Whenever I witness members of the education establishment (to which school board members by definition belong) discuss excellence in education, I am struck by the failure to understand what is meant by an excellent education and to grasp the essential purposes of K-12 education.
Understand, then, these fundamentals >>>>>
Definition of an Excellent K-12 Education
An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a content-rich liberal arts curriculum (focused especially on math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts) in grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors.
Definition of an Excellent K-12 Teacher
An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge in her or his subject area, with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.
Purposes of K-12 Education
The purposes of excellent education are to provide students with knowledge and skill sets abetting a life of 1) cultural enrichment, 2) civic preparation, and 3) professional satisfaction.
I can typically set many a head to wagging affirmatively by enunciating these statements as to educational excellence and purposes. But, as a formal debater, I can do the same with the following pronouncements:
An excellent education is a matter of encouraging students to identify their own driving interests and to pursue those interests through engaging investigations and experiences that will develop critical thinking skills and preparation for lifelong learning.
An excellent teacher is a classroom facilitator skilled in helping students identify resources for investigating topics of driving interest, develop critical thinking skills, and prepare for lifelong learning.
The purposes of education are to develop student critical thinking skills and encourage lifelong learning.
By now, you will also likely be wagging your head affirmatively at these latter formulations. But if you are a clear thinker, you will at some point make a decision to embrace one set of definitions as primary.
Excellence of K-12 education follows the first set of definitions. Students should acquire a vast array of knowledge and skill sets as they go from grade to grade in the thirteen years of the K-12 experience:
They should be given an aggressive mathematics sequence that prepares them to be able to succeed in Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus by the late high school years.
Students should similarly gain logically sequenced, grade by grade training in the natural sciences throughout the K-12 experience that prepares them to take AP courses in biology, chemistry, and physics during high school.
Students should gain a thorough understanding in United States and world history, accumulated and discussed in such a way as to analyze current national and international issues from an informed understanding of past events and the political systems, cultural contexts, and religious faiths that have forged the world in which we live.
Students should read a rich variety of literature from the Western world, including both American and English classics in translation; classics from the Greeks and Romans in translation; major works from the written and oral traditions of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America; and literary gems from major ethnicities of the United States, especially those of African American, Hispanic, and Native American authors. English composition and language arts skills should be acquired by engaging with and analyzing great national and international works of literature.
Students properly trained in these fields will thrive in taking the relevant AP exams.
Students should also gain thorough grounding in the fine arts (musical and visual), so that their lives become enriched with a firm understanding of early music from across the world; classical, baroque, and romantic music from the Western tradition; ongoing developments in world music; and the forms most associated with the 19th century, 20th century, and 21st century American experience: work songs of the slaves, blues, jazz, country, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and hip-hop.
If given a proper education at the K-5 level, of the sort found in the Core Knowledge sequence of E. D. Hirsch, our students would at that point possess more knowledge in the key subject areas than is the case with our current students when (if they graduate) they walk across the stage at graduation to receive a piece of paper that is a high school diploma in name only. Middle school students would progress to a level of very sophisticated mastery, and most students at the high school level would be very capable of mastering the rigorous material of AP courses, taking specialized courses in the liberal arts (e. g., African American History, Native American Literature, Jazz Interpretation and Composition), and learning the technical arts (e. g. plumbing, auto mechanics, computer graphics).
World language course options for high school students would be abundant. Curriculum would be rendered at a level of rigor and content anticipating, and at points intersecting, courses taught in community and technical college settings.
As we send our students forth into the world, we should want them to be prepared to evaluate whether military involvement in Afghanistan is worth sending sons of American mothers and daughters of American fathers into potentially fatal situations; whether the Affordable Health Care Act will be the fairest way to expand access to high-quality medical care--- or whether a single-payer or a traditional fee-for-service/ HMO approach should abide; whether Social Security and Medicare should claim such a high percentage of federal budget expenditures--- and whether these programs should be incorporated into a more comprehensive government welfare scheme, or eliminated altogether; whether August Wilson or Arthur Miller is the most adept at generating dramatic dialogue; whether Newtonian and Einstein’s physics have stood the test of time; whether the functioning of operant conditioning undermines the notion of free will; and whether the forms of jazz and hip-hop can be ranked with the best of classical and baroque forms.
Thus, we should want our students to be culturally enriched, so that they live their lives fully engaged with all the splendor of this earthly sojourn. We want them to be citizens capable of good judgment on issues of superlative importance. And we want them to go forth to post-secondary training with all of the knowledge and skill sets necessary to give them lives of professional satisfaction.
Were we to give our students of all demographic descriptors such an education, we would create a whole new world. People would live their lives on a high cultural plain, capable of artistic, musical, and gastronomic discernment. They would leave the abiding circumstance of episodic emotional responses to vital issues, too often leaving judgments to governmental office-holders who make bad decisions--- and rise instead to the level of informed citizenship. And they would be so well-educated as to gain welcome into numerous professional spheres, making major contributions and earning incomes capable of ending cycles of familial poverty that have existed for decades.
Such people are genuine critical thinkers and lifelong learners, because they have the knowledge base on which to exercise critical judgment and to live with joy in the world of mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts--- and in many areas of technical endeavor and manual skill.
Thus, members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should decide that having a firm idea of the constituents of an excellent education--- and a keen grasp of the purposes for which we want to educate our young people--- is important. They should opt for the principles, purposes, and personnel integral to a broad and deep liberal arts education. And they should make all of their decisions while on the school board on the basis of that commitment to a knowledge-rich curriculum, imparted to all of the precious beings whose lives have been placed in their care.
