Freezing Educational Time

By Richard Lodish

In 1970, my wife and I moved into our first apartment. Previously, the place had been rented to what was known then as a "far-out hippie." During a three-day cleaning and purging of the various '60s paraphernalia left in the apartment, I heard my wife laughing hysterically as she opened the freezer to find an alarm clock leaning precariously against ice-encrusted orange juice containers.As children of the '60s ourselves, we concluded that the former occupant must have been trying to freeze time.

Looking back over 30 years spent in educational pursuits, I can't help thinking that this "hippie" may have been on to something. Too often today, we think that we are totally different from the folks in days gone by. Sure, big changes have occurred over two American centuries—in population growth, family structure, neighborhoods, technology, and just about everything else. But in terms of education and children, the present isn't all that different from the past. Much has remained (and should remain) the same.

Over the last 20 years, I have become fascinated with original school documents from the last two centuries. Acquiring these memorabilia has become something of a hobby for me. The items vary from books about teaching and those recounting school stories, to handwritten school contracts and regulations, teacher journals, student writings, awards of merit, and other bits of educational ephemera. In reading and studying these documents, what has struck me most is that, like the frozen alarm clock in my first apartment, time has not thawed all that much in the last two centuries. And I,...