Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child by Anthony Esolen (2015)

‘How do you raise a child who can sit with a good book and read? Who is moved by beauty? Who doesn’t have to buy the latest this or that vanity? Who is not bound to the instant urge, wherever it may be found?’

Life Under Compulsion is a follow on from Anthony Esolen’s previous title, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which I read a few years ago.
When one of my sons saw these two books in the bookcase he said: “Mum, you read some weird books! What are you trying to do to us?”
My youngest's reaction was, "No wonder some people think homeschooling's a bad idea...trying to destroy our imagination?!"
If you don’t already know, Dr. Esolen played the devil’s advocate with Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which is a little reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, minus the humour.
Life Under Compulsion continues the combatative tone of his previous book but focuses on the ideas of freedom versus compulsion.
Freedom is a buzzword of our times but it is a word that has been mis-used.
Dr Esolen argues that our children are anything but free - they are slaves to compulsions that come either from outside of themselves (e.g. government mandates that control what children are taught in schools) or within (the itches that must be scratched, the passions that master them).
He examines modern culture, explains how our idea of freedom is warped and dangerous, and draws on the great thinkers of the past to help us understand what freedom truly means:

‘To be “free” is not to do as you please but rather to realise the fulfilment of your natural created being, without impediments.’

Thomas Aquinas

Esolen is scathing about the education system and their ‘courses in compulsion.’ When he was Professor of English at a Catholic University he wrote an article for Crisis Magazine on the university’s ‘diversity’ stance:

…a vision that pretends to be “multicultural,” but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along...

His incisive comments and criticism of the politically correct practices of  radical university professors resulted in student protests and faculty members calling for his dismissal in 2016. No wonder he sounds grumpy when he writes.

In Life Under Compulsion, the author examines the school system and its courses in compulsion where children must be segregated by age and must move to the next classroom at the ringing of the bell. Education is based on a utilitarian foundation and is reduced to a tool; students have to adapt themselves to the 'factory' or Teaching Machine, which is not for teaching children but for ‘socialising them.’ It doesn’t impart virtue because virtues set a people free but the system wants a ‘managed’ people.

Freedom is the movement of the heart to embrace what is good, or beautiful, or noble. 

A man who cannot admire is a slave.

Dr Esolen refers to a wide variety of literature in both books I’ve read which I really appreciate: works by Sigrid Undset, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Pieper, Bradbury, Kipling, Dickens, Hugo, Orwell, and Chesterton, for example, but he doesn’t always provide references so if you don’t recognize the characters he’s referring to you’ll have to do some Google Searching.

Systems of Compulsion breed the unnatural, just as the unnatural requires systems of compulsion to confirm it. Consider communism, a system so insane that it could survive only by compulsion - through show trials and executions and the Gulag.

We must not think that these acts of compulsion were merely imposed upon a defenceless people, from without. They also rose from within.

Here he references Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (which I’m in the very slow process of re-reading) where the author cites the Soviet criminal code that dealt with any failure to make a denunciation of certain actions. The powers that be demanded enthusiasm for their revolution and not just a passive acceptance.

Life Under Compulsion is an important book for parents, anyone who is involved in education, those concerned about the outrage trend in society or the attempt to subject curriculum to the demands of a current political aim.
Considering the reaction to Dr. Esolen’s 2016 article, the book is even more relevant now than when it was when it was first published.

‘How do you get people en masse to submit to madness? By compulsion.’

This is a book I've chosen for the Christian Greats 2019 Challenge: No. 5)  A Philosophical Book by a Christian Author

Reading, Thinking, & Domesticity #2

We started lessons again this week but we're not back into full swing yet. It will be short weeks for the next little while as we have a camping trip planned. The night sky isn't easily observed where we live so to view the sky we have to get up out of the valley and away from all the trees that overhang us. I want to use the opportunity of being away from suburbia to do some star gazing and hopefully identify some constellations.

Family from interstate visited last weekend and Moozle joined her two cousins and two aunties for a visit into the city. All three girls came back with their hair braided after a visit to a braiding shop.

While the girls were doing this, Nougat drove down to Canberra with his Uncle and his cousin to the Summernats Exhibition - a testosterone-fuelled event of noise, burnouts, and cars in general.

Our weather has been extremely hot so a family trip to the beach late in the afternoon for a dinner of fish & chips went down well last weekend and the girls and I had a couple of visits to Bridal shops this week so that Zana could try on some dresses.

Technology

It's laughable that I could share anything technologically related that would help any of my readers, but you never know...I've had some issues with Blogger over the years that I've had to sort out with a little help on the side from the techy people in the family, who say they know nothing about blogging but usually manage to point me in the right direction.

* At one stage Feedburner stopped sending out emails to some subscribers to this blog. Apparently, whenever I copied & pasted what I'd written from a Word document directly to my blog post, rather than typed directly onto Blogger, it included lots of random HTML code. You can check this out by clicking on the HTML link at the top left hand side of your dashboard. For some reason this can interfere with Feedburner. The problem is, you don't know you have a problem unless someone tells you they're not receiving your blog's emails. The solution was to copy & paste my Word document contents onto an online notepad and then copy it from there onto your blog post. A couple of online notepads I've used are: rapidtables and anotepad.

*  Wordpress users sometimes have difficulties posting comments on Blogger. To fix this, I went into Settings & clicked on Posts, comments & sharing. In comment location you have four choices: embedded, full page, pop up window & hide. I've always used 'embedded' but this supposedly was causing problems, so I changed that recently to pop up window & it seems to be working ok. What I don't like with this new setting is that you can't always reply directly to a comment. Your comment just goes under the last one that was logged so it can be confusing if you don't address each person by name when you reply to them.

*  On occasion, I've used Google Forums if I had a problem. Often you'll find it's not only your own blog but others are having similar issues, like I discovered last year when my followers gadget disappeared.

Reading

These are my unfinished books from last year that I will be reading in 2018. I'm taking ages to read N & N as I really have to be in the right frame of mind to read it. It's good but very dense. Or maybe it's me that's dense:

Norms & Nobility by David Hicks

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason

Parents & Children by Charlotte Mason

Life Under Compulsion by Anthony Esolen - Esolen throws in all sorts of quotes and references to authors and literature, which is something I enjoy & appreciate, and I like to know what books an author has read or been influenced by.
Esolen's Introduction alone refers to Genesis, Little House on the Prairie, The Screwtape Letters, The Bethrothed, Dante, and Thomas Aquinas!

I read the three books below last year but never got around to writing about them until now:

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt was written in 2007 and is a Newbery Honor book. It is set in 1967 and centres around the mishaps and adventures of Holling Hoodhood, a 7th Grade student, who is forced to read Shakespeare by Mrs. Baker, whose husband has just been deployed to Vietnam.
At first this book annoyed me. It's written in the first person from the protagonist's point of view and it struck me as frivolous at first. It's quite funny in places and when Benj read it at around 15 or 16 years of age he thought it was good. It grew on me as it went on and the conversations between Mrs. Baker and her student about life and Shakespeare's characters showed sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Readers from about age 14 years and up would enjoy this - boys, especially, and particularly boys who don't like Shakespeare! With it's backdrop of the Vietnam War, Holling's family tensions, and even some of the reflections about Shakespeare, some maturity on the part of the reader would be helpful in order to get the most out of this story.

"You know," I said, "it's not easy to read Shakespeare - especially when he can't come up with names you can tell apart."

..."Shakespeare did not write for your ease of reading," she said.

No kidding, I thought.

"He wrote to express something about what it means to be a human being in words more beautiful than had ever yet been written."

"So in Macbeth, when he wasn't trying to find names that sound alike, what did he want to express in words more beautiful than had ever yet been written?"

Mre. Baker looked at me for a long moment. Then she went and sat back down at her desk. "That we are made for more than power," she said softly. "That we are made for more than outr desires. That pride combined with stubbornness can be a disaster. And that compared with love, malice is a small and petty thing."
  
Dombey & Son by Charles Dickens - Paul Dombey is a cold and ambitious man whose wife had died leaving him with two children, his daughter Florence, whom he callously ignores and neglects, and her younger brother, whom he positively dotes on. Pride is the overarching theme of this book and as the Book of Proverbs says, 'Pride goes before destruction,' so it goes with an array of characters in this story; but there is also an eleventh hour where love snatches a life from the jaws of Pride, the destroyer. As is usual with Dickens' novels, it is peppered with deplorable characters, the worst of whom is Mr. Carker, who is an even darker and more dangerous version of David Copperfield's Uriah Heap. A great story!

The Root of the Righteous by A.W. Tozer- I loved this book and I've scheduled it for Moozle in Term 3 of AmblesideOnline Year 7 in place of the suggested devotional book as I thought it would be a better fit for her. The Root of the Righteous is a simple & wise book that I let distill into my soul for the better part of last year:

Speed and noise are evidences of weakness, not strength. Eternity is silent; time is noisy. Our preoccupation with time is sad evidence of our basic want of faith. The desire to be dramatically active is proof of our religious infantilism; it is a type of exhibitionsm common to the kindergarten.

The bias of nature is toward the wilderness, never toward the fruitful field.

Of all persons Christians should have the largest hearts; to them the narrowing of the heart should be an unthinkable calamity...
And one singular characteristic of the enlarging life is that it is quietly unaware of itself. The largest heart is likely to be heard praying, 'Narrow is the mansion of my soul. Enlarge Thou it.'

January Reading:

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - this will take me a few months I expect. Non-ficiton, very readable, but awful in places. Goodness! How can we not learn from history?

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Crafting

This is what Moozle has been working on:




Update: this is what Moozle made after watching the video above. Very cute:

A neat little boxed stationery set

Take the lid off and there's a storage area for cards, notepads, pen, etc

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

A Reading Plan for 2017

My tentative plans, subject to change, but set down here with a sincere desire to execute said plans and to participate in the Challenges described below.

A Year Long Read - Norms & Nobility by David Hicks. The Ambleside Online (AO) Forum is reading through this book over the year. It's short but dense and I've wanted to read it ever since I read that the creators of the AO curriculum drew from his work and ideas in the planning of their curriculum (which I use and highly recommend) in the upper years. I probably won't be joining in the online converstion but will use the study notes that Karen Glass will be posting as we progress through the book. I've been listening to the Classical Homeschool Podcasts which discuss David Hick's definition of classical education and they have a good mix of philosophy and practice.

Back to the Classics 2017 - hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate, this will be my third year for this and I've thoroughly enjoyed finding books to fit into each category as it made me read some books I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. I'll post a more definite plan after Christmas but I'm going to try to choose books that will fit with the next two challenges:

Russian Literature Reading Challenge 2017 - hosted by Keely @ we went outside and saw the stars   (What a great name for a blog!). Keely has a comprehensive list of Russian literature to help you choose. I'd like to read:

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzenitsyn - I read this when I was about 18 and the USSR was in its prime. Solzenitsyn impressed me then and when I found a secondhand copy of the book earlier this week I decided it was time to read it again.

Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzenitsyn - I wanted to read this last year but didn't get to it.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Some short stories - eg. Gogol, Tolstoy.



Cloud of Witnesses Reading Challenge - hosted by Becky

 For an author to qualify for this reading challenge, they must be among "the cloud of witnesses".... in other words, they must be dead. (They must also be Christian.)

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) is one book I'd like to read this year. I'll add in some others when I have had a good look at my bookshelves.

Reading the Histories - hosted by Ruth at A Great Book Study - this is a three year reading challenge and I'd like to read a couple of books over that time eg. Plato, Bede, Machiavelli. Ruth has a list of study questions to help with your reading.

Once a year, Brona @ Brona's Books has a month long Australian reading challenge in November. This will be the fourth year for me. Hope to see some of you there and if you need some suggestions just ask.

I forgot to mention my ongoing Classics Club Challenge:

A Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce (1875-1958) - Classic Children's Literature Event 2016

A Little Bush Maid was published in 1910 and is the first book in the Billabong series by Mary Grant Bruce. There are fifteen books altogether and they follow Norah Linton from when she was a twelve year old growing up at Billabong, her father's property in rural Victoria, through to her adult years.

It's best to read the books in chronological order just to get the characters straight (although we didn't because it took us a decade to gather all the titles in the series) but the books do stand alone.
The author wrote the Billabong series over the years 1910 to 1942 and they reveal a very different Australia than that of today. They are historically interesting - three of them have World War I as a backdrop (From Billabong to London; Jim & Wally; Captain Jim) and are set in locations other than Australia.

A Little Bush Maid starts off slowly as Norah and the other characters are introduced. Norah's father was widowed when she was a baby, and he was left to bring up both her and her beloved older brother, Jim. Her upbringing so far has been unconventional. She has had no formal schooling and she spends her days in her father's company, helping out on the property and growing 'just as the bush wild flowers grow.' Jim is at boarding school in Melbourne and as the story opens, he comes home with two of his friends, Wally and Harry, for the school holidays.

A Little Bush Maid may not immediately entice a young reader as they may initially be put off by the lack of action, but it is worthwhile to keep going. There is still a good deal of lighthearted, humorous banter between the characters and when the action does begin, the story picks up quickly. Norah discovers the camp of a mysterious old hermit, the young people have encounters with venomous snakes, a disgruntled swaggie sets fire to the Linton property and a visit to the circus nearly ends in tragedy.
The title of the first book probably isn't appealing to boys, but although Norah is the main character, there are strong male characters in all the books.
Age-wise, a confident reader of nine would enjoy this book, but if they like the book as much as some of my children did, you will want to start looking for more books in the series. They are out of print but the first title can generally be found easily enough and a kindle version is available online at Gutenberg (see below).
The Mary Grant Bruce Official Website has a list of the books in chronological order.

As the book was written in 1910, the attitudes and views reflect that time period. Chinese workers, Aboriginals and servants have attributes ascribed to them that are not acceptable these days and in 1992 a revised edition produced by Angus & Robertson was published with some omissions to reflect this.

 1992 Version

 

We have an unabridged copy and a 1992 edition and I noted some of these changes:

Norah was driving a horse and carriage and referred to the two horses as 'Darkie' and N***er. In the revised edition the second horse's name was changed to 'Blackie.'

A remark made about black Billy, the Aboriginal station hand was omitted:

"Queer chap, that," said Dr Anderson, lighting a cigarette. "That's about the only remark he's made all day."

I'm surprised they didn't omit the reference to the cigarette...

This sentence referring to the Chinese gardener was omitted:

Wally's own idea was to tie him up by the pigtail, but this Jim was prudent enough to forbid.

In the afterward written by Barbara Ker Wilson in the 1992 revised edition she states:

With hindsight, we disclaim many of the ideas, opinions and attitudes of 1910, and a few paragraphs which might be thought of as racist today have been omitted from the text. But it would be profitless to criticise the author of a story written at that time for relaying the attitudes of her day through her characters.

Another revised edition (illustrated, same text as the book above & easy to find)

Interesting - we've been listening to an audio version of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and I was thinking how that book would be absolutely decimated if you took out the ideas, opinions and attitudes of the time in which it was written.
Literature is the product of a culture. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said that 'literature is the living memory of a nation.' If we sanitise our past we are removing those memories and how do we learn and overcome our blind spots if we do not remember?

Gutenberg has four books in the series available in a kindle edition:

1) A Little Bush Maid
2) Mates at Billabong 
6) Captain Jim
7) Back to Billabong


This hardback version is unabridged and was published by John Ferguson Pty Limited in 1981. It also contains the next book in the series, Mates at Billabong:

An unabridged audio published by Bolinda Publishing is also available. I haven't listened to it but there's an excerpt here.

We used The Little Bush Maid as a substitute for American Tall Tails in AO Year 3. The Billabong books fit chronologically into Years 5 & 6 of Ambleside Online but we've mostly used them as free reads from the age of around 9 years.

Linking this to the 2016 Children's Classic Literature Event at Simpler Pastimes.

The Year of the Russian Novels

This has been my year of the Russian novel. Mind you, I've only read three but the first two, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment both by Fydor Dostoevsky were epics - not just because of the length of the books themselves but also due to the rambling narrative and the confusion of keeping track of the Russian character's names and derivatives.

I made the mistake of starting with The Brothers K. It was the most difficult of the three to follow and there were a few times when I wondered why on earth I was reading it but I plodded on as I really wanted to find out where it was going. I couldn't for the life of me begin to explain what it was about, except that it involved the Karamazov brothers, their father and a broad sweep of moral and philosophical arguments and ramifications.

Even though it was a struggle to read, my overall opinion is that it is a significant, thought provoking book and the overarching theme is one of redemption.

The impact and significance of the book doesn't lie in the story line of the book but in the themes that lie beneath its content.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the third of the Russian novels that I've read this year, was a pleasant surprise in contrast by being so much more readable, not to mention shorter, at only 143 pages.

Both Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn wrote out of their own personal experiences. Dostoevsky faced a firing squad in 1849 for his involvement with an illegal group but had a last minute reprieve of his sentence and was sent instead to a Siberian labour camp, while Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a labour camp for making depreciating comments about Stalin in 1945.

Ivan Denisovich Shukov is the main character in Solzhenitsyn's story and is serving time in a Soviet prison camp during the 1950's due to the fact he was captured by the Germans during the war and subsequently is falsely accused of being a spy. The story describes one day of Ivan's (he is generally referred to in the story by the name of Shukov) life in the camp with an engrossing narrative. I was waiting for something awful to happen at the end of Ivan's day but it didn't occur. Instead as Ivan gets into his bunk at the end of a long, weary and eventful day he says...

'Glory be to Thee, O Lord. Another day over. Thank you I'm not spending tonight in the cells. Here it's still bearable.'

He lay head to the window, but Alyosha, who slept next to him on the same level, across a low wooden railing, lay the opposite way, to catch the light. He was reading his Bible again......Alyosha heard Shukov's whispered prayer, and turning to him:

'There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why, then, don't you give it it's freedom?'

Shukov stole a look at him. Alyosha's eyes glowed like two candles.

'Well, Alyosha,' he said with a sigh, 'it's this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with "rejected" scrawled across 'em......'

'But Ivan Denisovich, it's because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That's why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying...'

This was a brilliant little book and a good introduction to Solzhenitsyn in particular and Russian novels in general.

In retrospect it would have been good to start with this book. I think Crime and Punishment would be a better introduction to Dostoevsky for a first timer but I think both books are rich, reflective and fascinating works.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is scheduled in Free Reads, Ambleside Online Year 11