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.Repetitive behavior, whatever else its functions, helps give meaning to non-repetitiveevents, by providing the backdrop against which novelty is silhouetted.Sociologists JamesBossard and Eleanor Boll, after examining one hundred published autobiographies, foundseventy-three in which the writers described procedures which were "unequivocallyclassifiable as family rituals." These rituals, arising from "some simple or random bits offamily interaction, started to set, because they were successful or satisfying to members, andthrough repetition they 'jelled' into very definite forms."As the pace of change accelerates, many of these rituals are broken down or denatured.Yet we struggle to maintain them.One non-religious family periodically offers a seculargrace at the dinner table, to honor such benefactors of mankind as Johann Sebastian Bach orMartin Luther King.Husbands and wives speak of "our song" and periodically revisit "theplace we first met." In the future, we can anticipate greater variety in the kinds of ritualsadhered to in family life.As we accelerate and introduce arhythmic patterns into the pace of change, we need tomark off certain regularities for preservation, exactly the way we now mark off certainforests, historical monuments, or bird sanctuaries for protection.We may even need tomanufacture ritual.No longer at the mercy of the elements as we once were, no longer condemned todarkness at night or frost in the morning, no longer positioned in an unchanging physicalenvironment, we are helped to orient ourselves in space and time by social, as distinct fromnatural, regularities.In the United States, the arrival of spring is marked for most urban dwellers not by asudden greenness there is little green in Manhattan but by the opening of the baseballseason.The first ball is thrown by the President or some other dignitary, and thereaftermillions of citizens follow, day by day, the unfolding of a mass ritual.Similarly, the end ofsummer is marked as much by the World Series as by any natural symbol.Even those who ignore sports cannot help but be aware of these large and pleasantlypredictable events.Radio and television carry baseball into every home.Newspapers arefilled with sports news.Images of baseball form a backdrop, a kind of musical obbligato thatenters our awareness.Whatever happens to the stock market, or to world politics, or to familylife, the American League and the National League run through their expected motions.Outcomes of individual games vary.The standings of the teams go up and down.But thedrama plays itself out within a set of reassuringly rigid and durable rules.The opening of Congress every January; the appearance of new car models in the fall;seasonal variations in fashion; the April 15 deadline for filing income tax; the arrival ofChristmas; the New Year's Eve party; the fixed national holidays.All these punctuate ourtime predictably, supplying a background of temporal regularity that is necessary (thoughhardly sufficient) for mental health.The pressure of change, however, is to "unhitch" these from the calendar, to loosen andirregularize them.Often there are economic benefits for doing so.But there may also behidden costs through the loss of stable temporal points of reference that today still lend somepattern and continuity to everyday life.Instead of eliminating these wholesale, we may wishto retain some, and, indeed, to introduce certain regularities where they do not exist.(Boxingchampionship matches are held at irregular, unpredictable times.Perhaps these highlyritualistic events should be held at fixed intervals as the Olympic games are.)As leisure increases, we have the opportunity to introduce additional stability pointsand rituals into the society, such as new holidays, pageants and games.Such mechanismscould not only provide a backdrop of continuity in everyday life, but serve to integratesocieties, and cushion them somewhat against the fragmenting impact of super-industrialism.We might, for example, create holidays to honor Galileo or Mozart, Einstein or Cezanne.Wemight create a global pageantry based on man's conquest of outer space.Even now the succession of space launchings and capsule retrievals is beginning to takeon a kind of ritual dramatic pattern.Millions stand transfixed as the countdown begins andthe mission works itself out.For at least a fleeting instant, they share a realization of theoneness of humanity and its potential competence in the face of the universe.By regularizing such events and by greatly adding to the pageantry that surrounds them,we can weave them into the ritual framework of the new society and use them as sanity-preserving points of temporal reference.Certainly, July 20, the day Astronaut Armstrongtook "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," ought to be made into an annualglobal celebration of the unity of man.In this way, by making use of new materials, as well as already existing rituals, byintroducing change, wherever possible, in the form of predictable, rather than erratic chainsof events, we can help provide elements of continuity even in the midst of social upheaval.The cultural transformation of the Manus Islanders was simple compared with the onewe face.We shall survive it only if we move beyond personal tactics to social strategiesproviding new support services for the change-harassed individual, building continuity andchange-buffers into the emergent civilization of tomorrow.All this is aimed at minimizing the human damage wrought by rapid change.But thereis another way of attacking the problem, too.This is to expand man's adaptive capacitiesthe central task of education during the Super-industrial Revolution.Chapter 18EDUCATION IN HE FUTURE TENSEIn the quickening race to put men and machines on the planets, tremendous resources aredevoted to making possible a "soft landing." Every sub-system of the landing craft isexquisitely designed to withstand the shock of arrival.Armies of engineers, geologists,physicists, metallurgists and other specialists concentrate years of work on the problem oflanding impact.Failure of any sub-system to function after touch-down could destroy humanlives, not to mention billions of dollars worth of apparatus and tens of thousands of man-years of labor.Today one billion human beings, the total population of the technology-rich nations, arespeeding toward a rendezvous with super-industrialism.Must we experience mass futureshock? Or can we, too, achieve a "soft landing?" We are rapidly accelerating our approach.The craggy outlines of the new society are emerging from the mists of tomorrow.Yet even aswe speed closer, evidence mounts that one of our most critical sub-systems education isdangerously malfunctioning.What passes for education today, even in our "best" schools and colleges, is a hopelessanachronism.Parents look to education to fit their children for life in the future.Teacherswarn that lack of an education will cripple a child's chances in the world of tomorrow.Government ministries, churches, the mass media all exhort young people to stay in school,insisting that now, as never before, one's future is almost wholly dependent upon education [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]