ABSTRACT
Modernism, an umbrella word, covers the words modern, modernity, and even moderné. These words derive from the Latin modo, “just now.” As “just now,” modernism, modern, and modernity all deal with the continually current, always on the cutting edge of the present. Their histories, though, stretch back many centuries, and thus, while continually in the present, modernism and its allied words have long pasts. It is the play of the past with the present that keeps modernism always on the edge of an emerging future. Modernism can be looked at linguistically, intellectually, socially/politically, and educationally. Each view gives modernism another layer of richness and presents to us a concept that at times is apart from current traditions and at other times is a part of current traditions. This interplay of apart from/a part of is what gives modernism its dynamism.
