Tag Archives: Turnings

Looking to Generations of Knights for Better Days

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  ’64

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”   — Abraham Lincoln

There is reason to be hopeful about the future of our Republic, but a lot depends on a generation of Americans only just leaving school and getting a solid grip on life.

If you are a disciple of historians Neil Howe and the late William Strauss, as is my friend Jerry Climer, who tutors me on their theories of generational change, generations fresh from the classroom of the 21st Century, will have much to say about the next 30 years, a critical era in our future, and not unlike a time less than a century ago.

Strauss and Howe advanced the notion of history repeating itself to a new dimension. They did so in a sophisticated review of generational history dating back to the late 16th Century.  Continue reading