The following letter is adapted from remarks delivered at today’s Parents Association Winter Luncheon in Olson Hall.
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” So reflected the 19th-century historian Henry Adams in his eponymous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, toward the end of his life. Adams recalled that he “knew nothing about history, and much less about teaching” when Harvard College first hired him, and he worried that the responsibilities of a professorship were “above his powers.” The truth is that teaching, like parenting, is frequently above anyone’s powers—and yet the progress and happiness if not the very survival of our species depends fundamentally upon both. The secret is knowing they are above your powers and leaping in anyway—and sadly, the leapers among us are fewer all the time.
I feel sure that on some future Friday, I will write about diminishing fertility—the dwindling population of parent leapers—in American life, and the impacts on schools thereof; but today my attention will focus on the increasing scarcity of teacher leapers. The most expensive and consequential investment that an independent school education affords is the employment of a faculty whose scale in relation to the student body it serves is significantly outsize to the norm. At MICDS there are approximately five teachers for every 45 students we enroll; if we were a typical United States school, there would only be three.
Perhaps because we inhabit an academically selective and rigorous institution, our tendency is to imagine the benefit of this faculty investment in just such « college prep » terms—and yet a growing body of research would suggest that the value of so many caring and committed adults in our students’ lives obtains more materially and meaningfully in their non-cognitive than in their cognitive development, precisely because, notwithstanding our national obsession with measures of intelligence and academic achievement, non-cognitive development “pays off” more materially and meaningfully in human life. One study of Armed Forces Qualification Test participants and scores, for instance, found that cognitive ability explained only 21% of median income—implying that non-cognitive and other factors explained 79%. Writing in this month’s Atlantic, in an article titled “How the Ivy League Broke America,” David Brooks contends that “we want a society run by people who are smart, yes, but who are also wise, perceptive, curious, caring, resilient, and committed to the common good”—an assertion that stands to reason if “smart” only accounts for 21% of “the good life” (using income as a convenient if insufficient proxy for life satisfaction) and if “wise, perceptive, curious,” etc., account for the 79% lion’s share. I would argue, therefore, that our value proposition at MICDS is not exclusively or even principally that we surround our students with an abundance of teachers in the interest of their cognitive growth. The responsibility to foster students’ character formation and other aspects of their non-cognitive education is at least as crucial.
Regrettably, virtually every indicator of health in the K-12 teacher workforce is trending downward. The percentage of Americans who view teaching as a prestigious occupation, of parents who want their children to teach, of college freshmen who anticipate a career in teaching, of high school seniors who want to work at a school or university, of undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in education—all have fallen precipitously in recent decades, at the same time that baby boomers are retiring in their considerable numbers.
The recruitment, employment, compensation, support, and retention of great teachers—“great” because they nurture students’ cognitive and non-cognitive growth alike—is as important an obligation as any other that falls to me as Head of School, and will only intensify in the face of such stiff societal and demographic headwinds. I welcome the challenge as a privilege. It is a joy to work alongside, and to endeavor to sustain, a faculty so instrumental in securing lifelong opportunities for our students. “Affecting eternity,” as Adams understood, is serious business—and humbling. It can be above the powers of any of us. I thank our teachers at MICDS for knowing this, and for leaping in all the same.
Always reason, always compassion, always courage. Hug a teacher! I wish you a wonderful weekend with your loved ones.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist: German Cars by Matt Nathanson (Apple Music / Spotify)