Change, Change and More Change Please!

I have had a lot of interesting conversations with my students the past couple of weeks and they all revolve around change, or sometimes the lack of change in our culture.  I think it's natural for us to fear it to some extent, I don't always like change myself, but as I grow older, I feel like I would rather embrace change then shy away from it.  But then I start thinking about this and what really concerns me is what changes are we embracing and what are we shying away from in our culture as a whole?

It's funny, because we tend to embrace change when it comes to technology.  In my Speech classes we are currently working on group advertising campaigns and we had a discussion about how much the media has changed in ten years and predicted how it will change in the next ten.  My students laughed when I talked about only having one cell phone for my whole immediate family back when I started high school.  Cell phones were still relatively new, anybody else remember how popular the "Nokia" brand used to be??  We can laugh about how old I appear when I mention that text messaging hadn't been invented yet, but I text now myself.  I teach in a 1:1 environment, several of my students follow me on twitter and now I am blogging.  I learn about technology in my professional development and I am constantly trying to change and adapt to keep up with current trends.  Most of us are not afraid to check out the latest gadget or online tool.

This is all great, but now let's look at the conversations I had with my English students this past week when we studied "The Crucible."  Why is it that we can connect the Salem Witch Trials with McCarthyism and even Columbine and 9/11.  The term 'witch trial' has been used many times after Salem and in each case, it seems history repeated itself.  We don't seem to be changing the way we react to our fears, but instead continue to accuse the unknown with little or no evidence, which is exactly what happened back in Salem.

So what's the point?  Change can be scary, change can be great, but let's remember that it is not enough to change and be "up to date", we have to reflect on our philosophies too.