We’re Entering a “Dark Age” in American Education
Here’s How to Start a Renaissance
American education may be entering a “Dark Age” – a decline accelerated by violence, pandemic, and schism. Rand researchers have argued “teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling,” yet the reputation and standing of the teaching profession is collapsing, as I wrote last Tuesday. According to a Brown University study by Matthew Kraft and Melissa Arnold Lyon published in November 2022, “perceptions of teacher prestige [have] fallen to the lowest levels recorded in the last half century.” The profession’s continuing deterioration inhibits the recruitment of the best candidates and discourages many excellent teachers already serving in our nation’s classrooms. The result is an increasingly inferior education for America’s students.
To prevent a “Dark Age” from taking hold in American education, we need a renaissance in the teaching profession – and fast.
As I mentioned in my article Why Was My Teacher a Poor Student?, Kraft and Lyon documented the decline in the teaching profession in their study, stating there is “cause for serious national concern.”
Right now, few young people dream of being teachers.
“Interest in the teaching profession among high school seniors and college freshman has fallen 50% since the 1990s, and 38% since 2010, reaching the lowest level in the last 50 years,” Kraft and Lyon found. Teachers’ job satisfaction and the proportion of college graduates who go into teaching are both at a 50-year low.
Some may want to suggest this is an anomaly caused by the pandemic, but the authors make clear that is not the case. They write that “most of these declines occurred steadily throughout the last decade suggesting they are a function of larger, long-standing structural issues with the profession.”
If this doesn’t reflect a looming “Dark Age” in American education, I don’t know what does.
So, what should we do? How can we start a Renaissance in American education?
Believe it or not, one can look to fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy for some clues on how cultures and societies can experience renewal and fundamental transformation. To be sure, making historical analogies can be a perilous enterprise; no two periods or cultures are exactly alike. But just as the Italy of Giotto and Michelangelo experienced its Renaissance or “rebirth” after a period of great chaos and calamity, so too could American education experience a moment of remarkable intellectual and cultural renewal and reinvention.
The search and respect for the best ideas of the past, the role of money and competition in fueling revitalization, and the employment of extraordinary art and promotion helped ignite and extend the distinctive cultural transformation that took place during the Italian Renaissance. Some of these same general dynamics, translated for the twenty-first century, could help us move American education a few steps closer to experiencing a renaissance of its own.
The French historian Jules Michelet was the first to use the term Renaissance to refer to cultural developments in Florence.1 Italian intellectuals, humanists, and other contemporaries in Italy between the years 1350 and 1550 indeed sensed something special was stirring. There was a revolution in Western art, as humanists rediscovered knowledge from ancient Greece and Rome.2 And these classical ideas, with the help of the new printing press created by a scrappy craftsman from Mainz, “set educational reforms and cultural changes in motion that spread throughout Europe.”3
For our purposes, we can set aside debates about whether the Dark Ages were really that dark or whether Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy exaggerated and oversimplified what happened in Florence. Regardless, the age of Dante, Da Vinci, and Lorenzo the Magnificent provides three helpful insights for reframing a twenty-first-century cultural problem and figuring out how to escape an ongoing and dangerous descent in American education.
LEARNING FROM THE ANCIENTS
The first insight can be found in the respect for best practices in the past that served as catalysts for the Renaissance. Humanists such as Petrarch (1304-74), referred to by historian Charles Nauert as the Renaissance’s “first great figure, the real founder of the new culture,” searched for ancient standards of excellence and often sought to adopt the standards themselves.4 Just as importantly, humanists viewed the recovery of the best ideas of the past not as stopping points, but as stepping stones.
While Petrarch praised the writings of Levato and Mussato, contemporary poets from Padua, Petrarch “also believed he had alone had been the first to form a clear idea of the necessity and the possibility of rediscovering and bringing back to life the inner spirit of ancient Roman civilization… Petrarch [aimed to] regenerate the world and create a distinct new culture built on the solid foundation of a lost but retrievable antiquity.”5
Notice the use of the word “foundation.” One crafts a foundation to build something more grand on top of it.
Architects and artists also turned to antiquity for guidance. With his friend, the sculptor Donatello, the young architect Filippo Brunelleschi embarked on an odyssey to Rome, and literally dug up the past among the ruins and learned from, rather than looted, them. “He measured every structure he studied: almost every one in Rome at the time,” wrote architect James Atkins. Brunelleschi also paid special attention to the ancient engineering genius revealed in the Pantheon and translated what he learned to finish construction of the dome of Florence’s Santa Maria del Fiore, then the largest dome in the world.
Fast forward to 2023. American popular culture seems to elevate and even idolize the new – the novel. The flooding of American classrooms with cellphones, electronic gadgets, and pedagogical gimmicks reflects such an outlook.
Technology can facilitate true learning. But in my experience, it is often a destructive distraction in the classroom.
Perhaps American education needs to “pull a Petrarch” and re-examine the methods and approaches used by the best ancient and not-so-ancient educators, to rediscover what outstanding teaching looks like.
Some of history’s greatest teachers – Socrates, Confucius, and Jesus of Nazareth (who for Christians also happens to be the Almighty) just to name a few – would probably have something to say about who teaches our children and how they do it.
Socrates might suggest that students engage in more 3D person-to-3D person connection and debate rather than fixating mindlessly on 2D people via screens and texts. He would suggest students be taught to reflectively examine their lives and improve them. He might suggest more student-centered round table discussions. By the way, round table discussions (i.e. Harkness discussions) CAN WORK with a class of 32 (I have done it!), but smaller classes would give students more opportunities to share.
These great teachers might say we should take the vocation of teaching more seriously, and that if our society wants to endure, it should recognize and honor the inherent nobility of the teaching endeavor and be picky about who we choose to engage in it. I think they would say that teachers in a society should be held to a higher standard and that the job should not be offered to just anyone.
Jesus of Nazareth might also emphasize loving others and treating them as we would like to be treated. Confucius might remind children to respect the wisdom of elders (assuming they are wise ones).
Combining those two ancient approaches can begin to change education in our country one classroom at a time.
Admittedly, order and respect for authority are not exactly in vogue in the United States, but a disturbing lack of order in many classrooms has undermined the effectiveness of teachers. That can make the job unnecessarily difficult and only hurts children.
The atmosphere of disorder in so many of America’s schools also undermines the reputation and authority of teachers and drives away existing teachers and any top candidates who might be considering teaching as a career.
But a cold authoritarian classroom focused on order without love is a difficult place in which to learn. Clearly, we need classrooms characterized by a harmonious balance between order and love.
Perhaps recovering and employing some of the best ideas of the past will help restore the power of teachers in the classroom and can help stop American education’s descent.
THE ROLE OF MONEY
If Socrates were alive today and suggested smaller classes would make for better Socratic Seminars, many of us might respond by saying, “Smaller classes? More classrooms? More teachers? Sure. Schools will need more money, then.”
Exactly.
During the Renaissance, money and a spirit of entrepreneurial competitiveness played an essential role in fueling the dramatic development and expression of talent. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Medici family amassed a banking fortune that allowed them to politically and commercially dominate Florence from 1434 until 1492.6 Cosimo de’ Medici “spent vast sums on collecting and copying ancient manuscripts”, founded and funded a Platonic academy, and served as a patron for Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and the sculptor Donatello. The patronage of Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo de’ Medici, facilitated masterworks by Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci.
Just as money played such an undeniably important role in moving medieval Europe beyond the Dark Ages and fueling the development of artistic and intellectual skill during the Italian Renaissance, it will take serious money to revitalize the teaching profession in the United States.
Philosophically, there are some human activities that should not be associated with pay because of the spiritual nature of the labor. Parenting would be one example. We all recognize that mothers and fathers do not demand their kids pay them for love and guidance.
However, most of us do have to work to feed ourselves - and our kids. And in America, it’s salary that often indicates the degree to which our society values our work.
Last week, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced a new initiative entitled “Raise the Bar: Lead the World” and asked, “Have we as a country minimized the [teaching] profession so much that we’re OK with teachers driving Ubers and getting second or third jobs on the weekend to earn enough money to pay the bills?”
Secretary Cardona added, “I’m not O.K. with that.”
A dramatic increase in teacher pay could help catalyze renewal and attract the best candidates. The authors of the Brown University study found evidence connecting pay and the state of teaching. The decline in teaching during the 1970s was in part due to declining real wages associated with rapid inflation. In addition, during the 1980’s, an increase in real wages played a role in teaching’s recovery.
While there are efforts underway to incentivize districts and state agencies to maintain a $60,000 floor for annual teacher salaries, and this may help for the moment, the gesture does not go far enough.
As images of grossly unqualified long-term substitutes and teachers lacking any sense of excellence cross your mind, you may find my argument unreasonable. But transforming the teaching profession and moving American education out of an impending Dark Age by attracting at least the top third rather than the bottom half of college graduates, requires a salary adjustment at early, mid, and late career that will truly help professionalize teaching and renew the way we think about the vocation.
The $60,000 salary might attract an entry level teacher in the short-term, but only if that candidate can see a competitive and growing salary - and the respect it commands - down the road.
Only when our society truly puts the teacher in the same socio-economic, socio-cultural category as a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, will we be able to attract the best to the profession. It will actually BE a profession rather than the “semi-profession” as it is widely regarded now.
A teaching position will become a valued opportunity, and candidates will compete for that opportunity. The most competitive candidates - those with character, a heart for children, and strong academic records - will increasingly find their way to our classrooms.
Excellent teachers engaged in a noble endeavor should be compensated by American society in a way that demonstrates respect and gratitude.
I will save my thoughts on the issue of unqualified and ineffective teachers who do not deserve a pay raise for another post.
CREATING A NEW IMAGE FOR TEACHING
The third insight the Renaissance can offer to our educational predicament today relates to the art of marketing. If we want to prevent the further decline of American education, we need to change teaching’s image and start marketing the profession differently.
Again, we can take notes from the Medici.
Renaissance artists undoubtedly celebrated humanity’s dignity and beauty in their work, and they also often communicated the power, prestige, and education of wealthy patrons such as the Medici family, Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino, or Isabella d’Este of Mantua. Patrons not only associated themselves with the visual and intellectual excellence of art but often featured themselves in the works as well. Think Renaissance portraits.
Benozzo Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi portrays members of the Medici family, who were definitely not part of the original Christmas story, in the foreground. The Medici were only too eager to steer visiting guests to this magnificent immortalization and celebration of power.
Artistic signaling sustained and raised the status of both artist and patron. As the number of excellent artists in Florence and Rome proliferated, Florence gained a reputation as an epicenter of learning and art. Painters from elsewhere in Europe either traveled to Italy to study or at least mimicked the techniques and styles of Italian art of the period. We see echoes of the Italian approach in the works of artists from other regions such as German artist, Albrecht Dürer, and Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. Renaissance artists elevated the status of their city-states, their patrons, their art, and themselves.
While I am not suggesting we start creating sculptures of teachers for our town squares, we will need to elevate the status of teaching not only through employing excellent practices in the classroom and dramatically increasing pay, but intentionally marketing and promoting teaching as a noble and prestigious profession.
These days, when a young person is asked whether he would like to become a teacher, he should have images of himself as a Socrates (who isn’t executed for his views) or an Indiana Jones (who grades his papers on time) or a well-paid and less micromanaged John Keating (Dead Poets Society) or even a Dr. Frizzle-ish figure (Magic School Bus) and not an exhausted and under-qualified person who does not belong in a classroom.
Teaching’s image needs an overhaul.
Authors Kraft and Lyon assert that “prestige can be understood to mean the reputation and social standing that the profession holds in society as well as the respect and authority workers are afforded as professionals. High prestige occupations are typically characterized as having 1) advanced degrees, 2) a well-developed knowledge base, 3) restrictions to entry into the profession, 4) common norms and standards of practice, 5) a large degree of autonomy over their work, and 6) relatively high compensation.”
Keeping these characteristics in mind, if we hope to recruit the best teachers – those with character, a heart for children, and strong academic backgrounds - we should signal in every possible way that teaching is prestigious and a profession worthy of our nation’s best citizens.
To prevent a “Dark Age” from taking hold in American education, we need to start by transforming the teaching profession. The good news is that the Renaissance offers some insights on how American education can begin to have a rebirth of its own.
Until the next post!
- Antonette
Lawrence Cunningham and John J. Reich, Culture and Values. A Survey of the Humanities (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006), 457.
Ibid, 437.
Donald Kagan, Steven E. Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, The Western Heritage (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2013), 289.
Charles Garfield Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21.
Ibid, 22.
Lawrence Cunningham and John J. Reich, Culture and Values. A Survey of the Humanities (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006), 444.