FITTING ON THE TRACKS
Since our society is in the midst of deep changes, locally and globally, it is tempting to want to preserve what we have. But we also need to think about what we can change for the better, particularly if what we already have is no longer working for most people. Making changes is not easy for individuals, let alone societies, and I will be talking about this in my upcoming keynote at the AERO conference next week.
John’s words inspired me to develop my speech; I hope you’ll find his words inspiring too.
From the foreword that John Holt wrote in 1972 for a book called SOMEWHERE ELSE:
.. . At a meeting—very pleasant—of (mostly) sociologists at Harvard, someone said to me, "But if we educate children in the way you propose, how are they later going to fit on the tracks laid down by society?” The question showed me that he understood very clearly what schools are for—to make people think, as they had made him think, that the tracks that make a society of any particular moment are not only the best tracks, but the only possible tracks.
His remark was a perfect illustration of what Ivan Illich was to say some years later about how the institutions of our society dominate not only our lives but our imaginations, not only what we do but what we even think we might or could do. I didn't say any of this to my questioner. What I said was, “They'll make new tracks." From their expressions it was clear that most of them had never thought of this. “And after all," I went on, "where do you think the present tracks in society came from? They weren't always there. They didn't fall from the sky. Somewhere, back in the past, someone made a track, did something that had not been done before—usually because everyone who considered doing it, if anyone did, thought it was impossible or crazy.”
Societies are constantly making new tracks. If they don't they freeze up, get hardening of the arteries and joints, corrode, decay, and die. All of which our society is quite clearly in the process of doing. The question is, can people ... make enough new tracks, and fast enough? Can we find new ways of living, thinking, learning, working to replace those which have quite obviously ceased to work? Nobody knows ...
