This is my favorite time of year: it’s curriculum planning time! And Anthony Esolen’s new book came just in time as my 9th-grader-to-be and I discuss what we’re doing for Fall 2015. She’ll be joining a homeschooling co-op for the first time and picking her own courses, and I’m adding Life Under Compulsion to the mix.
I don’t know if Mr. Esolen expected his book to be used this way, but it will serve nicely as our “spine”. We could go on a hundred rabbit trails just with this one book, so it’s enough for a year or two of high school. There are lessons here in history, religion, civics, psychology and sociology, and of course language and literature. Just about the only thing we’ll need to add is math.
We started homeschooling because we wanted our children to have a real childhood. We wanted them to dream and play and sing, to think and to imagine, to see beauty where others don’t. We wanted them to get inspired by the past, to live fully in the present, and to make sound plans for their future. We wanted them to ponder a world beyond this world. In our 15th year of homeschooling, I do suffer every now and then from burnout, and this book reminded me of why we set out on this journey in the first place, and why we want to continue. Like Charlotte Mason’s books, this book is about education, yes, but more importantly it’s about life.
Anthony Esolen blesses us with his unclouded thinking and writing. He makes me look at situations, stories, including alarming current events, from angles I may not have considered before, minus the hysterics I often see even in serious cultural commentary. When you read this book, and I highly recommend it, you might find that almost every sentence gives you pause. I found myself noting down a lot, mostly things I want to discuss with my kids, and things they’ll need to discuss with their future kids.
Life Under Compulsion covers more ground than any psychology textbook I used in college. Mr. Esolen talks about the different compulsions society is out to convince us we live under, for which temporary quick-fixes are usually prescribed. Government and media talk about our youth’s most pressing problems incessantly, to the point that many of us have become numb and deaf, but seldom, if ever, do they address the roots of unrest and disease. The message our youth are sent even before they’re out of high school is that they can’t be trusted, and that it’s foolish to expect them to shoot for high standards of moral behavior. On top of that, our society creates so much noise and confusion, that this message dominates others, and anything to the contrary is deemed unacceptable and unhelpful.
The book gives us a glimpse of what freedom used to look like. It’s also a call to silence, to the sanctuary… like the bells up in the church tower when Liturgy is about to start. It makes us conscious of ultimate ends. There’s much that’s worthy of meditation here.
It talks about the unity that we find in prayer. At the same time, it also made want to weep for the greatness that was once America, and for the greatness that I often see hidden deep within men’s souls but that lie dormant, buried by years of brokenness.
Around p. 183, I was looking for the happy ending, somewhat similar to how I felt when I was reading Bonhoeffer. In that sense, Life Under Compulsion is not a satisfying read. It doesn’t promise that things will get easier, or that things will change back to the way they were. But it is not without hope, because redemption comes at the last, and Mr. Esolen reminds us to embrace the freedom that has already been won for us, at so great a price.
Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child
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