Holt – 5. On the Loss of Authority of the Old

“A generation that does not believe it can make a future that it will like, or trust or love any future it can imagine, has nothing to pass onto and hence nothing to say to the young. It might seem a paradox that our society, which perhaps more than any that ever existed is obsessed with the need to control events, nature, people, everything, should feel more than any other that things are out of control.” (P. 57-58)

On the first statement, I think many homeschoolers are living out their opposition to this. Whether or not it is universal, what I’ve seen is that most people in my generation thought that it could be done, but they were not in the position to do anything about it. Many years ago someone told me, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and you don’t get any closer to your destination until you take it.’ Instead of focusing on the future, we set out to make a present that we liked and sometimes accepted one which allowed us to go to sleep at night. When you approach it that way, it doesn’t matter how close you are to the thousand miles. As long as you are taking steps, you will be getting closer.
            

“We worship change and progress, the belief that the new must always be better than the old. We believe that we can change and improve on anything. And yet, we do not really believe that in any large sense we can change things to make them come out the way we like.
… We have created a false dream and called it Progress. … If newer and newer and more and more do not seem any longer to add up to the Good Life, we conclude there cannot be such a thing as a good life…”
(P. 58-59)

This reminded me of a buzz phrase I’ve heard often in the last five years or so. Someone will say, ‘We are going to move forward with this.’ As often as not, it is said in regard to something which was not an improvement over the current situation. This usage implies progress
whether or not the undertaking is actually going to improve anything. Again, I’ve found that homeschooling is not progress in the sense that most people use the term. But, C.S. Lewis said in one of his books that if you discover you are going the wrong way, turning around and going back is the only way you will make progress. Because homeschooling is turning around and going back 100 years in a step, it is true progress.