Reading the right classics

Classical Christian school leaders have always endorsed reading whole books, and whenever possible, in the original versions.  Well-meaning "child enablers" have been dumbing down the classics for many years. 

In recent years, I have collected a number of examples of this to show to parents.   The contrast between the first page of the original Peter Pan and the first page of the Disney version is an example I have frequently demonstrated.  Ironically, the copy of the "Disney version" I show to audiences is from a book I received as a child in the 1950's.  

In the case of almost every "classic," I have had to go back and read the originals as an adult, in order to appreciate the breadth of thought and language the author actually employed.  But the damage is worse than just "dumbing down."

This year I am teaching Robinson Crusoe for the first time, and once again, I find the original not at all like the childhood version I remember.   In the original, after Crusoe has been on the island long enough to build a shelter and begin a simple form of agriculture, he discovers a Bible in a chest of books salvaged from the ship and begins reading it.  Eventually his whole attitude about the fortunes and misfortunes of his life begin to change.  He becomes conscience-stricken for the first time in his life, and then we come to this paragraph:

 "Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, "Call on Me, and I will deliver thee," in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called DELIVERANCE, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and that in the worse sense in the world. But now I learned to take it in another sense: now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing. I did not so much as pray to be delivered from it or think of it; it was all of no consideration in comparison to this. And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction."

What an elegant depiction of salvation!   So many of these gems of our heritage are being edited out of modern experience.  I checked a popularly available edition of the book, and all mention of the Bible and Crusoe's praying have been omitted.

Let me beat this drum one more time:  when children are educated in a literacy which never affirms that others (than their parents and the people at their own church) have any experience of Christ's salvation, it is much easier for them to dismiss faith in God when they become adults.  This is only one of many ways that secular education is destroying the faith of covenant children.