Very Bad People

Literature professor Anthony Esolen has written a delightful and funny book about inspiring the imagination of the young.  He wants to do this of course.  But he has chosen to write this book satirically.  Thus, the title: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.


He doesn't actually want to do this, of course.  And the feel of the book ultimately is that of lament because he fears he is expressing intentionally what our educational landscape in the U.S. does unintentionally.  He laments that there are many ways to destroy the imagination, and that a lot of them are being done well.


Here's a paragraph about how history becomes exciting or boring: "Or consider this piece of apparently harmless trivia: "The Normans conquered Sicily in the eleventh century."  Ah, who cares about that?  Nobody, so long as you have not made the mistake of introducing your student to geographical facts to boot.  For if he knows where Normandy and Sicily are on the globe, he may ask the obvious question, "How did the Normans get down there?  Did they go overland, or did they sail?"  And that might lead him to investigate the construction of their boats, or who was in control of Sicily before they arrived.  He might eventually find out that Viking raiders and traders had long been in contact with Constantinople, and that the Byzantine rulers there requested the help of the now Christian Normans in ousting their enemies, the Muslim Arabs, from Sicily.  How did Vikings end up in Byzantium?  It appears they trekked overland to the River Don in Russia, and then sailed down it to the Black Sea and Constantinople.  It would be better if the student could not tell Sicily from Saskatchewan, and knew only that Vikings were Very Bad People with funny hats who sailed a lot." (Esolen, 7)