Lisa Petrides at Huffington Post suggests that technological and cultural changes in the 21st century are pointing the way to a renaissance in education similar to the capital-R Renaissance that began in the late 13th century. While I share her enthusiasm about the sense of being on the cusp of something amazing, I worry a little that she is romanticizing the original Renaissance and thus the current one as well.
Indeed, the Renaissance saw a flowering of arts and sciences as well as the rise of the middle class whose increased income allowed for discretionary spending on things like books and art and music. Newly found leisure time made is possible to enjoy those things as well and perhaps even to dabble in their creation.
But, there was still a vast population that lived in rural areas, working as serfs or sharecroppers, without access to all the wonders of the Renaissance. Even in the cities where the great artists and thinkers congregated, poverty kept most people out of this community as they struggled simply to feed themselves and their families. For every Medici who was patronizing artists, there were thousands of unnamed poor people who received no such funding and for whom the Renaissance did very little to change their lives for the better.
So, the original comparison can be and should be expanded and deepened as the disparity between rich and poor is increasing in the 21st century just as it did in the Renaissance. The infographic on the new digital divide from Color Lines reminds us that not all access to the Internet is equal. And while there are lots of opportunities to learn outside the classroom, studies continue to show that low reading skills correlate with high poverty, and despite the proliferation of media, reading remains a hugely important skill for those who wish to take advantage of open source courses.
I hate to be the negative to Petrides’ optimistic essay as I agree that opportunities for learners are greater than ever, but we cannot forget that while these wonders of education and creativity are more widely available than every before, there are still large parts of our population for whom they remain a distant dream and we won’t achieve a more humanistic and connected world if, in our enthusiasm, we leave them behind.
