Then and Now

I was walking the dogs with my middle son tonight, and we had a good talk. We recently decided on a special weekly reading assignment for him: In addition to his regular homeschooling work, he is going to be reading one book a week and reporting on it the following weekend. The book we assigned to him today was Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. That's 'Little House on the Prairie', for you older folks. We picked it because it's not really a challenging book; it's written for younger people, after all, so it's not like I handed him Moby Dick.

Anyway, we read the first two chapters together today. At first, he wasn't that much into it; after all, it's the story of a little girl growing up in backwoods Wisconsin 150 years ago. How exciting can that be, right?

Turns out, it's quite interesting, even for a boy about to turn twelve. The descriptions of the smokehouse and butchering the hog got his attention, and the story of how Grandpa got away from a panther was riveting.

On the walk, we talked about what life was like back then compared to now. I pointed out that Wilder, born in 1867, was 36 when the Wright Brothers took off for the first time, and died shortly before the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Can you imagine the changes that generation experienced? They didn't even have light bulbs when they were kids; the Civil War was still fresh and raw; Canada was a brand-new country. By the time they were gone, the world had fought two horrifying industrial wars, and the final frontier had been breached.

There's never been a societal shift of that magnitude before, and I doubt there ever will be again. Jules Verne was writing fantastical stories about submarines and moon shots, and by the time Wilder was gone, those things were a reality. How did they process that shift? There's no one alive today, obviously, who can remember those things; the Wright Brothers first flight was in 1903, 117 years ago. Of all seven billion people alive right now, there is a grand total of ONE person who was alive in 1903, a Japanese woman who was less than a year old then. So, there's no one left who remembers a time when men couldn't fly. When compared to recorded human history, it's the blink of an eye. But it's now four full generations since that happened.

And people wonder why I'm studying history in school. There is no more fascinating subject than history; it's also the most important one. That's why books like Laura Ingalls Wilder's tales are valuable to us, because they give us a window into a different time. A simpler time, yes, in many ways, but that doesn't mean inferior. The past has so much to teach us, which makes me wonder why so many people are so determined to erase it. Schools don't teach history, or if they do, it's a dull, watered-down version with so much revisionism and outright invention that it's no wonder kids don't pay attention to it and think it's boring.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We've seen that time and time again, and those of us who have learned from history are watching it all happen again. And for all those people that say, 'it can't happen here', well...it's not the first time that's been said, either.

If you're interested in history, check out my first fantasy novel,which has historical tie-ins: The Chronicles of Meterra: Arrival, available in e-book and in paperback. And leave a comment; it's nice to know what other people think.