Monique Taylor-Myers--- Ever Upward as the Best Student in the State of Minnesota

Monique Taylor-Myers---

Ever Upward as the Best Student in the State of Minnesota

Personifying the Possibilities for Students Enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative From a Young Age

December 2013 Update for Donors and Others Interested in the New Salem Educational Initiative

There was a telling moment that came last July 2013, as I sat on the steps of the paternal (ClemMyers) residence of Monique Taylor-Myers.

This is just one house at which I visit Monique and pick her up for transport to our weekly two-hour academic sessions. I find her at least as often at her mother’s (Bernadette Taylor’s) home, and also frequently at the quarters of a very remarkable maternal grandmother Jenna Taylor).

We were sitting on the steps of Monique’s father’s house, reflecting on Monique’s rapid ascent during academic year 2012-2013. I was recalling a juncture at mid-spring of that year at which Monique had grown frustrated with the relative lack of diligence on the part of two other highly talented students enrolled in a Sunday evening academic session focused on rigorous college-level material. The other students, while magnificent talents, had not been demonstrating the self-starting, highly conscientious approach that Monique takes to everything that she does.

By the time of this July 2013 conversation, Monique had performed the part of King Lear’s middle daughter, Regan, in our compressed version (with all original Shakespearean lines), of the Bard’s great play. She had also read Twelfth Night with me and gone with other students to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona to see this refined Shakespearean comedy. Her mood was very upbeat, and she was excited to delve into the ACT preparatory materials that I was leaving for her at the time of this conversation. “

What you’ve got to remember,” I told Monique, “is that in the same way that I am not like just another teacher [Monique smiled], “you are not like just another student. You are very special.”

Monique smiled, knowingly, confidently, determinedly.

“I love you, kiddo,” I said.

“I love you, too, Gary,” this extraordinary Grade 11 student, whom I had taught since she was in Grade 3, replied.

As splendid as our academic and interpersonal experiences had been, the very best, the most exquisite, were about to unfold before four eyes watching in wonder and gratitude.

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Monique and I agreed that she had progressed to the point that she would begin to meet with me one-on-one in an Oxford/ Cambridge style tutorial. Beginning in the late weeks of summer and extending to the present time (December 2013), I have guided Monique through a series of compact, densely informative courses in psychology, economics, political science, and world religions.

Monique proved to be even smarter and more intensely intellectually ambitious than even my high standards and abiding confidence foresaw. Topic after topic, she would grasp immediately. I would provide illustrative examples, we would explore applications in the workaday world, and this absolutely stunningly talented young woman would be ready for the next step.

Psychology

Thus, she quickly grasped Freud’s concepts of Id, Ego, and Superego--- understanding my examples in application to human behavior, then providing her own insights into how such ideas could viably be applied to act in everyday life. Also following Freud, we examined psychoanalytic technique, distinguishing psychoanalyst from psychiatrist from psychotherapist.

Angelic comprehended immediately my explanations of the Oedipus Complex and the Electra Complex. She discerned the difference between the human unconscious and the human subconscious, and how each of these must be understood as they relate to conscious behavior. And she grasped the Vienna middle class context in which Freud conducted his psychoanalytic sessions, considering what limitations these may or may not have placed on his observations and on the generation of his theories.

Monique then eagerly listened to my explanations of behaviorist psychology, culminating in the work of B. F. Skinner. She very rapidly grasped the difference between classical conditioning of Ivan Pavlov and operant conditioning of Skinner. She recognized immediately the explanatory content that I provided with regard to primary reinforcers versus secondary reinforcers, ratio versus interval reinforcement schedules, fixed versus variable reinforcement, the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment, and the sustaining power of positive reinforcement as a shaper of human behavior.

We then examined key findings of neuropsychology, how these have helped us understand phenomena as varied as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia; and the functioning of the brain of the psychopath and the schizophrenic. She learned the varying functions of right brain and left brain, and she grasped with astonishing rapidity the functions of numerous areas of the brain: cerebral cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, cerebellum, corpus callosum, and on and on.

We then discussed the long-standing differences between humanists and behaviorists, and we shared views on what research and observations from psychologists working from different perspectives have to tell us about nature versus nurture, and about free will versus determinism. We also reviewed the key concerns and research foci of developmental psychology, psychometric psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and abnormal psychology.

Over not more than three academic sessions, totaling at most six hours, Monique Taylor-Myers thus had grasped beyond question, and in fact upon much questioning by me, concepts that college students taking an introductory psychology course would be happy to remember from a whole semester’s worth of instruction.

But we had hardly begun, and the story gets much, much better. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Monique and I next proceeded to move through the most important concepts in the discipline of economics.

Economics

Over about the same duration of three academic sessions and six hours, Monique and I moved through our compact course in economics. Monique had no difficulty at all grasping the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. She demonstrated her Immediate understanding by very quickly identifying consumer behavior, decision-making within an economic enterprise, corporate wages and prices, federal budgeting, Gross Domestic Product, recession, depression, and quarterly economic growth for proper association with either microeconomics or macroeconomics.

Monique quickly absorbed information as to how the technical definition of recession differs from the popular perception, when economic decline goes from recession into depression, the fundamental causes of the Great Depression, and how economic cycles have occurred over time. She quickly came to understand the difference between monetary policy and fiscal policy, inflation and deflation, deficit and debt. She rapidly grasped the difference in constituent membership within the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and Standard and Poor’s indexes, how stocks differ from bonds, and methods used to calculate daily rise and fall of indicators across these three key indexes.

With astonishing mental acuity, Monique sat in eager intellectual absorption of the key tenets of Adam Smith; Marx and Engels, and John Maynard Keynes. We discussed the location of the concepts of these thinkers on the left-right continuum, and we compared the concepts of these economic philosophers to the prevailing liberal-conservative views in the United States.

Our compact course in economics would most likely have moved even more quickly in response to this magnificent young talent’s mental agility, except that we read five articles of varying lengths that related the economic concepts that we had discussed to a daily stock market report, sequestration, debt ceiling, federal stimulus through bond-buying, and the debate over minimum wage.

Again, many college students would be happy to retain this much information, this time in two different courses, microeconomics and macroeconomics, that Monique had absorbed in six two-hour sessions over three weeks.

But this account of the accomplishments of Monique Taylor-Myers as we assess her progress into early December 2013 is just at the halfway point.

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The compact course in political science was even shorter in duration than the others, similarly packed with information but ever more adroitly absorbed by Monique.

Political Science

We reviewed political organization in historical context, considering decision-making as to “who gets what, when, where, and how” according to the hunter-gatherer historical stage, at the agrarian village stage, in city-state and early imperial systems, in feudal society, and in traditional monarchies.

We then explored political organization in modernity, understanding the importance of feudalism giving way to monarchy and monarchy gaining differentiation as to benevolent, absolutist, and constitutional forms. We took a look at developments in the course of the 19th and 20th century and into the 21st century, as liberal democracy, fascism, communism, and democratic socialist systems become especially relevant.

Monique and I explored the key concepts of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Locke as they were adapted by Jefferson, Madison, and others at the founding of the United States. We studied the Marxist historical progression of political systems and analyzed the validity of the scheme. We compared Marxism in theory to the alteration in practice witnessed in Soviet, Chinese Communist, and Cuban systems. We discussed the evolution of the term, “liberal,” from the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill to the contemporary liberalism that developed from the New Deal forward.

Many of these concepts and clarifications thereof take considerable intellectual nimbleness. The terms “communist” and “liberal,” just to cite two examples, require a grasp of historical context and wariness of popular misconception that can take students some time to decode and internalize. Monique handled all of this with aplomb.

So on we went to world religions. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

World Religions

We began with an overview of the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, discussing why these are labeled as such and belong together in historical context. We then proceeded to examine Judaism in more detail, considering the patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob according to their momentous experiences and contributions.

Monique knows all of the Ten Commandments by heart, she understands the meaning of the Covenant, the importance of the Ark of the Covenant, the first exilic and post-exilic periods, the second exile in Babylon, and the meaning for the Hebrew people each time in return to the Promised Land.

Monique understands the historical division of Israel versus Judah in terms of political geography. She knows how Roman rule affected the history of Palestine, and how the diaspora came about. She knows also about the historicity of the term, “ghetto,’ and the ant-Semitism that eventually gave rise in unprecedented extremity to Hitler and induced the recognition of the nation of Israel in 1948.

Monique also comprehends expressions of contemporary Judaism. She knows the differences among Orthodox and Conservative and Reform practices. She understands Kosher dietary strictures. She knows the essence of the Jewish High Holidays and the less important but seasonally notable Hanukkah, and she knows what the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah mean to Jewish males and females respectively.

Monique also understands the historical forces behind the Hebrew-Jewish emphasis on education, with study in Talmud-Torah schools often occurring after regular school ended. She can evaluate Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in terms of Jewish success at professions eschewed by Christians. She knows the Torah as the Pentateuch or first five books of the Bible, and she grasps the essence of the academic and religious traditions that resulted in Talmudic scholarship. Monique and I both have a penchant for memorization as well as analysis; thus, we have memorized the books of the Old Testament, with the practical application of categorization into the Mosaic first five books, the historical books, the poetic books, and the books of major and minor prophets.

Similarly, we have memorized the books of the New Testament, for fun and for the practical purpose of categorization of the Gospels delivering our information on the life of Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles for information on the development of Christianity in the aftermath of the death of Jesus, the numerous Epistles attributed to Paul, the Epistles by other early Christian adherents, and the closing books of Jude and Revelation.

Monique understands the evolution from persecuted faith to official imperial faith that Christianity traversed in the Roman Empire, she knows how the Roman Catholic and Greek/ Russian Orthodox traditions diverged, the essence of how the papacy developed over history, and what the Protestant Reformation meant in terms of Christian sectarianism and the eventual proliferation of the great variety of Protestant denominations.

Along the way, Monique came to understand why, despite chronological categories of Before Christ (B. C.) and Anno Domino (“in the year of our Lord,” A. D.), Jesus actually most likely was born before 4 B. C. (when Herod died). And in examination of the Gospels she knows much about the life and teachings of Jesus, contextualized within the prophetic tradition quintessentially represented by Isaiah, and within the religious, political, and social realities of Jesus’s own times.

Thus far, Monique and I have spent three academic sessions for a total of six hours on such matters of world religions. We will now spend a projected three additional weeks on the religious traditions of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism (Daoism), and Shinto. Angelic meanwhile is reading a distillation of Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad, which we will use as segue into polytheistic traditions in the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas.

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Monique Taylor-Myers: At Once An Extraordinary Young Talent and a Vision of the Possible in the New Salem Educational Initiative

Monique Taylor-Myers has learned all of this material over the course of about three months. In the months ahead, Monique and I will move through compact courses in world and American history; world and American literature; the visual and musical arts; the most important concepts of biology, chemistry, physics--- emphasizing the concepts most prominently omitted in school-based courses; and, similarly, we will explore those topics in mathematics that have been given short shrift in Angelic’s regular algebra, geometry, and trigonometry courses to date--- with our attention also trained on calculus up ahead.

Actually, Monique and I have already begun to study many of these just-mentioned subject areas at the college preparatory level, many of which have come up as we have taken on the subject areas detailed in the sections above. And did I mention that we paused in the midst of all of the compact course delivery to prepare Angelic for the PSAT that can bestow National Merit Scholar status? Or that we have read, almost incidentally, as a kind of midway break in our academic sessions, the exquisite play, Fences, part of the decalogy of plays by master dramatist, August Wilson, conveying the African American experience for each decade of the 20th century?

I have known Monique Taylor-Myers since she was eight years old, a Grade 3 student struggling below level of school enrollment in both math and reading. She caught up quickly, gained full grade level performance by Grade 5, and has been soaring ever since. Monique lives on and traverses the meanest streets in North Minneapolis. Her grandmother, whom she often visits and in whose home she was living when she first enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative, lives on the most drug-infested, gang-ridden street in the Metro.

Thus, Monique Taylor-Myers represents a case of personal triumph over the odds. But she also represents the potential of students for achievement if they start on a challenging academic track early in their K-12 experience. Not all students have Monique’s combination of natural talent, steady disposition, and enormous dedication. But all students who enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative from a young age thrive academically to become viable candidates for matriculation at high quality colleges and universities.

So Monique Taylor-Myers, whose participation in the New Salem Educational initiative encompasses all but two years of the program’s existence, represents not only a case of astounding individual success, but also the vision of what all students can achieve if they are given love, enduring commitment, and the highest quality academic training from early in their K-12 experience, through the high school years, and on to the best colleges and universities in the land.

Students of all economic and social identifiers can succeed.

We await not the emergence of young people of promise, but the attention of enough caring adults willing to nurture that promise.