Where Have You Been?

Most of us spend our lives looking forward, planning for the next big job, or vacation, or holiday.  I have always been obsessed with looking backward.  I like to ask, “How did we get here?”  Even in the most simple of tasks, like taking a walk, I enjoy gazing over my shoulder to take stock of where I’ve been, appreciating the consideration of trajectory and effort at least as much as the destination.

I am very amused by the occasional Facebook post that crosses my News Feed containing a photo of some formerly ubiquitous relic.  I am old enough to remember dial telephones, sewing machine treadles, hand-crank egg beaters, and rabbit-eared televisions that stood on feet in giant furniture boxes.  I remember Smarties, Dots, and Mary-Janes.  I remember when gasoline was $19.99 per gallon and a Hershey Bar, which contained individually molded squares that spelled out H-E-R-S-H-E-Y, was only a nickel.  When I finished high school, the graduation gifts of choice were a portable Corona Electric Typewriter with removable correcting cartridge, and a Texas Instruments calculator with trig functions.  Each came with a price tag in excess of $200.

During our formative years, we never questioned the need to learn math the hard way—suffering the discipline of long division and adding infinite columns of multi-digit numbers.  I remember that the first problems on the SAT test were computational—just straight arithmetic.  These days, our children begin with calculators somewhere around the sixth grade.  They learn all advanced mathematics with special “graphing calculators,” which are permitted at all exams, including the dreaded SAT.   This allows them to travel a farther intellectual distance in the same number of years.  After all, there is more to learn, right?

I suppose a child who grows up today in a world where everything is digital and wireless will be more likely to imagine the next arrival point on the technology spiral.  Without the ancient paradigms of their parents stuck in their heads, they are free to envision grander solutions.  Perhaps tomorrow’s television has no physical body at all, or synchronous telephone communication will be proven unnecessary.  Maybe Jury duty will be served at home over Skype.  Perhaps local supermarkets will be replaced by online ordering from regional warehouses.  Elementary school teachers will preside over decentralized, remote classrooms with more advanced tools for personalized interaction.

I am enough of an antique to believe that the smell of chalk is an important part of the educational experience.  But my real lament is not for the nostalgia of it all.  I am sad that today’s kids do not gaze upon their pretty toys with wonder.  My father became an electrical engineer in the 1950’s when electronics were large enough to see and wire by hand.  He was on the front lines when integrated circuitry entered the fray.   Having once built our family a stereo system from a mail-order kit, he had a keen understanding of the quantum leaps achieved in electronics in his own lifetime.  When he held an ipod in his hand, he truly understood what a marvel it was.  It wasn’t because of the cool neon colors of the cases; he was well aware of how many bundles of achievement were necessary to bring that single product to market.

There are few discontinuities in technological advancement.  Like evolution, the toys and tools we use are the products of small, incremental steps.  Just like we can connect the modern bluebird to prehistoric reptiles, I would bet that we could draw a straight line from Gothic cathedrals to those weightless laptops and tablets we carry.  Digital technology is not a new idea; it harkens from mass production techniques deployed during the industrial revolution.  While it is true that someone from my generation could never have invented Facebook, would Mark Zuckerberg have worked so painstakingly on his social network had he not experienced personally the limitations of Harvard’s Freshmen Facebook?

Technology is only one example of how we enjoy the spoils of change without an appreciation for the struggles that preceded it.   Recently, my husband and I joined some friends to see the movie Lincoln.  This film (I was not aware until it was over that it was a Steve Spielberg film, but then it was like—of course!) takes place during a very small window of time between Lincoln’s re-election and the end of the Civil War.  It focuses on the struggle to pass the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolishes slavery.  It highlights the interesting political tug-of-war that takes place in Washington, as Lincoln believes that once the war is ended, there would be no imperative to pass the Amendment.   Additionally, it is believed that the Amendment would thwart efforts to end the war.  That ticking political time-bomb gives the film its suspense, as a war-weary South begins contemplating options of negotiation and compromise.

Of course, we know from history that both the Amendment and the end of the war come to pass.  What is not well taught is Lincoln’s own role in making this happen, and the extent to which he sacrifices everything for the passage of an Amendment that he believes so fundamental to our existence as a nation.  There are points of history worth noting:  that the Constitution was ratified without addressing the issue of slavery, and that the 13^th Amendment is the only place in the Constitution where the word “slavery” is mentioned.  What this film so artfully underscores is that while many in Congress thought slavery abhorrent, they resisted voting to abolish it because they could not fathom the downstream social and economic consequences. 

There are many living in today’s world who believe that we have equality and freedom because the Constitution says so.  It is no truer today than it was in 1865.