Weekly Midweek Missive (#376, IX-29) sent to my son, Ryan Davison-Reed, on Friday, 11 March 2016: The Starkly Errant Philosophy of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education

[Note:  


Names of students given in these and other articles on this blog are data privacy pseudonyms.


Names given for my son and for members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education are actual.]

March 11, 2016


My Beloved Ryan---


May this note find you and Kellie reveling in Bernie's victory in her home state. I have said for many moons that the Midwest would offer opportunities for candidates not named Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the race for party nominations. This has proven true for Bernie, with victories in Nebraska, Kansas, and Michigan. 


The ground for Republicans other than the Reality TV host has not been as welcoming, particularly for my predicted beneficiary Marco Rubio. But Ted Cruz has made some inroads, and PBS commentators David Brooks (moderate Republican) and E. J. Dionne (liberal Democrat) agree with me that Trump's nomination is not a done deal, with less than a majority going into the convention still very possible. So we'll see. I do have the sense that Florida is going to go Trump's way and that Rubio will thereafter be that firm bread often eaten for breakfast.


I hope that you are enjoying the political season. This one certainly has been intriguing, with both disturbing and fascinating connotations


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That is a segue of sorts to another intriguing event, with both disturbing and fascinating connotations. Yesterday from 5:30 to 7:00 PM (Thursday, 10 March) the League of Women Voters held a forum for members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education at Bryn Mawr K-5 in the residential area of the same name. 


School board members Jenny Arneson, Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, Don Samuels, and Nelson Inz sat left to right as the audience peered at their table; Carla Bates and Josh Reimnitz were not in attendance, and Tracine Asberry was at another meeting and did not make an appearance until the event was almost over.


The school board members each introduced themselves and explained what had impelled them to run for a position on the board. Recent student representative Noah Branch (term ended in January) and Tracine's daughter (Dominica Asberry-Lindquist) made some stand-in comments for her but then sat back down in the audience for the remainder of the event.


When the time came for questions, I went first, with the following question, led by an introductory reference:


"In 1996, E. D. Hirsch published a book entitled, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them; in 1999, Alfie Kohn published a reply to the Hirsch work entitled The Schools Our Children Deserve. Those books convey very different philosophies of education. Please tell me whether you think that an excellent education is a matter of knowledge-intensity, imparted by teachers who have a great deal of subject area knowledge; or a matter, touted by education professors as 'progressive,' of emphasizing critical thinking and lifelong learning, with classroom presences in the role of facilitator. Please don't succumb to the temptation to try to muddle in between those two definitions. Make a decision for one or the other."


The school board members, moving left to right, then each answered my question. Quite bracingly if not astonishingly, they all favored the second of the too options, emphasizing in their answers the critical thinking component.


This is the summary of their essential replies:


Jenny Arneson said that she is not an educator but as a mother of children in the Minneapolis Public Schools she did care about the subject area content in their classes;  she thought, however, that critical thinking was most important.


Kim Ellison said that the question was not a matter of either-or. I interrupted to say that yes, as a matter of philosophical commitment, it is. She then continued, saying that in her own teaching in an alternative school setting, she had developed the belief that critical thinking was most important. 


Rebecca Gagnon, who was the only one who had shaken her head affirmatively as if aware of both the Hirsch and Kohn books, said that technology had rendered knowledge-based education an emphasis of the past. She said that people can always access any factual knowledge that they need, and that she does so all the time. Critical thinking and lifelong learning should be emphasized in our schools.


Don Samuels said that in Jamaica he had been given an education of the knowledge-intensive type, and that he understood that approach. But he also said that as a creative person he did not always do all that well under the knowledge-intensive approach and would come down on the side of critical thinking and lifelong learning.


Nelson Inz, like Samuels, seemed uncomfortable in having to make the decision but he, too, sided with critical thinking and lifelong learning. He took my question very seriously and came back to the topic in comments at the close of the event, in the aggregate saying that as a Montessori-trained guide to student learning he emphasized critical thinking and lifelong learning. As a high school social studies teacher, he often gets students who tell him that they would like more information about events such as World War II; he explains to them that he sees his role as giving his students the skills that they need to find out more about World War II and other events and topics on their own.


I was more disturbed by these answers than I have been by any comments heretofore made by school board members in my 20 months of regular attendance and Public Comment. That each of these members of the board devalues knowledge as the core of education is deeply troubling.


I now know how much work is ahead of me, how vital is my modeling of the knowledge-intensive approach in the 17 weekly academic sessions that I conduct for my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, and how important are the various venues (television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison [6:00 PM Wednesdays, MTN Channel 17]; academic periodical, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, blog at http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com and book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education) that I have created as components of a structure running parallel to the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Within the structure that I have created, I support the Minneapolis Public Schools while demonstrating principles and approaches for extrapolation.  In doing this, I assert the power of knowledge as the only genuine focus of education.


In the course of time, I will give Carla Bates, Josh Reimnitz, and Tracine Asberry a chance to respond to the question that I asked the others.


And much of what I write in the days ahead will, even more than is typically the case, demonstrate the necessity of knowledge as the core of K-12 education--- and the stark foolishness of the sort of answers given by the members of the school board.                               


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Especially given the ignorance that prevails on the school board as to the definition of an excellent education, I am very much looking forward to my interactions with my students and their families this weekend (Saturday, 12 March; and Sunday, 13 March). 


Tomorrow morning I will be going by to work with IEP-laden Anna Robinson, who I have found actually to be an enormously talented Grade 1 student. I will then record two hours of the television show, as sisters Hanna (Grade 12), Felicia (Grade 11), and Juana (Grade 8) Ramirez and I study my Psychology chapter from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education. Then I will work with siblings Teresa (Grade 4), Carlos (Grade 6), and Francisco Marquez Hernandez (Grade 8) in the late afternoon.


On Sunday I will hear one of Reverend McAfee's concomitantly erudite and street-wise sermons, then drive over to East St. Paul to pick up half-brothers Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1) along with mom Evelyn (studying with me in preparing to go back to community college). And, finally, I'll go deep into Sunday evening with Soledad Martin (mother of Teresa, Carlos, and Francisco) and her sister Anna Martin as I work with them to go back and get their GEDs; these latter two dropped out of school at Grade 8 and Grade 10 respectively as the Minneapolis Public Schools of the vastly overhyped Superintendent Carol Johnson era failed them miserably.                            


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As usual, the opportunity to deliver an actual K-12 education of excellence, by definition, knowledge-intense;  and to express my views via the many venues that I have created;  helps me deal with the starkly faulty philosophy and misdirected energy of the education establishment.


As usual, we can discuss the recent activities of your life in Burlington, the matters given above, and much more--- in that ever-looming conversation.


I love you so very much, my dear son---


Gary