitting with the right posture in total silence while learning and writing is supposed to make us better students and better writers. Or, to put it another way, better users of our own languages with a better control of grammar and vocabulary. But Anne Trubek turns all these notions upside down in her article for JSTOR. These norms have been unhelpful for quite some time. But who would ever guess that students from the Victorian era were worse writers than our kids, who you never seem to see sitting at the table doing homework? They’ve thrown away pencils and pens; they neglect their homework in favor of spending time on Facebook; they sit comfortably on a couch or work out of their bed instead of working at a desk. So one would assume that their writing is as sloppy as their rooms are untidy. All wrong. And it is not only because of the computer and spell-check. It is because they are different. Their lifestyle may be unorthodox to us, but we have to respect and trust them. I had to learn that, too.