In reading my recent blog post and Star Tribune opinion piece on the historical roots of the Charleston, South Carolina murders (those roots to be found in the Compromise of 1877); and the culpability of psychologists for not giving the public a consensus view as to why people do what they do; one of my readers focused heavily on my statement that there is no such thing as free will.
This reader has been a public defender, and in that capacity cited the case of one of his defendants, a recidivist offender who found the life of a robber highly rewarding. The professional robber detailed the advantages of his lifestyle: He can sleep as late as he wants to, live with whatever female is able to give him living accommodations and other favors, take his leave from each successive iteration of the latter when the topic of marriage or commitment arises, and enjoy the material benefits of his robbery until he is caught. When this robber is arrested, tried, and convicted, he is very willing to accept free room and board from the state as a surrogate for his women, doing his few years until released from prison to begin the cycle all over again.
My reader asks me what I would recommend the state do with such a repeat offender.
My answer is as follows, two-fold in composition:
First, the state must follow existing laws for arrest, trial, and (assuming a verdict of guilty) incarceration.
Second, the state should take stock of certain psychological realities and understand that this professional robber is very likely at this point incorrigible. The explanation for this incorrigibility is as follows:
The person of note very likely is ill-educated and is almost certainly improperly educated. Given the description of his lifestyle and values, he very likely attended the public schools of the inner city or near suburbs; and seems definitely to have attended K-12 schools of the United States. This means that he has not received the knowledge-replete education imparted in the schools of the Scandinavian nations, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, or Taiwan.
Public education in these nations is centralized at the national level, with uniform curriculum imparted throughout each nation, heavy on the liberal arts of natural science, mathematics, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts. Although academic tracking does occur in some of these nations, and rigorous college-entrance exams tend to forestall some in their quest for university matriculation, all students receive a substantive education at least through the equivalent of our middle school years--- possessing thereby a better education than that received by the typical high school graduate in the United States.
In the United States, education professors have ruined most teachers and administrators, almost all of whom they train. Education professors are the lowest status faculty members on college campuses, but in their trust has been placed the future teachers whom they intellectually abuse. These irresponsible trainers of our teachers tell students in departments, schools, and colleges of education that well-defined knowledge is not important, instead touting “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning” as central to the education of students in the public schools.
From such a program K-5 teachers emerge particularly woefully ill-trained, knowing little about natural science, mathematics, history, economics, literature, or the fine arts. In this context, “critical thinking” and “life-long learning” become excuses for doing very little: One cannot think critically in the absence of a strong knowledge base; and one cannot internalize an ethic of lifelong learning when one never learns much, taught as she or he is by a teacher who does not value or have much knowledge.
So almost all students in the United States graduate from high school and even college without possessing important knowledge sets; and also without much training in the industrial arts. After 13 years of schooling, students should know a great deal about natural science, mathematics, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts; and also have training in such industrial and technological arts as computer technology, woodworking, plumbing, auto mechanics, landscaping, and heating/ conditioning. Instead, our students have little knowledge either in the liberal arts or the industrial/ technological arts.
The problem is particularly grave in schools at or close to the urban core, where I suspect our professional robber received his education. Urban school district administrators and teachers have never dedicated themselves fully to addressing the needs of students from impoverished families with frequent dysfunctionality, so they have been unable to impart much education to students from such circumstances, even education of the paltry nature derived from the misguided concepts of education professors. Inner city students tend either not to graduate at all or to claim a diploma that signifies little in the way of knowledge acquisition.
So our professional robber likely had little education and a dysfunctional family life. Under such circumstances, people take their satisfaction and seek their identities elsewhere: street crime, gang affiliation, and sexual promiscuity. These rewards, in behaviorist psychological terms, become the available positive reinforcements, surrogates for those that could under other circumstances be positive reinforcements grounded in knowledge and familial love. But when you ain’t got nothin’ goin’ on at school or at home, you take your satisfaction where you can and become inured to positively reinforced behaviors that have unfortunate consequences for society.
Under these circumstances, the behavior may not be correctable without an extremely well-designed and persistently delivered program of educational retraining, counseling in ethical behavior, and the rewards accrued when the person receives the positive reinforcements of accomplishment, praise, and material reward (as in remuneration under circumstances of employment) after terminating antisocial patterns of behavior and living instead according to socially desirable (and more morally satisfying) patterns of behavior.
The professional robber needs exhortations to do better, be more moral, act with more public conscience and consciousness--- but in the critical context of human praise and material benefit for doing better, acting morally, and acting with more public conscience and consciousness.
For the person has no free will simply to do better. The person must be positively reinforced (given rewards), negatively reinforced (be the beneficiary of terminated aversive consequences), or punished (receive the aversive consequences for undesired behavior). The person has a capacity for cognitively reasoned decision-making in the knowledge of behavioral consequences for exercising certain options; but has no actual free will in the absence of operant conditioning productive of better and more satisfying behavior.
Thus we have the irony that people are actually more in control of their destinies when they understand that they have no free will; rather, they have the cognitive capacity, given enough information about their lives and their potential to make decisions likely to give them certain expected rewards--- and that particular rewards lead to behaviors with more satisfying outcomes for both themselves and for society.
We therefore actually gain a certain enhanced control over our cognitive processes when we acknowledge that we have no free will.
As to our professional robber, he is unlikely--- given the current abilities of our system to redirect his pattern of behavior via a sophisticated and adroitly administered program of behavior modification--- to change his behavior.
In the absence of such a program, the only alternative will be to keep recycling him through the judicial and penal systems as we await that day when we as human beings become more sophisticated in the knowledge of why we do what we do, ironically taking more cognitive control over our destinies when we acknowledge the abiding reality:
There is no such thing as free will.
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 24, 2015
The All-Out Effort to Revolutionize K-12 Education Via the New Salem Educational Initiative
Understand that the passion you can feel as you read the articles posted on this blog is manifested in many other ways as I exert my expanding all-out effort via the New Salem Educational Initiative to revolutionize K-12 education.
First, there is the core academic instruction provided through the New Salem Educational Initiative. That program itself has two parts. There is my superintending of the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, which has now run for over 20 years. This program is attended mainly by young people who are members of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where my friend Jerry McAfee is pastor. Then there is the seven-day-a-week small-group program that serves young people from throughout Minneapolis but concentrated heavily on the North Side; this program has run for over 10 years. Most of these students attend classes of the Minneapolis Public Schools but get most of their real education with me: After school and on weekends, I move them quickly to grade level performance in math and reading, then put them on a college track course of study. My relationships with the students and families in the small-group program are enduring; I never let go of a student once she or he has entered my universe: They study with me throughout their K-12 years, many of them having attended from their kindergarten years on up.
Second, there is the blog that you are now reading. I launched this blog site five years ago and thus far have posted 166 articles on K-12 education.
Third, in July 2014 I inaugurated a new academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Research and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this journal I present my seminal ideas for overhauling K-12 education--- first in Minneapolis, then throughout Minnesota, and eventually (with the Minneapolis Public Schools transformed into a model centralized school district) all across the United States. The August 2014 (Vol. I, No. 2) and September 2014 (Vol. I, No. 3) editions are especially important, respectively detailing as they do a complete grade-by-grade curriculum for Grades K-12 in the Minneapolis Schools; and the teacher training that will be necessary to impart such a curriculum. A subscription to this academic journal is $600 annually, the funds received going to support the program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Fourth, in January 2015 I premiered my new television show, The K-12 Revolution, with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison. This show is another conduit for my ideas on the transformation of K-12 education. It runs every Wednesday at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network Channel 17.
Fifth, I speak in many forums and at many venues, including the Public Commentary time at every meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education (second Tuesday of every month during the academic year). At this latter, I go right at board members and the superintendent (now Interim Superintendent Michael Goar) with a tough message that the public schools of Minneapolis have failed students (particularly students of color and young people from challenging familial circumstances) for over 30 years--- and that the time is now to start delivering the strong knowledge-based curriculum that the students deserve, taught by thoroughly retrained teachers who themselves have been intellectually abused in lightweight teacher training programs located in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
I do most of these things by myself.
You could help in two ways:
First >>>>>
Donate.
I have a strong group of dedicated donors who understand the importance of my mission and who have been steadfast in their support. I need more such stalwart philanthropists. What I need most is your financial backing. I put in 19-hour days, seven days a week in what is both a professional undertaking and a labor of love. I am at present serving far too many students in what becomes a volunteer effort when no sponsor has stepped forward for a particular student: I continue to abide by my pledge never to let a student go once she or he is enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Second >>>>>
Join the revolution.
The overhaul of K-12 education constitutes the Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement and must be conducted on the ground, with Saul Alinsky-style social activism. But this stage is much tougher, because it involves not simply passing and implementing governmental legislation but intellectually grasping the details of curriculum and teacher retraining; the literature covering disparate ideas for education change; and the need to commit ongoing time to the cause of the K-12 Revolution.
For those of you willing to donate financially or to commit your time as activists, I can be found at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church every day (coming and going at various times, depending on the nature of my activities on a particular day). Those of you who are resourceful will find out how to contact me by cell phone or email.
Do know that there could be no better cause than the waging of the K-12 Revolution upon the foundation of my ideas and the program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
First, there is the core academic instruction provided through the New Salem Educational Initiative. That program itself has two parts. There is my superintending of the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, which has now run for over 20 years. This program is attended mainly by young people who are members of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where my friend Jerry McAfee is pastor. Then there is the seven-day-a-week small-group program that serves young people from throughout Minneapolis but concentrated heavily on the North Side; this program has run for over 10 years. Most of these students attend classes of the Minneapolis Public Schools but get most of their real education with me: After school and on weekends, I move them quickly to grade level performance in math and reading, then put them on a college track course of study. My relationships with the students and families in the small-group program are enduring; I never let go of a student once she or he has entered my universe: They study with me throughout their K-12 years, many of them having attended from their kindergarten years on up.
Second, there is the blog that you are now reading. I launched this blog site five years ago and thus far have posted 166 articles on K-12 education.
Third, in July 2014 I inaugurated a new academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Research and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this journal I present my seminal ideas for overhauling K-12 education--- first in Minneapolis, then throughout Minnesota, and eventually (with the Minneapolis Public Schools transformed into a model centralized school district) all across the United States. The August 2014 (Vol. I, No. 2) and September 2014 (Vol. I, No. 3) editions are especially important, respectively detailing as they do a complete grade-by-grade curriculum for Grades K-12 in the Minneapolis Schools; and the teacher training that will be necessary to impart such a curriculum. A subscription to this academic journal is $600 annually, the funds received going to support the program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Fourth, in January 2015 I premiered my new television show, The K-12 Revolution, with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison. This show is another conduit for my ideas on the transformation of K-12 education. It runs every Wednesday at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network Channel 17.
Fifth, I speak in many forums and at many venues, including the Public Commentary time at every meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education (second Tuesday of every month during the academic year). At this latter, I go right at board members and the superintendent (now Interim Superintendent Michael Goar) with a tough message that the public schools of Minneapolis have failed students (particularly students of color and young people from challenging familial circumstances) for over 30 years--- and that the time is now to start delivering the strong knowledge-based curriculum that the students deserve, taught by thoroughly retrained teachers who themselves have been intellectually abused in lightweight teacher training programs located in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
I do most of these things by myself.
You could help in two ways:
First >>>>>
Donate.
I have a strong group of dedicated donors who understand the importance of my mission and who have been steadfast in their support. I need more such stalwart philanthropists. What I need most is your financial backing. I put in 19-hour days, seven days a week in what is both a professional undertaking and a labor of love. I am at present serving far too many students in what becomes a volunteer effort when no sponsor has stepped forward for a particular student: I continue to abide by my pledge never to let a student go once she or he is enrolled in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Second >>>>>
Join the revolution.
The overhaul of K-12 education constitutes the Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement and must be conducted on the ground, with Saul Alinsky-style social activism. But this stage is much tougher, because it involves not simply passing and implementing governmental legislation but intellectually grasping the details of curriculum and teacher retraining; the literature covering disparate ideas for education change; and the need to commit ongoing time to the cause of the K-12 Revolution.
For those of you willing to donate financially or to commit your time as activists, I can be found at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church every day (coming and going at various times, depending on the nature of my activities on a particular day). Those of you who are resourceful will find out how to contact me by cell phone or email.
Do know that there could be no better cause than the waging of the K-12 Revolution upon the foundation of my ideas and the program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Jun 21, 2015
Compromise of 1877 and Culpability of Psychologists Explain the Charleston Murders of Dylann Roof
Well outside of the range of prevailing assumptions about the racially motivated murders in Charleston, South Carolina, the explanations for this catastrophic episode lie in the historical event known as the Compromise of 1877; and in the failure of professional psychologists to provide a compelling synthetic account of why people do what they do.
Perpend: In the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-1865), there was an effort known as Reconstruction (1866-1877) to bring former slaves specifically and African Americans generally into the civic fabric of the nation. But in 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat) ran in a virtual dead heat in pursuit of the presidency. Over a century before hanging chads entered the national lexicon in the aftermath of presidential election 2000, the vote turned on Florida: The election was in dispute in that state, the electoral votes of which would swing the election to one side or the other.
A deal was cut that determined the course of United States history thereafter. Democrats told Republicans that they would concede the Florida vote and thus the election if Hayes and cronies would agree to remove federal troops from the South. Out the troops came, so that the Reconstruction amendments (13th: abolished slavery; 14th : provided full citizenship rights to all adult males; 15th: guaranteed the vote to all adult males) to the United States Constitution could not be enforced, as long as the federal executive winked at the ensuing violence and the federal judiciary continued to rule that the “law of the land” could not be enforced nationally because of states’ rights.
The years from 1877 until 1964 were just as difficult and violent for African Americans as were the centuries of slavery. The “separate but equal” principle advanced in the Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) facilitated Jim Crow, the Black Codes, and the American precursor to apartheid. Sharecropping proved another form of economic bondage. Vigilantes lynched over 4500 people (a third of them white folks in the Wild West, most of the others black folks in the Mean South) between 1882 and 1965.
Migrants heading northward from the southern states during the first two-thirds of the 20th century found greater economic opportunity, but they also experienced familial dislocation and racially discriminatory residential housing covenants that shuttled them to certain areas within urban communities. Ironically, civil rights legislation and fair housing laws of the 1960s facilitated not only white flight but also the movement of the African American middle class to the suburbs, a phenomenon witnessed both in the North and in the South.
Left behind at the urban core were many people suffering extreme poverty and familial dysfunction. Central school districts were overwhelmed and have not for at least 35 years (since crack cocaine hit the streets and gang violence worsened) provided anything remotely resembling an acceptable K-12 education. African American students typically failed to graduate from high school, and no one got a knowledge intensive K-12 education in history or any other subject because the education establishment devalues knowledge in favor of shibboleths such as “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning,” protective shields against failure to teach historical knowledge sets that most teachers do not themselves understand.
So a Dylann Roof appears somewhere on our national landscape with disturbing regularity. He blew away the lives of nine fellow human beings that he was too ignorant to recognize as fellows. But he himself was already emotionally dead: a failure in high school, reared in familial fragmentation, living in his car, drug-dazed at malls, possessing a skewed historical opinion in the absence of historical knowledge--- the latter a condition abiding in an illness abhorrently manifested in a 21 year-old white male but shared with the American people in general.
Very few Americans comprehend how the deal cut in the Compromise of 1877 validated racism that existed most overtly into the 1960s but abides today in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, North Minneapolis. The particularly ignorant and violent Dylann Roof is the natural extension of our own ignorant and violent selves. We all murdered those nine sincerely religious African American people by creating the climate of historical ignorance and racial insensitivity that is nationally ubiquitous.
Meanwhile, professional psychologists study the brain, cognitive processes, and social psychological phenomena, but they fail to take a stand in a consensus account fundamentally explaining why people do what they do. The psychology profession is deeply culpable in abetting simplistic explanations of “evil” as the reason why a Dylann Roof blows nine fellow humans out of this earthly sojourn: Psychologists offer no compelling explanation of their own.
A behaviorist such as myself is clearer: There is no such thing as free will. People do what they do because of reinforced behaviors from their own experiences, or because of some biological condition present at birth or acquired typically in the early years of life. Since therefore behavior is either biologically determined or environmentally reinforced, there can be no justification for capital punishment except in some crude effort to make the Dylann Roofs of our nation an extreme example of a condition that abides in the nation as a whole, thereby dissuading us all from our worst behavioral potential.
Rather than ring our hands seeking explanations for why the good folk studying the Bible in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were brutally murdered by this most violent extension of our own propensities, we should study and comprehend history, embrace knowledge rather than excuse ourselves for not having it, and face the psychological reality of human behavior even if the professionals cannot or will not.
Perpend: In the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-1865), there was an effort known as Reconstruction (1866-1877) to bring former slaves specifically and African Americans generally into the civic fabric of the nation. But in 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat) ran in a virtual dead heat in pursuit of the presidency. Over a century before hanging chads entered the national lexicon in the aftermath of presidential election 2000, the vote turned on Florida: The election was in dispute in that state, the electoral votes of which would swing the election to one side or the other.
A deal was cut that determined the course of United States history thereafter. Democrats told Republicans that they would concede the Florida vote and thus the election if Hayes and cronies would agree to remove federal troops from the South. Out the troops came, so that the Reconstruction amendments (13th: abolished slavery; 14th : provided full citizenship rights to all adult males; 15th: guaranteed the vote to all adult males) to the United States Constitution could not be enforced, as long as the federal executive winked at the ensuing violence and the federal judiciary continued to rule that the “law of the land” could not be enforced nationally because of states’ rights.
The years from 1877 until 1964 were just as difficult and violent for African Americans as were the centuries of slavery. The “separate but equal” principle advanced in the Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) facilitated Jim Crow, the Black Codes, and the American precursor to apartheid. Sharecropping proved another form of economic bondage. Vigilantes lynched over 4500 people (a third of them white folks in the Wild West, most of the others black folks in the Mean South) between 1882 and 1965.
Migrants heading northward from the southern states during the first two-thirds of the 20th century found greater economic opportunity, but they also experienced familial dislocation and racially discriminatory residential housing covenants that shuttled them to certain areas within urban communities. Ironically, civil rights legislation and fair housing laws of the 1960s facilitated not only white flight but also the movement of the African American middle class to the suburbs, a phenomenon witnessed both in the North and in the South.
Left behind at the urban core were many people suffering extreme poverty and familial dysfunction. Central school districts were overwhelmed and have not for at least 35 years (since crack cocaine hit the streets and gang violence worsened) provided anything remotely resembling an acceptable K-12 education. African American students typically failed to graduate from high school, and no one got a knowledge intensive K-12 education in history or any other subject because the education establishment devalues knowledge in favor of shibboleths such as “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning,” protective shields against failure to teach historical knowledge sets that most teachers do not themselves understand.
So a Dylann Roof appears somewhere on our national landscape with disturbing regularity. He blew away the lives of nine fellow human beings that he was too ignorant to recognize as fellows. But he himself was already emotionally dead: a failure in high school, reared in familial fragmentation, living in his car, drug-dazed at malls, possessing a skewed historical opinion in the absence of historical knowledge--- the latter a condition abiding in an illness abhorrently manifested in a 21 year-old white male but shared with the American people in general.
Very few Americans comprehend how the deal cut in the Compromise of 1877 validated racism that existed most overtly into the 1960s but abides today in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, North Minneapolis. The particularly ignorant and violent Dylann Roof is the natural extension of our own ignorant and violent selves. We all murdered those nine sincerely religious African American people by creating the climate of historical ignorance and racial insensitivity that is nationally ubiquitous.
Meanwhile, professional psychologists study the brain, cognitive processes, and social psychological phenomena, but they fail to take a stand in a consensus account fundamentally explaining why people do what they do. The psychology profession is deeply culpable in abetting simplistic explanations of “evil” as the reason why a Dylann Roof blows nine fellow humans out of this earthly sojourn: Psychologists offer no compelling explanation of their own.
A behaviorist such as myself is clearer: There is no such thing as free will. People do what they do because of reinforced behaviors from their own experiences, or because of some biological condition present at birth or acquired typically in the early years of life. Since therefore behavior is either biologically determined or environmentally reinforced, there can be no justification for capital punishment except in some crude effort to make the Dylann Roofs of our nation an extreme example of a condition that abides in the nation as a whole, thereby dissuading us all from our worst behavioral potential.
Rather than ring our hands seeking explanations for why the good folk studying the Bible in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were brutally murdered by this most violent extension of our own propensities, we should study and comprehend history, embrace knowledge rather than excuse ourselves for not having it, and face the psychological reality of human behavior even if the professionals cannot or will not.
Jun 11, 2015
Principles for Extrapolation by Decision-Makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools: 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet
Every year the occasion of the New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet provides opportunity for decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to draw from student demonstrations of skill and knowledge, and from many other moments that transpire, fundamental approaches that could be extrapolated for application in the Minneapolis Public Schools. This is particularly true of this year’s banquet.
In terms of grand moments at the banquet, two are especially instructive.
The first of those came at the midpoint of the banquet, when I and fourteen of my students performed my 30-minute compressed version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (all original language, lines and scenes selected for delivering the essence of the plot, character, and themes).
Principle #1: The Appeal of Shakespeare and Other Classical Literature to Students
Throughout the K-12 Years
One of these students is just graduating from third grade: Helena Ramirez (data privacy name, as with all student references in this article) played a hit-woman, paired with brother (Marcos Ramirez, Grade 7) as hitman, the duo hired by Macbeth to knock off his friend, Banquo. The performance called upon this young student to deliver, among others, the follow line:
I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.
Helena delivered the line flawlessly and now has that rich store of language in her mental file. Marcos Spoke a similar line when he declared,
And I another
So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance to be rid on’t.
Not only is the Elizabethan language sonorous to the ear, the characters and the lines convey a street-type all too familiar to children living at the urban core. The words spoken reveal people living at society’s fringe: ill-educated, undependably employed, beaten down at every turn by defeat, ready to strike back with any action that will either advance their material prospects or rid them of a dead-end life. Such characters are replete in Shakespearean tragedies, to which I invariably find students relate intimately when the language is decoded for aesthetic appreciation and substantive meaning.
We should never disregard this love of classical literature by children when taught by a teacher who is deeply taken with the beauty of the language and has the pedagogical ability to convey the litrary majesty and the meaning. Fault in lack of appreciation and comprehension is never that of the student. Rather, it is the fault of the teacher, the solution for which lies in the identification and training of teachers able to rise to a challenging but achievable responsibility.
All fourteen of the student actors, variously playing roles as witches, ghosts, palace guards, thanes (aristocrats), monarch (shrewd and ambitious queen), and heirs to the throne reveled in the applause that greeted the conclusion of their exercise in serious work that brings magnificent rewards.
The other grand moment at the banquet occurred at the end of the celebration, at which I sat with my best student, Monique Taylor-Myer, to demonstrate to a stunned audience the full extent of this remarkable student’s extraordinary knowledge base and level of accomplishment as she concludes her K-12 years as a graduating senior and anticipates applying her full-ride package of scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial backing to her first year as a university premed student.
Principle #2: The Rewards of Many Years of Absorbing a Rich Liberal Arts Curriculum
Monique Taylor-Myers began studying with me as a Grade 3 student at Shingle Creek K-5 School in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). She attended classes at her school of MPS, as most of my students do, getting most of her real education in her studies with me beyond school hours. Through the years, she built an advanced skill base in mathematics and verbal skills, the latter of which she put to use in readings that I put before her in the key subject areas of natural science, history, economics, creative literature, and the fine arts.
By the time Monique was in Grade 8 (Olson Middle School), I placed her in a special class that I conducted with two other similarly advanced students who had absorbed large knowledge and skill bases with me over many years of study beyond the school hours. By the end of Grade 10, Monique was clearly moving rapidly ahead of even these other two highly capable young scholars, so that she and I began to meet in an Oxford/ Cambridge-style tutorial seminar, taking to ever advanced levels our exploration of subjects across the liberal arts curriculum.
During summer 2014, Monique and I met for periods lasting beyond the typical two hours to expedite her preparation for taking the ACT. The academic sessions stretched to three hours and sometimes went to three and a half hours. After Monique took the ACT in October, we continued to meet in academic sessions of this extended duration, now focused once again on news articles, literature, and subject area material that covered the gamut across a rich liberal arts curriculum.
She and I were so invested in our work that by spring 2015 we often lost track of time and sat in studious exploration of the wonderful world of knowledge for four full hours. So it was that Monique and I sat at banquet’s end as I asked her questions pertinent to Freudian (e. g., Id, Ego, Superego; Oedipal Complex) and behaviorist psychology (ratio and interval/ fixed and variable schedules of reinforcement); micro- and macro- economics (GDP growth rates expected for mature versus emerging economies; functioning of the Federal Reserve in implementing monetary policy; items [Entitlement Programs] taking highest percentage of the Federal Budget [fiscal policy]; the differences in economic theory offered by Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Marx); political science (the left-right international political continuum; detailed explanation of the differences between radical and democratic socialism, and between revolutionary communism at the far left and reactionary Nazism and Fascism at the far right); and world religions (Judaism and Hinduism as progenitors of other regional faiths).
We also outlined Monique’s knowledge of mathematics through FST (Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry); and biology, chemistry, and physics. But that’s not all. Monique and I then read selections from August Wilson’s Fences, Sophocles’s Antigone, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in the Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass; and poetry from Harlem Renaissance writers Georgia Douglass Johnson and Langston Hughes, and from Maya Angelou (“On the Pulse of Morning” [written for and delivered at Bill Clinton’s First Presidential Inaugural]).
No one in the audience was surprised, but all rose in standing ovation, when I awarded this remarkable academic talent, on the basis of her ability to focus for long periods of time in complete absorption of an off-the-charts knowledge base that puts her functionally at the level of the successful third-year (junior) university student--- and far beyond what in fact many university graduates have learned and retained--- with an award confidently declaring her the “Best Student in the State of Minnesota.” All of this was after Monique, as Lady Macbeth, had declared (among other soaring Elizabethan lines), with the reference to the looming assassination of King Duncan and his never again witnessing the light of another day,
O, never
Shall the sun that morrow see!
To beguile the time, look like the time;
Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, you tongue:
Look like the innocent flower;
But be the serpent under’t; you shall put
this night’s great business into my dispatch:
Leave all the rest to me.
Absorbing this broad and deep knowledge base requires years of academic leavening. Doing so prepares one to succeed in all manner of university courses; and to live a life of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Other Principles, Extrapolated from My Awarding of Student Certificates, and from the General Atmosphere of the Banquet
The banquet began with a meal of my preparation, and a moment of comment and gratitude for the repast from Reverend Jerry McAfee. The main activity of the banquet thereafter, aside from the major segments just detailed, was my awarding of student certificates of accomplishment for participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative for academic year 2014-2015.
I made all of the decisions as to the appellations for each award, highly personalized for each student’s accomplishment and with very specific comments on the history of each student’s participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The awards included, for example, the Magnificent Potential, University-Bound, and Poised and Confident Scholar awards.
These came with respective comments as to a particular Grade 5 student’s need to apply in school the same habits of scholarship that he demonstrates with me; the extended academic accomplishment of a Grade 8 student whose mother completed only third grade in Mexico; and the exceptionally serene presence of a Grade 11 student who encourages her two sisters to be similarly confident and serious about their academic studies.
Behind all of this knowledge of student familial background and details of academic status and achievement is my memorized retention of three or four cell phone numbers for each student household; in-the-home interaction with my students and their families; myriad roles played as counselor and conduit to the variety of resources typically needed by economically challenged families; and my status as an adjunct family member in the homes of most of my students.
Thus, from the above, we may extrapolate numerous principles from my approach in the New Salem Educational Initiative for application to the policies for implementation in the Minneapolis Public Schools:
Principle #3: Intimate knowledge of each student’s familial situation and life circumstances
Principle #4: Thorough understanding of the student’s academic history and current level of skill and knowledge mastery across a range of subject areas
Principle #5: Expectation that students all master common skill and knowledge sets, with high confidence that they are capable of doing so
Principle #6: Love expressed, lived, demonstrated in every word that I speak and action that I take--- resulting in effective adoption as a family member
Principle #7: In all of this, the guiding and exalted principle that authentic personalization comes not with pandering to student whim (with all of the latter’s overblown rhetoric as to “learning styles” and “driving passion”) , but rather with deep understanding of a student’s life situation and personal history--- who that student is as a person--- and the confidence that all students may rise to the challenges of a commonly mastered rich liberal arts curriculum that can then serve, animate, and ignite those individual passions that do lie within each student’s intellect and soul.
At the end of the 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, my staff of tutors in the New Salem Tuesday Night Program; the students and families of the seven-day-a-week small-group program in which I alone am the teacher; myself, my life partner of over forty years (Barbara Reed), and everyone else in the room, hugged, spoke words of joy and celebration, and radiated love for all members of this human community.
For the perceptive reader and adept extrapolator, that conclusion to a radiantly wonderful evening provides much to consider, as well.
In terms of grand moments at the banquet, two are especially instructive.
The first of those came at the midpoint of the banquet, when I and fourteen of my students performed my 30-minute compressed version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (all original language, lines and scenes selected for delivering the essence of the plot, character, and themes).
Principle #1: The Appeal of Shakespeare and Other Classical Literature to Students
Throughout the K-12 Years
One of these students is just graduating from third grade: Helena Ramirez (data privacy name, as with all student references in this article) played a hit-woman, paired with brother (Marcos Ramirez, Grade 7) as hitman, the duo hired by Macbeth to knock off his friend, Banquo. The performance called upon this young student to deliver, among others, the follow line:
I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.
Helena delivered the line flawlessly and now has that rich store of language in her mental file. Marcos Spoke a similar line when he declared,
And I another
So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance to be rid on’t.
Not only is the Elizabethan language sonorous to the ear, the characters and the lines convey a street-type all too familiar to children living at the urban core. The words spoken reveal people living at society’s fringe: ill-educated, undependably employed, beaten down at every turn by defeat, ready to strike back with any action that will either advance their material prospects or rid them of a dead-end life. Such characters are replete in Shakespearean tragedies, to which I invariably find students relate intimately when the language is decoded for aesthetic appreciation and substantive meaning.
We should never disregard this love of classical literature by children when taught by a teacher who is deeply taken with the beauty of the language and has the pedagogical ability to convey the litrary majesty and the meaning. Fault in lack of appreciation and comprehension is never that of the student. Rather, it is the fault of the teacher, the solution for which lies in the identification and training of teachers able to rise to a challenging but achievable responsibility.
All fourteen of the student actors, variously playing roles as witches, ghosts, palace guards, thanes (aristocrats), monarch (shrewd and ambitious queen), and heirs to the throne reveled in the applause that greeted the conclusion of their exercise in serious work that brings magnificent rewards.
The other grand moment at the banquet occurred at the end of the celebration, at which I sat with my best student, Monique Taylor-Myer, to demonstrate to a stunned audience the full extent of this remarkable student’s extraordinary knowledge base and level of accomplishment as she concludes her K-12 years as a graduating senior and anticipates applying her full-ride package of scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial backing to her first year as a university premed student.
Principle #2: The Rewards of Many Years of Absorbing a Rich Liberal Arts Curriculum
Monique Taylor-Myers began studying with me as a Grade 3 student at Shingle Creek K-5 School in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). She attended classes at her school of MPS, as most of my students do, getting most of her real education in her studies with me beyond school hours. Through the years, she built an advanced skill base in mathematics and verbal skills, the latter of which she put to use in readings that I put before her in the key subject areas of natural science, history, economics, creative literature, and the fine arts.
By the time Monique was in Grade 8 (Olson Middle School), I placed her in a special class that I conducted with two other similarly advanced students who had absorbed large knowledge and skill bases with me over many years of study beyond the school hours. By the end of Grade 10, Monique was clearly moving rapidly ahead of even these other two highly capable young scholars, so that she and I began to meet in an Oxford/ Cambridge-style tutorial seminar, taking to ever advanced levels our exploration of subjects across the liberal arts curriculum.
During summer 2014, Monique and I met for periods lasting beyond the typical two hours to expedite her preparation for taking the ACT. The academic sessions stretched to three hours and sometimes went to three and a half hours. After Monique took the ACT in October, we continued to meet in academic sessions of this extended duration, now focused once again on news articles, literature, and subject area material that covered the gamut across a rich liberal arts curriculum.
She and I were so invested in our work that by spring 2015 we often lost track of time and sat in studious exploration of the wonderful world of knowledge for four full hours. So it was that Monique and I sat at banquet’s end as I asked her questions pertinent to Freudian (e. g., Id, Ego, Superego; Oedipal Complex) and behaviorist psychology (ratio and interval/ fixed and variable schedules of reinforcement); micro- and macro- economics (GDP growth rates expected for mature versus emerging economies; functioning of the Federal Reserve in implementing monetary policy; items [Entitlement Programs] taking highest percentage of the Federal Budget [fiscal policy]; the differences in economic theory offered by Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Marx); political science (the left-right international political continuum; detailed explanation of the differences between radical and democratic socialism, and between revolutionary communism at the far left and reactionary Nazism and Fascism at the far right); and world religions (Judaism and Hinduism as progenitors of other regional faiths).
We also outlined Monique’s knowledge of mathematics through FST (Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry); and biology, chemistry, and physics. But that’s not all. Monique and I then read selections from August Wilson’s Fences, Sophocles’s Antigone, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in the Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass; and poetry from Harlem Renaissance writers Georgia Douglass Johnson and Langston Hughes, and from Maya Angelou (“On the Pulse of Morning” [written for and delivered at Bill Clinton’s First Presidential Inaugural]).
No one in the audience was surprised, but all rose in standing ovation, when I awarded this remarkable academic talent, on the basis of her ability to focus for long periods of time in complete absorption of an off-the-charts knowledge base that puts her functionally at the level of the successful third-year (junior) university student--- and far beyond what in fact many university graduates have learned and retained--- with an award confidently declaring her the “Best Student in the State of Minnesota.” All of this was after Monique, as Lady Macbeth, had declared (among other soaring Elizabethan lines), with the reference to the looming assassination of King Duncan and his never again witnessing the light of another day,
O, never
Shall the sun that morrow see!
To beguile the time, look like the time;
Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, you tongue:
Look like the innocent flower;
But be the serpent under’t; you shall put
this night’s great business into my dispatch:
Leave all the rest to me.
Absorbing this broad and deep knowledge base requires years of academic leavening. Doing so prepares one to succeed in all manner of university courses; and to live a life of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Other Principles, Extrapolated from My Awarding of Student Certificates, and from the General Atmosphere of the Banquet
The banquet began with a meal of my preparation, and a moment of comment and gratitude for the repast from Reverend Jerry McAfee. The main activity of the banquet thereafter, aside from the major segments just detailed, was my awarding of student certificates of accomplishment for participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative for academic year 2014-2015.
I made all of the decisions as to the appellations for each award, highly personalized for each student’s accomplishment and with very specific comments on the history of each student’s participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative. The awards included, for example, the Magnificent Potential, University-Bound, and Poised and Confident Scholar awards.
These came with respective comments as to a particular Grade 5 student’s need to apply in school the same habits of scholarship that he demonstrates with me; the extended academic accomplishment of a Grade 8 student whose mother completed only third grade in Mexico; and the exceptionally serene presence of a Grade 11 student who encourages her two sisters to be similarly confident and serious about their academic studies.
Behind all of this knowledge of student familial background and details of academic status and achievement is my memorized retention of three or four cell phone numbers for each student household; in-the-home interaction with my students and their families; myriad roles played as counselor and conduit to the variety of resources typically needed by economically challenged families; and my status as an adjunct family member in the homes of most of my students.
Thus, from the above, we may extrapolate numerous principles from my approach in the New Salem Educational Initiative for application to the policies for implementation in the Minneapolis Public Schools:
Principle #3: Intimate knowledge of each student’s familial situation and life circumstances
Principle #4: Thorough understanding of the student’s academic history and current level of skill and knowledge mastery across a range of subject areas
Principle #5: Expectation that students all master common skill and knowledge sets, with high confidence that they are capable of doing so
Principle #6: Love expressed, lived, demonstrated in every word that I speak and action that I take--- resulting in effective adoption as a family member
Principle #7: In all of this, the guiding and exalted principle that authentic personalization comes not with pandering to student whim (with all of the latter’s overblown rhetoric as to “learning styles” and “driving passion”) , but rather with deep understanding of a student’s life situation and personal history--- who that student is as a person--- and the confidence that all students may rise to the challenges of a commonly mastered rich liberal arts curriculum that can then serve, animate, and ignite those individual passions that do lie within each student’s intellect and soul.
At the end of the 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, my staff of tutors in the New Salem Tuesday Night Program; the students and families of the seven-day-a-week small-group program in which I alone am the teacher; myself, my life partner of over forty years (Barbara Reed), and everyone else in the room, hugged, spoke words of joy and celebration, and radiated love for all members of this human community.
For the perceptive reader and adept extrapolator, that conclusion to a radiantly wonderful evening provides much to consider, as well.
Jun 10, 2015
High Points of the 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet
Celebration of the 10th Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet held this past Monday, June 8, 2015 (starting at 6:30 PM and lasting until about 9:00 PM) was very special.
Although we have only had a banquet for the last 10 years, we actually celebrated over 20 years in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, and over 10 years in the seven-day-a-week small-group program--- both of which I superintend. And I spotlighted the achievements of the most remarkable student that I have ever seen--- Monique Taylor-Myer (data privacy surname), now in Grade 12 and a graduating senior headed for a full ride at St. Cloud State University--- who has studied with me for 10 years, sits with me weekly in a three and a half-hour seminar, and is functioning at a junior collegiate level in academic accomplishment.
Monique and I put on a demonstration of her knowledge across the liberal arts curriculum and read aloud very diverse set of readings from works that included Fences (August Wilson), Antigone (Sophocles), Alice in Wonderland/ Alice Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll), Harlem Renaissance poetry from Georgia Douglass Johnson and Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning," the poem that Angelou wrote for and delivered at the First Presidential Inaugural of Bill Clinton.
After this powerful display, I explained fully why that and other amazing feats on the part of this remarkable young woman impelled me to present her with the Best Student in the State of Minnesota Award.
The students also performed my compressed (all original Shakespearean language, compiled for 30-minute presentation) script for Macbeth --- and the students gave powerful demonstrations of their skills and talents.
Our banquet was graced by the presence of St. Cloud Admissions Office professional Hannah Meyer, who drove all the way from St. Cloud for our celebration, and by Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Member Rebecca Gagnon. School board members Tracine Asberry and Don Samuels sent particularly kind regrets for being unable to attend, as did MPS Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin.
Asberry sent a letter to students and parents of the New Salem Educational Initiative in attendance at the banquet that included a quotation from Nelson Mandela; that great leader in the struggle for human dignity urged us all not be afraid to show ourselves as the brilliant and creative people that we are, noting that we do not fear our inadequacy (as is more conventionally assumed) so much as we fear to assert our right to walk in the light and reveal all of the marvelous talents that all people possess.
Most of my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative who performed and gave demonstrations at the banquet are currently enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), and all of them were enrolled in MPS when they entered my academic universe. I teach all of these students personally, encouraging them to maintain enrollment in the Minneapolis Public Schools while getting much of their genuine education with me after school and on weekends.
All of the principles that undergird my teaching and superintending of all aspects of the New Salem Educational Initiative were on display at the banquet. All of these principles could be extrapolated by school board members and officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools for application to the guiding philosophy and programs of that school district--- about which I will write more in future articles.
Although we have only had a banquet for the last 10 years, we actually celebrated over 20 years in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, and over 10 years in the seven-day-a-week small-group program--- both of which I superintend. And I spotlighted the achievements of the most remarkable student that I have ever seen--- Monique Taylor-Myer (data privacy surname), now in Grade 12 and a graduating senior headed for a full ride at St. Cloud State University--- who has studied with me for 10 years, sits with me weekly in a three and a half-hour seminar, and is functioning at a junior collegiate level in academic accomplishment.
Monique and I put on a demonstration of her knowledge across the liberal arts curriculum and read aloud very diverse set of readings from works that included Fences (August Wilson), Antigone (Sophocles), Alice in Wonderland/ Alice Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll), Harlem Renaissance poetry from Georgia Douglass Johnson and Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning," the poem that Angelou wrote for and delivered at the First Presidential Inaugural of Bill Clinton.
After this powerful display, I explained fully why that and other amazing feats on the part of this remarkable young woman impelled me to present her with the Best Student in the State of Minnesota Award.
The students also performed my compressed (all original Shakespearean language, compiled for 30-minute presentation) script for Macbeth --- and the students gave powerful demonstrations of their skills and talents.
Our banquet was graced by the presence of St. Cloud Admissions Office professional Hannah Meyer, who drove all the way from St. Cloud for our celebration, and by Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Member Rebecca Gagnon. School board members Tracine Asberry and Don Samuels sent particularly kind regrets for being unable to attend, as did MPS Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin.
Asberry sent a letter to students and parents of the New Salem Educational Initiative in attendance at the banquet that included a quotation from Nelson Mandela; that great leader in the struggle for human dignity urged us all not be afraid to show ourselves as the brilliant and creative people that we are, noting that we do not fear our inadequacy (as is more conventionally assumed) so much as we fear to assert our right to walk in the light and reveal all of the marvelous talents that all people possess.
Most of my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative who performed and gave demonstrations at the banquet are currently enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), and all of them were enrolled in MPS when they entered my academic universe. I teach all of these students personally, encouraging them to maintain enrollment in the Minneapolis Public Schools while getting much of their genuine education with me after school and on weekends.
All of the principles that undergird my teaching and superintending of all aspects of the New Salem Educational Initiative were on display at the banquet. All of these principles could be extrapolated by school board members and officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools for application to the guiding philosophy and programs of that school district--- about which I will write more in future articles.
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