Anthony M. Esolen said this quote

“ You democratize heroism. Everybody is a hero, and simply for doing (and often not well at that) the ordinary tasks of living as a half-decent person. Does your mother fix you breakfast? She is a hero. Does your father visit you every weekend without fail? A hero. Does your teacher mark your papers faithfully when you make a mistake? Unexampled heroism, that. If everyone is a hero, then no one is a hero; and genuine heroes will go unnoticed in all the mindless self-congratulation. ”

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For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.

~ Anthony M. Esolen

Anthony M. Esolen Asylum Autodidact Autodidactism Education High School Homeschooling Reform Sad Truth School Standardized Testing Standardized Tests Teenagers Teens Unschooling Young People Youth

[Today's high schoolers are required to read] a couple of Shakespeare plays...the couple of Shakespeare plays function as an inoculation – that is, you get exposed to 'half-dead Shakespeare virus', and it keeps you from ever loving Shakespeare again, your whole life long. It would be much better if they didn't do that at all!Because [the students] have no linguistic preparation for it, and no cultural or historical preparation for it. They've not been reading English poetry, so the language strikes them as completely bizarre […] and they have no historical place to put it, so they don't know what's going on. All they know is that they're 'supposed to like it'.

~ Anthony M. Esolen

Anthony M. Esolen Education Fixing Education Genius History Humor Language Learning Reform Schools Shakespeare Writing

The first good news for all of us, the first joyful story of our lives, is that there is a story at all, and an Author who has loved us into being.

~ Anthony M. Esolen

Anthony M. Esolen Catholicism Christianity Stories

If we loved children, we would have a few. If we had them, we would want them as children, and would love the wonder with which they behold the world, and would hope some of it might open our eyes a little. We would love their games, and would want to play them once in a while, stirring in ourselves those memories of play that no one regrets, and that are almost the only things an old man can look back on with complete satisfaction. We would want children tagging along after us, or if not, then only because we would understand that they had better things to do.

~ Anthony M. Esolen

Anthony M. Esolen Childhood Children Imagination Life