This sense is no doubt enhanced as we come to end of a century and a
millennium. Lately I find it comforting as powerful forces are setting
the hands of the clock backwards in terms of education, particularly
literacy and language policy, to think that in the context of the
universe our life spans are but a wink in time. Two thousand years is
hardly a tiny fraction of the history of our species which itself is a
very late comer to the span of life on earth. European languages,
English for example, are only a few hundred years old and literacy in
those languages is even more recent. And only in the last century has
there been any attempt to achieve universal education and literacy.
All this is not to say that our brief lives are insignificant but rather
that these mean times can be a tiny aberration in the context of time.
so if we learn to swim under water until the floods recede the world
will pick up where we have left off.
Ken Goodman
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Kenneth S. Goodman, Professor, Language, Reading & Culture
504 College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
fax 520 7456895 phone 520 6217868
These are mean times- and in the mean time
We need to Learn to Live Under Water