It is perhaps a bit ironic that I should buy a book entitled Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child the very day I found out about it. I read the sample on Amazon, which includes most of the introduction, and loved it so much that I simply had to read more. 😉 Of course the title itself is ironic, as I had to assure my curious daughter! I am now about 3/4 of the way through, and have seven pages of quotes in my commonplace book, with more marked with sticky tabs waiting to be entered. Needless to say, I’m loving it.
One of the things I enjoy most about Anthony Esolen’s writing (I read his Ten Ways to Destroy The Imagination of Your Child a few years ago) is all the quotations and examples from other books, often great literature. Just the intro alone has illustrations from Paradise Lost, Little House on the Prairie, Dante and The Betrothed (he’s whetting my appetite for Ambleside Online’s Year 8!). In the chapter entitled Rush to Work, he quotes the Eighth Year of The Literature Readers series published in 1917. The editor, Leroy Armstrong, wrote in his introduction of the unique place that literature holds in the curriculum and the care that must be taken in teaching it. The entire introduction, available on Google Books, is a quick but interesting read. Here is the paragraph quoted in Life Under Cumpulsion:
With the library habit as the goal, there will be a clearer understanding of the real function of literature. Nearly all the school subjects lay great stress on information. But literature makes its appeal to the heart as well as the intellect. Geography and arithmetic fit a pupil for hours of labor in later life. Literature prepares him for the hours of leisure now and later. Literature makes the pupil a good companion for himself, and removes the appeal of cheap entertainments and unworthy companions. Literature is essentially non-informational, and finds its glory and its charm in that fact. No Gradgrind, bent on facts, should ever be persuaded to teach a class in literature.
Wednesdays with Words is hosted by ladydusk.
"But literature makes its appeal to the heart as well as the intellect."
LOVE that!!! And I see it with my own children- anything I use literature for draws them in & shapes them! 🙂
Oh, this looks so good despite the price tag! I hope you share further from your 7 pages of notes! I agree with Heather about the literature quotes 🙂