… in the name of progress

Featured Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

There’s a cultural tone where progress is pretty full of its own value. The connotation of progress often suggests, by the same turn, that whatever is not progress is an obstacle. This sense of progress discounts whatever preceded it as obsolete – whether as something quaint or paltry but, either way, as certainly not worth keeping. To this sense of progress, however ironically, history is invective.

Progress is commonly venerated as something that’s coming next that is better and, obviously, thereby to be preferred, as compared to whatever’s coming next as being simply next. What might have amounted to an organic change is pre-empted by the contrivance of progress. What might have been less characterised than simply observed is superseded by an imperative for progress, the value and desirability of which is clear to any who decide to believe it, and lost on any who decide not to.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Planet Earth is visible as a bright speck within the sunbeam just right of center and appears softly blue, as in the original version published in 1990…. The popular name of this view [the “pale blue dot”] is traced to the title of the 1994 book by Voyager imaging scientist Carl Sagan, who originated the idea of using Voyager’s cameras to image the distant Earth and played a critical role in enabling the family portrait images to be taken.”
– NASA/JPL-Caltech

Who decided progress gets to play the trump card? When and how was progress excused from easing its way in respectfully, the way I ask students to join us quietly when they arrive late? What makes progress this prevailingly important, as compared to any other approach or way to be that we might choose to try?

Maybe asking these questions is stubborn, but that only makes progress more pushy – and if both are arrogant for saying so, well… I’m pretty sure it takes one to know one.

Progress ought to understand, when it rips the past to shreds, that it’s not the only one who’s expended itself to become what it becomes. Tearing down the past can discount untold gallons of blood sweat and tears. One swing of progress can undo years, decades, centuries of labour, layer upon layer of things learned along the way up til then, things like the forebears of – yeah – progress.

Assuming one and only one stance risks neglecting any other perspective. Careful note here ought to assure that progress, like status quo, doesn’t have to be a nemesis or a victim, not unless it decides to be.

Image Credit: Pixabay from Pexels
“Earthrise”

Author: Scott Robertson

Scott is a Canadian school teacher, a doctoral candidate in Education, an avid gardener, and a football (soccer) coach. He is also a Dad. Scott worked in high school classrooms for 17 years, teaching mostly Secondary English. He describes learning as a continual renovation: intentional self-reflection aimed at personal growth, alongside people who share similar aims. At the core of his lessons is personal responsibility, an approach to living with integrity by adopting the habit of thinking. It's a blend of philosophy, literature, grammar, history, and science, all tied in a bundle by classical rhetoric. His students often described his approach to be unlike others they knew—mostly in a good way—which prepared them for post-secondary school and adulthood, citizenship, and whatever else. Outside the classroom, Scott has been coaching football (soccer) since 1990 and still enjoys playing, too, except when he’s too injured—then he tries to play golf instead. View all posts by Scott Robertson