Writing >Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education< to Atone for the Miserable Education that Students Get in the Minneapolis Public Schools

Whenever I am reading a newspaper or journal article with a student, or training that person to take the SAT or ACT, I always end up giving mini-courses in economics, political science, psychology, history, literature, English usage, the fine arts, or natural science. This is in addition to teaching them most of what they know about math and the skill of reading at advanced levels of comprehension.


I give these mini-courses and teach these skills because the education that students receive in the Minneapolis Public Schools is so insubstantial. And my identification of the Minneapolis Public Schools with the rendering an insubstantial education may be taken to apply to all urban school districts. We are getting some signals of improvement from Charlotte-Mecklenburg and from Cincinnati, but we’ll have to wait for many years to see if the school districts in those urban centers realize their seeming promise. We have been disappointed so many times.


Even in the areas of math and reading, for which student assessments got so embarrassing that even the education establishment started giving belated attention, the results are not encouraging. The United States fares poorly by comparison with other nations on the highly regarded PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), a program that tests academic skills in math, reading, and science in all major industrialized nations and many developing, emerging, and newly developed nations as an activity of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [note that spelling is in the British style for an organization actually based in Paris, France]).


And for young people from economically challenged and historically abused families, the results are disastrous: Almost all young people in these familial categories score poorly on objective tests of skill and knowledge. And they either do not graduate from high school or they have to take remedial courses once in a college or university setting; moreover, graduation rates for students of economically and historically challenged circumstances from colleges and universities are very low.


When reading a substantive article from the newspaper or an ACT practice reading, all kinds of topics are likely to arise. Such topics may lead me to ask questions such as the following:


>>>>> You do know what was important about the Mayflower, right?


>>>>> You know the basic difference between a republic and a monarchy, don’t you?


>>>>> You’ve heard of Sigmund Freud, haven’t you?


>>>>> You know that Buddhism began in India but ended up gaining more followers in Southeast and East Asia, right? And do you know, then, what religion is most prevalent in India?


>>>>> You do know that Newton’s laws of motion and gravity revolutionized how we thought about the physics of planet Earth--- but that Einstein taught us that those laws are not absolute and not at all adequate when contemplating motion and gravity of the greater cosmos--- right?


I always get blank stares when I pose these questions, which arise implicitly from articles that we read, because such topics gain mention in serious reading material. So I end up taking a long time just helping students to understand subjects that they should be learning in school.


Two favorites of mine are the single words “liberal” and “communist.” Just ponder the layers and layers of difficulty in understanding the various meanings of these terms if the student is not given a full exposition that includes usages across historical and societal circumstances.


So all of this got very old.


 Wanting to give my students the equivalent of a private school education and then, knowing that even the education rendered at well-regarded private institutions in the United States is overrated, wanting for them much better than that--- I decided just to haul off and write a book, to be entitled, Foundations of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.


This book is now becoming the chief reading text for my students, who are successively moving through the chapters already written, those focused on economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, and African American history. I will soon have completed the chapters on literature, English usage, and fine arts (visual and musical); and then by early November will have concluded the chapters for mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.


That will be fourteen chapters covering the subjects most important to an excellent liberal arts education, of the sort that will send students forth into the world culturally enriched, civically informed, and prepared to pursue specialized training for lives of professional satisfaction.


Readers of the whole book will gain that education that most high school and even most university graduates wish that they had received. And now my students will know the answers to the questions posed above--- and many more.


Subscribers to my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota are currently receiving three chapters at a time, per edition. Most recently they have received the first three chapters, those for Economics, Political Science, and Psychology.


Readers of the blog have received snippets that represent about 10% of the full chapters. My goal is to provide an avenue for the journey through the exciting world of knowledge, alerting readers to information that they have never before received--- or refreshing them on subjects studied long ago, awakening them anew to the excitement of knowing, understanding, and thinking deeply about matters of great importance to the fully lived life and the citizen of the world.


Our young people need such an education. They are cheated every day they set foot in the terrible institutions of the Minneapolis Public Schools--- and all other urban schools of the United States.


And well-regarded suburban and private schools are overrated, recording test scores that do not rate high on the PISA exam, not even close to providing the much higher quality education rendered to students in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, and the Scandinavian nations.


If all people, even in the comparatively superb educational systems of the European social democracies and East Asia, mastered all of the knowledge that I am providing in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, this would be a better world:


People would understand the fundamental principles by which national and international economies function; the differences in the vast array of political systems of the world; why people behave as the do; how people of all major world religions view the divine and the purpose of humanity; how world, American, and African American history have given us the world of today; the finest works of the European Old Masters, the Song Dynasty landscape artists, and the exquisite sculpture of the Ibo; the roots of hip-hop and rap in the work songs of the slaves; the meaning of a gerund and how a participle can hang; the principles of geometry and trigonometry utilized in constructing bridges that usually don’t fall--- but why they do when they do; how asexual reproduction occurs; the chemical combinations that yield favorable versus unfavorable outcomes for humanity; and why energy is equal to mass, if one takes velocity into consideration.


Knowing such things enriches life, makes this potentially wonderful world understandable, and reduces the chances that people live out this one earthly sojourn forever ignorant, always wondering but never knowing who they are and how they relate to other creations of the natural world. This is the education that our young people and all people should have but do not receive. Tired of having to provide my students this sort of education in ad hoc lectures, I have tapped out the foundations of an excellent education on my keyboard. Now my students will have the education that they should have in Foundations of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, and so will you my readers.


Then we’ll share what we know with a world in need of the healing that knowledge and understanding will provide.