FINDING OUR WORDS excerpt in "The Federalist"

The Federalist has published an excerpt from Allison Ellis’ FINDING OUR WORDS: Words That Made America. In the excerpt, we learn why we should read the greatest words ever spoken and written in American history to our children, and how to do so in a way that allows even young children to appreciate them.

"From the time I started my adventure in homeschooling over a decade ago, I have wanted to collect some of the most inspiring words spoken by American leaders since our founding — eloquent and soaring words, rooted in the wisdom of the ages. The desire emerged from reading those great words of American history aloud with my daughter, contrasting them with the words we heard daily all around us, and realizing that something priceless had been lost.

American education, not long ago the envy of the world, has become a corrupt, bloated, and failed institution. This has been happening for over a century and there is no sign of recovery.

The loss can be summed up in one sentence: We have lost our words.

We no longer read the greatest spoken and written words of all time in the fields of history, literature, poetry, philosophy, and politics, and so we have lost the understanding of words that our ancestors lived by. More critically, however, we have lost what those words have represented. 

So what can we do?"