Anthony Esolen

Life Under Compulsion: Music and the Itch

bagpiper March 11, 2013

Like dew on the gowan lying
Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet;
Like winds in summer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low and sweet,
And she’s a’ the world to me,
And for bonnie …

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Life Under Compulsion: The Itch

inf.29.82.dore February 11, 2013

Thee let old men, Thee let young men,
Thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens,
With glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring,
Evermore and evermore!
From Prudentius, Cordenatus ex …

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Life Under Compulsion: The Dehumanities

reading statue January 21, 2013

Imagine a new father looking into the eyes of his child.  A wisp of blond hair curls about the scalp.  The fingers, wrinkled like those of an old man, curl about his own finger.  He has blue eyes, but who…

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Life Under Compulsion: Bad Universality

equations December 31, 2012

This is Part VII of a series of essays. Read Part VI here.
I had not thought that the tsars of education could possibly have come up with another idea as inhuman or stupid as have been their many innovations…

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Life Under Compulsion: Curricular Mire

arch of titus December 17, 2012

This is Part VI of a series of essays. See Part V here.
In my last essay, I took issue with the inescapable computer, that costly thing on the student’s desk in “good” schools, inducing the itch for instant “information”…

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Life Under Compulsion: Human-Scale Tools and the Slavish Education State

421814_11464286 December 3, 2012

This is Part V of a series of essays titled “Life Under Compulsion.” See Part IV here.  
When he was governor of Maine, Angus King made sure that there was a computer on the desk of every middle-school child…

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Life Under Compulsion: If Teachers Were Plumbers

pipes November 19, 2012

This is Part IV of a series of essays. For previous installments of “Life Under Compulsion,” see Part I, Part II, and Part III.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” says the man at the door.  “I see that the pipes in your…

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Life Under Compulsion: The Billows Teaching Machine

charlie chaplin November 6, 2012

This is Part III of a series of essays titled “Life Under Compulsion.” See Part I here and Part II here. 
Charlie Chaplin is working on an assembly line.  He tightens bolts with a pair of wrenches.  He does this…

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Life Under Compulsion: From Schoolhouse to School Bus

photo by Dennis Gallus October 22, 2012

This is Part II of a series of essays. Read Part I, titled “Life Under Compulsion,” here.
“Imagine,” said my friend, “how long it takes the bus to go from Little Anse,” a village at the extreme end of the…

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Life Under Compulsion

Sigrid Undset photograph October 8, 2012

In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside at Lillehammer, and then, with her son Hans—her elder son…

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