This was my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 23, 2009 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. You might also hear a version of this piece on a future edition of KAXE’s “Between You and Me.”
Remember the good new days
By Aaron J. BrownI’m still not old, but “young” is now a highly contextual adjective. I get carded less, but some. I still have hair but it’s slowly changing color, tracking toward the shock white foretold by my genes. As time passes I am beginning to appreciate all the cool things that human beings can do but that I can’t and probably never will.
Hold your retort. I know that effort and positive thinking can lead to great accomplishments. Nevertheless, I will never be a good dancer or a dynamic singer. Another skill that will probably elude me is the ability to memorize and recite verse in a charming and/or strategic ways. You know what I mean. This is the person who can drop a bible verse like a grenade, who can cite Keats in a way that makes girls and tweedy professors melt at equal speeds. All of this belongs to savants and a previous generation.
Most people had to memorize a poem, song or some kind of literary whatnot during their education. In school a portion of one’s brain is reserved for the rotating churn of information needed to pass tests, escape Sunday school or achieve rank in the Boy or Girl Scouts. Vast amounts of that information is purged like a bad taco later, which is why according to a recent Research 2000 poll, 26 percent of Americans today deny the scientifically proven existence of the prehistoric continent of Pangaea, while another 32 percent weren’t sure. This is one of the down sides of the “good new days.”
We all know that in the good old days young people were schooled, literally, in the art of memorizing great works. Which great works? All of them. The ones deemed important by the teachers, anyway. Students recited the classics (whatever that means) and quoted the oracles (whoever they were) and then they worked at jobs and had babies like everyone else since the dawn of time. This was considered education then, and it was, and it was great. And I can’t compete.
I’m one of those misfits on the border between Generations X and Y. On the Iron Range the description is even easier: Punk. I don’t know Keats. I’ve read Shakespeare but can’t quote him. I can’t recite any poem at all, except that I know there are good poems out there for me to read and that I have read them in the past and could read them at any time in the future. On demand.
I’ve heard tell of a debate among historians whether human nature is constant or changing because of our modern media environment. I think humans are pretty much the same. The difference comes in how many stimuli bombard our minds at any given time. There was a period in history, a long one, where memorized poetry and prose was, in fact, not just a virtue but a pastime. If you didn’t like drinkin’ and shootin’ (or stabbin’), perhaps poetry would have been your thing. You could learn the great works and enjoy a sense of superiority in the world you created.
Times have changed. Today memorization is devalued and the Internet is to blame. The Internet provides boundless information upon request. You don’t have to dig through your closet, or the library or even the ancient ruins of an underground pirate shipwreck to read the “great works.” Frequently I’ve found myself writing something, remembering something I read long ago, and quoting the source material not from memory but from a 20 second Google search.
Studies have suggested that the future may not involve the memorization of the classics, but rather the education in how humans can use the entirety of all the great works posted online as a form of knowledge. After all, why commit something to memory when 100 times as many things are readily available upon request? All I am left with is a question. When my parents ran a business that transported senior citizens with dementia to their clinic appointments my dad told me a story. An old man riding in the back suddenly started reciting a poem. After completing his reading he paused, and then said “I haven’t thought of that poem since I read it in class 60 years ago.”
My only fear is that when I reach that age all I’ll remember is a Facebook status update. “OMG, I love cheese.”
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him and read more at MinnesotaBrown.com. His recent book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.
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