[Kuruharan]

(hopping up and down excitedly)

Ooo, Ooo, Ooo! Opportunity for me to go off on a really big tangent!

The Dark Ages had no period of knowledge of the past.

You have to be specific about where. In the Byzantine Empire the knowledge of the past was retained, and to a degree expanded. Only in Western Europe was there a great deal of cultural loss. But this loss was not total, monasteries kept much knowledge stored away through this period.

As a matter of fact, the Renaissance started as a result of cultural transferance from Byzantium to Florence. (It's a really interesting story too, but I'll spare you.)

So, are you saying we may as well fall back into the Dark Ages, where all knowledge of our past is lost???

Yes, that possiblity exists, at least to the degree that there may be another Dark Age. I doubt that all knowledge would be lost, as I said it was not before. However, there is a chance that a world wide Dark Age could occur.

But I still think it's better than the system we have in America, which has been foisted on Americans by the John Dewey school of thought. Hence, American schools are modeled after factories. The whole idea is to put out a product called a student graduate who is a capable member of society.

Or is it an attempt to give everyone an opportunity. Not that I am necessarily disagreeing with you, but the criticism would be that the European system is discriminatory. I don't think that any changes in that direction would float well in America.

There is, overall, tremendous pressure on children to grow up very quickly.

Spoken like a true parent.

Do we push our children too far, too fast? Would we be better off to slow down a bit as Tolkien postulated in his world.

But unfortunately we don't live in Tolkien's world. Or more specifically we don't have his economic system. This is an industrial society. The next generation has to be brought up quickly to fill their slot in society. By the time that the 33 year old children are just entering the working world their parents are going to be retiring out of it. That makes it difficult for an industrial society to have that large a group of individuals not working and a smaller group working, because the people not working still have to be supported by the people who are.

and look how many of them there were!

Exactly, all those non-producers that have to be fed and clothed.

But, on the other hand, we use more drugs to battle stress and depression than any other society. We have school shootings. We have rampent crime in the major cities. We have massive numbers of teens committing suicide. So we do have problems, or at least something is not working right.

Back to the acceleration of childhood, but that may be another reason why Tolkien did not like the modern world.