Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516579
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516579
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book

Book Description
Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.

Life Under Compulsion

Life Under Compulsion PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516277
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Welcome to Life Under Compulsion 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? As a parent, you've probably asked these questions. And now Anthony Esolen provides the answers in this wise new book, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Although freedom has become a byword of our age, Esolen reveals that our children are anything but free. In fact, they are becoming slaves to compulsions. Some compulsions come from without: government mandates that determine what children are taught, how they are taught, and even what they can eat in school. Others come from within: the itches that must be scratched, the passions by which children (like the rest of us) can be mastered. Common Core, smartphones, video games, sex ed, travel teams, Twitter, politicians, popular music, advertising, a world with more genders than there are flavors of ice cream—these and many other aspects of contemporary life come under Esolen's sweeping gaze in Life Under Compulsion. This elegantly written book restores lost wisdom about education, parenting, literature, music, art, philosophy, and leisure. Esolen shows why the common understanding of freedom—as a permission slip to do as you please—is narrow, misleading . . . and dangerous. He draws on great thinkers of the Western tradition, from Aristotle and Cicero to Dante and Shakespeare to John Adams and C. S. Lewis, to remind us what human freedom truly means. Life Under Compulsion also restates the importance of concepts so often dismissed today: truth, beauty, goodness, love, faith, and virtue. But above all else, it reminds us of a fundamental truth: that a child is a human being. Countercultural in the best sense of the term, Life Under Compulsion is an indispensable guide for any parent who wants to help a child remove the shackles and enjoy a truly free, and full, life.

For the Children's Sake

For the Children's Sake PDF Author: Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 9781433523083
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Provides a Christian perspective on how to make education a meaningful experience at home or at school, for parents, students, and educators.

Out of the Ashes

Out of the Ashes PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621575691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"Out of the Ashes is a full-throated, stout-hearted call to arms—soul-stirring,uncompromising, and irresistible." —ROD DREHER, author of The Benedict Option "Out of the Ashes is an astonishing combination of energy, humor, insight, and exceptional erudition, topped off by a vivid personal style and a special gift for tweaking the nose of secularist nonsense-peddlers. If you’re looking for a guide to our current cultural predicament (and how to fix it), one that’s sobering and invigorating at the same time, start with this book." —CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia "Anthony Esolen is one of our nation’s best writers because he’s one of our best thinkers. Out of the Ashes is vintage Esolen: eloquent, bold, insightful, profound." — RYAN T. ANDERSON, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation, and author of Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and ReligiousFreedom What do you do when an entire civilization is crumbling around you? You do everything. This is a book about how to get started. The Left’s culture war threatens America’s foundation and its very civilization, warns Esolen in his brand new book, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. They will tell you that babies in the womb are fetuses, that gender is a social construct, and that the backbone of society is government not the community. In Out of the Ashes, Esolen outlines his surprisingly simple plan to take back American culture— start at home. Esolen urges us to demand a return to values in our homes, our schools, our churches, and our communities, and to reject political correctness. “We must become tellers of truth again—and people who are willing to hear truths, especially when it hurts to hear them.”

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596980664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
In The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Western Civilization , Esolen describes the cultures that formed Western civilization, and explains to readers how each of them—from the Ancient Greeks and Romans, to the Renaissance humanists—has shaped the world we live in today. The latest work in the Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) series shows how the West laid the cornerstones of all modern civilization, including historical, artistic, and intellectual achievements.

Ironies of Faith

Ironies of Faith PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497635764
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
In Ironies of Faith, celebrated Dante scholar and translator Anthony Esolen provides a profound meditation upon the use and place of irony in Christian art and in the Christian life. Beginning with an extended analysis of irony as an essentially dramatic device, Esolen explores those manifestations of irony that appear prominently in Christian thinking and art: ironies of time (for Christians believe in divine Providence, but live in a world whose moments pass away); ironies of power (for Christians believe in an almighty God who took on human flesh, and whose “weakness” is stronger than our greatest enemy, death); ironies of love (for man seldom knows whom to love, or how, or even whom it is that in the depths of his heart he loves best); and the figure of the Child (for Christians ever hear the warning voice of their Savior, who says that unless we become like unto one of these little ones, we shall not enter the Kingdom of God). Esolen’s finely wrought study draws from Augustine (Confessions), Dante (The Divine Comedy), Shakespeare (The Tempest), and Tolkien (“Leaf, By Niggle”); Francois Mauriac (A Kiss for the Leper), Milton (Paradise Lost), and Alessandro Manzoni (The Betrothed); the poems of George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Edmund Spenser (Amoretti); Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol), Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), and the anonymous author of the medieval poem Pearl, among other works. Readers who treasure the Christian literary tradition should not miss this illuminating book.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

When Bad Things Happen to Good People PDF Author: Harold S. Kushner
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0805241930
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Offers an inspirational and compassionate approach to understanding the problems of life, and argues that we should continue to believe in God's fairness.

Tending the Heart of Virtue

Tending the Heart of Virtue PDF Author: Vigen Guroian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019538430X
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
From Pinocchio to The Chronicles of Narnia to Charlotte's Web, classic children's tales have shaped generations of young people. In recent years, homeschoolers and new classical schools have put these masterpieces of children's literature at the center of their curricula. And these stories continue to be embraced by parents, students, and educators alike. In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, while he also unveils components of the good, the true, and the beautiful in plot and character. With clarity and elegance, Guroian reads deeply into the classic stories. He demonstrates how these stories challenge and enliven the moral imaginations of children. And he shows the reader how to get "inside" of classic stories and communicate their lessons to the child. For more than two decades Tending the Heart of Virtue has been embraced by parents, guardians, and teachers for whom the stories it discusses are not only beloved classics but repositories of moral wisdom. This new revised edition includes three new chapters and an expanded annotated bibliography in which Guroian interprets such stories as Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, the Grimms' Cinderella, and John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River.

In the Beginning was the Word

In the Beginning was the Word PDF Author: Anthony Esolen
Publisher: Angelico Press
ISBN: 1621387976
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In this extended meditation, Anthony Esolen looks, phrase by phrase, at the majestic Prologue to the Gospel of John, which with good reason he calls "the most influential paragraph in the history of man." He unfolds its theological richness by showing how the Apostle John has in mind, not only what he saw Jesus do and heard him say, but also the whole witness of Scripture before the time of Jesus, and the way the young Church proclaimed him. A unique feature of this remarkable work is how Esolen "hears" (and we with him) the Hebrew/Aramaic underlying John's Greek (which was not his mother tongue), echoing those languages in such a way that, all at once, what we thought could never be more profoundly expressed bursts forth in a renewed poetic splendor that brings into ever keener relief the whole panorama of the theology of the God-Man. Esolen's decades-long immersion in Christian poetry and Scripture uniquely positions him as a guide to the astonishing and life-changing "poem" of the Prologue. He says it best: "My hope is not only to illuminate what John wishes us to hear, but to show that, when it comes to this poetry, John is not the originator; he is, rather, the beloved disciple who caught the habit from the Lord Himself."

Motherhood

Motherhood PDF Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1627790780
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.