During academic year 2015-2016, my waking hours were dedicated to multiple activities impelling the K-12 revolution forward.
>>>>> On my television show, I made ongoing commentary sounding my four key themes (curriculum, teaching, tutoring, and family & community outreach) in abundant detail, with reference to on-the-ground observations and collection of facts.
I had two notable guests on the show, Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker; and Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education member Rebecca Gagnon. I had super discussions with each of these latter two; they shared their perspectives from the vantage points of their professional perches and commented on the four themes that dominate my public statements, alongside any subsidiary points to these themes advanced for discussion.
At a League of Women Voters meeting in March 2016, Gagnon had made some very disturbing comments pertinent to the definition of excellence in K-12 education (see blog article from that phase of the academic year) but
on the show amended that view in a way that resonated with with my emphasis on knowledge-intensity.
Very notable in my discussions with people is the fact that very rarely does anyone sit or stand face-to-face with me and contradict any of the points that I make, consistent with the four paramount themes. Since I always take great care to gather facts meticulously, very few people with whom I exchange comments attempt to counter my factual references.
And yet on the public stage, for the consumption of audiences, they often present views that gloss over deficiencies in the education imparted by the Minneapolis Public Schools. Thus do I call them on these deceptions and denials on the television show and in all other available and self-created venues.
On the show, I also frequently featured my students during the 2015-2016 academic year as we worked on mathematics and reading; studied chapters of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education; read Shakespearean plays; trained for the ACT; or proceeded in similar ways to demonstrate the knowledge-hunger and enormous capability of students from very challenging life circumstances.
>>>>> I cranked out weighty editions of my academic Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota each month.
Three editions featured chapters from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, set in the context of commentary crafted especially for my subscribers in introductory and concluding articles. My subscribers now have had advanced access to ten of the fourteen chapters in the book; they will read the other four in editions of the journal to come and will receive, gratis, a copy of the book when the final, assiduously polished version of the tome is complete in autumn 2016.
Subscribers also read articles focused on the personal stories, challenges, and triumphs of my students. They read a very personal multi-article Meditations on the Art of Living that I wrote for a precious college-bound student whom I had taught and mentored since she was in Grade 3. They were able to absorb factual material that I collected in the course of the year on the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools. And they were able to follow the drama of the superintendent search as salient, fact-filled example of the frequent folly of such wasteful eneavors.
>>>>> I worked all day, every day to impel the K-12 revolution forward. Many days extended to 18 hours of work. No work day, of which in most weeks there are seven out of seven, consisted of less than 16 hours.
The television show and academic journal are powerful tools for pressuring the education establishment into observing, internalizing, and acting upon my four key principles. The blog, on which I now have 276 articles posted, is equally powerful. The blog consists of theoretical tracts, copious collections of data and factual material, accounts of current drama at the Minneapolis Public Schools, discussions of the inner workings of the school district, and the verbal equivalent of spotlight on activities of key actors, both in their typical foibles and in their less frequent favorable endeavors.
During academic year 2015-2016 I attended all major meetings associated with the Minneapolis Public
Schools--- the second-Tuesday meetings, those gatherings relevant to the two phases of the
superintendent search, finance committee meetings, Committees of the Whole, and any other meeting that gave me an opportunity to collect more information, assess the performance and capabilities of Minneapolis Public Schools officials and board members, and exert a prominent presence with ample verbal commentary of a kind delivered by no other person.
I met or conversed with all six semifinalists for superintendent during the first phase and both finalists during the second phase. Given her extraordinary accessibility and genuine love of education and the students who are the recipients, I had manifold conversations and communications (in person, by cell phone, and via text and email messages) with Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius, including one meeting at the Minnesota Department of Education in the aftermath of the stunning ineptitude manifested by members of the school board in the 6-3 vote favoring Graff.
These activities are consistent with my huge capacity for on-the-ground work of the Maoist-Gandhian-Alinsky type and dedication to all activities necessary for the attainment of educational excellence, consistent with the four principles and the achievement in these less than United States of the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
Jun 30, 2016
Tracking Events in 2015-2016 and Revolutionary Prescriptions for 2016-2017: New Superintendent Ed Graff Must Proceed on the Basis of Four Key Principles or Go the Way of the Guomindang in China and the British in India
I have been inspired in my activism especially by the seminal revolutionaries Mao Zedong, Mohandas Gandhi, and Saul Alinsky.
Mao was the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution that ultimately succeeded in 1949. In 1934 he and his comrades were pinned in by the rival Guomindang (Kuomintang) in the far southern province of Jiangxi, precipitating the vaunted Long March through southern and western China, northward to the province of Shaanxi. Arriving in Shaanxi in 1935, Mao holed up in a cave by night to theorize, write, and plan the revolution. By day he circulated among the peasantry and established the on-the-ground relationships with workaday people that gave him the mass support critical to his ultimately successful revolution against a better armed opponent.
Gandhi served in the Indian National Congress from 1885, earned a law degree in England, opposed apartheid in South Africa, then during the opening decades of the 20th century developed his satyagraha (“truth force”) approach to aggressive nonviolence as a precipitator of revolutionary change. By 1947 the mighty British Empire no longer contained India.
Saul Alinsky was the author of Rules for Radicals who, at a time when revolutionary 1960s groups such as the Black Panthers and Weathermen spouted leftist slogans but faded within a decade, fomented practical and effective change in numerous factories and businesses in behalf of working people and impoverished communities.
These revolutionaries gave their lives to their causes.
They looked to the future, maintained the long view, and committed their efforts for whatever time required to achieve the change in which they fervently believed.
This is the credo and work ethic that I bring to my efforts to overhaul K-12 education.
I am relentless, dauntingly frank, absolutely dedicated to the cause.
....................................................................
When I first dedicated my efforts to the cause of fomenting change in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Bernadeia Johnson was superintendent. She had formulated three programs that addressed the most critical needs of the central school district:
Shift, by which resources were to be concentrated closest to students and those who worked directly with them;
High Priority Schools, identifying for enhanced attention and resource investment schools wherein students struggled most to attain grade level academic performance; and
Focused Instruction, establishing grade by grade academic standards with topics to be studied uniformly across the district according to grade level.
Johnson’s greatest achievement was astutely establishing programs that directed attention where due. But she resigned, effective February 2015, after six years as superintendent, with very little progress as to effective implementation of her signature programs.
I counseled school board members (in conversations and Public Comments at second-Tuesday meetings) to forego a temporally prolonged search in favor of a brief call for applications nationwide while giving great consideration to candidates close at home. I told members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education that most candidates are trained in the same way by the same sorry lot of education professors and that very few rise above the level of mediocrity. I suggested that Michael Goar, who had been serving as Chief Executive Officer under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and had been tapped as Interim Superintendent was most likely as good a candidate as they were going to find: He should just be given the job to see what he could do and evaluated for extension as the three-year contract ensued.
But the school board went ahead with a nationwide search that I have detailed in my blog articles. During the summer-through-autumn 2015 phase of the search, six candidates emerged as semifinalists, of whom three (Charles Foust, Michael Goar, and Sergio Paez) became finalists. I recommended strongly for Foust, an energetic dynamo with a communicative manner and intellectual grasp that could have brought academic excellence of the type for which I have advocated; the board voted 6-3 for Paez (the losing three votes were for Goar). I then defended Paez when he was the victim of innuendo detailed in blog articles I wrote in December 2015.
But the board lost its spine on the Paez matter and was about to retreat to the Goar option when a rag-tag group of protesters shut a December 2015 meeting down, inducing the board to opt for another search. The second phase search lasted from January 2016 through May 2016. Under the guise of engaging the community more openly, the board voted to hire a community engagement firm for $70,000, in addition to a superintendent search firm for $85,000; and also created a search committee that included several parents and community representatives, along with three school board members.
By May 2015, Minnesota State Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius and outgoing Anchorage (Alaska) Superintendent Ed Graff were identified as the two finalists. I recommended forcefully for Brenda Cassellius for reasons given in blog articles of May 2016; the board voted 6-3 for Graff.
At the second-Tuesday June 2016 meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education I told the members of that board (in my Public Comments) that they had just done what I told them 17 months ago that them they would do: waste an unacceptable amount of money (in tabulation for the two searches, over $200,000) for a very conventional candidate (Graff).
They listened.
At least two of the three members who cast the losing three votes considered my comments on target.
Those who voted for Graff seemed variously taken aback or chastened.
I also told the members of the school board that my calculations indicated that of the 603 staff members at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools at 1250 West Broadway, 58 make $100,000 or more in salary; another 29 make between $90,000 and $100,000; while 82 make between $80,000 and $90,000 and 84 make between $70,000 and $80,000. I suggested strongly that they investigate these 253 positions to see if they are getting proper value for the great expenditure.
They aren’t.
Brenda Cassellius knew this: She effectively said that she would not be needing the six associate superintendents who now make $141,500 apiece.
I’ll be encouraging Ed Graff to make the same determination.
I’ll be pressuring Ed Graff to do many things, consistent with the four paramount principles relevant to curriculum, teachers, tutoring, and community outreach indicated above.
If he doesn’t do what is necessary to give life to the four principles, I’ll be working to make sure that he goes the way of the Guomindang and the British.
Mao was the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution that ultimately succeeded in 1949. In 1934 he and his comrades were pinned in by the rival Guomindang (Kuomintang) in the far southern province of Jiangxi, precipitating the vaunted Long March through southern and western China, northward to the province of Shaanxi. Arriving in Shaanxi in 1935, Mao holed up in a cave by night to theorize, write, and plan the revolution. By day he circulated among the peasantry and established the on-the-ground relationships with workaday people that gave him the mass support critical to his ultimately successful revolution against a better armed opponent.
Gandhi served in the Indian National Congress from 1885, earned a law degree in England, opposed apartheid in South Africa, then during the opening decades of the 20th century developed his satyagraha (“truth force”) approach to aggressive nonviolence as a precipitator of revolutionary change. By 1947 the mighty British Empire no longer contained India.
Saul Alinsky was the author of Rules for Radicals who, at a time when revolutionary 1960s groups such as the Black Panthers and Weathermen spouted leftist slogans but faded within a decade, fomented practical and effective change in numerous factories and businesses in behalf of working people and impoverished communities.
These revolutionaries gave their lives to their causes.
They looked to the future, maintained the long view, and committed their efforts for whatever time required to achieve the change in which they fervently believed.
This is the credo and work ethic that I bring to my efforts to overhaul K-12 education.
I am relentless, dauntingly frank, absolutely dedicated to the cause.
....................................................................
When I first dedicated my efforts to the cause of fomenting change in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Bernadeia Johnson was superintendent. She had formulated three programs that addressed the most critical needs of the central school district:
Shift, by which resources were to be concentrated closest to students and those who worked directly with them;
High Priority Schools, identifying for enhanced attention and resource investment schools wherein students struggled most to attain grade level academic performance; and
Focused Instruction, establishing grade by grade academic standards with topics to be studied uniformly across the district according to grade level.
Johnson’s greatest achievement was astutely establishing programs that directed attention where due. But she resigned, effective February 2015, after six years as superintendent, with very little progress as to effective implementation of her signature programs.
I counseled school board members (in conversations and Public Comments at second-Tuesday meetings) to forego a temporally prolonged search in favor of a brief call for applications nationwide while giving great consideration to candidates close at home. I told members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education that most candidates are trained in the same way by the same sorry lot of education professors and that very few rise above the level of mediocrity. I suggested that Michael Goar, who had been serving as Chief Executive Officer under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and had been tapped as Interim Superintendent was most likely as good a candidate as they were going to find: He should just be given the job to see what he could do and evaluated for extension as the three-year contract ensued.
But the school board went ahead with a nationwide search that I have detailed in my blog articles. During the summer-through-autumn 2015 phase of the search, six candidates emerged as semifinalists, of whom three (Charles Foust, Michael Goar, and Sergio Paez) became finalists. I recommended strongly for Foust, an energetic dynamo with a communicative manner and intellectual grasp that could have brought academic excellence of the type for which I have advocated; the board voted 6-3 for Paez (the losing three votes were for Goar). I then defended Paez when he was the victim of innuendo detailed in blog articles I wrote in December 2015.
But the board lost its spine on the Paez matter and was about to retreat to the Goar option when a rag-tag group of protesters shut a December 2015 meeting down, inducing the board to opt for another search. The second phase search lasted from January 2016 through May 2016. Under the guise of engaging the community more openly, the board voted to hire a community engagement firm for $70,000, in addition to a superintendent search firm for $85,000; and also created a search committee that included several parents and community representatives, along with three school board members.
By May 2015, Minnesota State Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius and outgoing Anchorage (Alaska) Superintendent Ed Graff were identified as the two finalists. I recommended forcefully for Brenda Cassellius for reasons given in blog articles of May 2016; the board voted 6-3 for Graff.
At the second-Tuesday June 2016 meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education I told the members of that board (in my Public Comments) that they had just done what I told them 17 months ago that them they would do: waste an unacceptable amount of money (in tabulation for the two searches, over $200,000) for a very conventional candidate (Graff).
They listened.
At least two of the three members who cast the losing three votes considered my comments on target.
Those who voted for Graff seemed variously taken aback or chastened.
I also told the members of the school board that my calculations indicated that of the 603 staff members at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools at 1250 West Broadway, 58 make $100,000 or more in salary; another 29 make between $90,000 and $100,000; while 82 make between $80,000 and $90,000 and 84 make between $70,000 and $80,000. I suggested strongly that they investigate these 253 positions to see if they are getting proper value for the great expenditure.
They aren’t.
Brenda Cassellius knew this: She effectively said that she would not be needing the six associate superintendents who now make $141,500 apiece.
I’ll be encouraging Ed Graff to make the same determination.
I’ll be pressuring Ed Graff to do many things, consistent with the four paramount principles relevant to curriculum, teachers, tutoring, and community outreach indicated above.
If he doesn’t do what is necessary to give life to the four principles, I’ll be working to make sure that he goes the way of the Guomindang and the British.
Jun 28, 2016
Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative That Should be Extrapolated for Application by Decision-Makers in the Minneapolis Public Schools
I initiated the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program in 1994. That program serves mainly students from families who are members of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church and is attended also by other young people (and adults resuming or continuing their formal education) in the Twin Cities, especially North Minneapolis. The program features a traditional tutoring scenario. I have four tutors working under my direction, serving about 15 regular attendees who may be joined by 10 or so additional students on any given evening. The emphasis is on mathematics and reading, many of the materials for which I generate
.......................................................
The seven-days-a-week program features 17 small-group (one to five students) sessions conducted solely by me. This program offers the full range of principles that the Minneapolis Public Schools should extrapolate for application at the level of the central school district. I perform all functions of the small group program:
>>>>> I typically pick up students at their homes and transport them to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church for their academic sessions.
>>>>> I generate the curriculum, ensuring that students speedily ascend to grade level performance in math and reading if, as is almost always the case, they lag behind grade level as they enter the program.
Participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative attend institutions of the Minneapolis Public Schools, overwhelmingly those of North Minneapolis. All of my students qualify for free or reduced price lunch; many are young people from families facing the challenges of dysfunction or the array of difficulties presented by economic impoverishment. Such students almost always need very aggressive tutoring to rise to grade level performance.
>>>>> Once students are performing at grade level, I launch them on a college preparatory curriculum. Except for students still at levels K-3, the young people in my program now study the chapters of my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, as their chief source of knowledge at a level of sophistication and with the breadth and depth necessary for embracing college and university classes.
The book features fourteen chapters, focused individually on economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts (visual and musical), mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.
We also read and discuss articles from newspapers, magazines, and academic journals--- either from original print versions or from online sources printed out in hard copy form. I introduce my students at grades 4-12 to high quality literature such as the plays of Shakespeare, Greek drama (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides), the epics of Homer, poetry and fiction from the Harlem Renaissance, and great 20th and 21st century playwrights such as Arthur Miller and August Wilson.
As my students enter Grade 8 I start training them explicitly in the skills specific for taking the ACT college readiness exam, for which the foundation has already been established in my challenging curriculum, which contains sophisticated vocabulary associated with university level material.
With younger students, I use mathematics and reading materials that I generate myself, augmented by high quality literature and material drawn from the Core Knowledge series edited by E. D. Hirsch. I always have a vision for my K-3 students leading to the knowledge intensity of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education and other college preparatory materials.
>>>>> I do anything necessary to assure that students who will be first-generation university students stay on a course leading to that status. Students whose family lives are described by poverty or dysfunction require adroit and specific care.
Thus, in superintending the New Salem Educational Initiative I memorize three or four telephone numbers for each student, via which I can get hold of adults with some association with the young people. I know not only their residence of most frequent occupation but also other homes or places where I am likely find them on any given day. I counsel my students and their family members; help them to work through any difficulties in human relationships; provide labor and physical assistance around the home as requested, and refer them to services necessary to deal with the array of difficulties faced by people mired in the circumstances of poverty.
>>>>> Thus, my students have via participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, preparation for advanced knowledge acquisition that follows the four principles that I have been emphasizing for extrapolation by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Student participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative are presented with
1) carefully sequenced knowledge-intensive curriculum throughout the K-12 years;
2) a teacher who has trained assiduously to provide knowledge-intensive curriculum;
3) aggressive tutoring as necessary for establishing the grade-level knowledge and skills in mathematics and reading that are required for advanced learning;
4) an array of services that extend right into their homes, upon firm relationships established with family members, and involving thorough knowledge of the life circumstances of each young person.
.............................................................................
Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must follow these four principles to achieve success in behalf of every single precious life under their care.
Failure to do so would be that of inept professionals at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The students themselves are eager for knowledge, masterful teaching, supplementary academic instruction, and attention to home and community. They have been waiting a long time for lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction toward which excellent K-12 education leads.
Education professionals have heretofore failed them.
I will not let this situation continue.
The future of the Minneapolis Public Schools must entail excellence of education in accordance with the four principles manifested in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Hence, I am exerting pressure via several media to impel revolutionary change in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Articles soon following upon this one will provide further detail as to my efforts to revolutionize the K-12 experience of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
.......................................................
The seven-days-a-week program features 17 small-group (one to five students) sessions conducted solely by me. This program offers the full range of principles that the Minneapolis Public Schools should extrapolate for application at the level of the central school district. I perform all functions of the small group program:
>>>>> I typically pick up students at their homes and transport them to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church for their academic sessions.
>>>>> I generate the curriculum, ensuring that students speedily ascend to grade level performance in math and reading if, as is almost always the case, they lag behind grade level as they enter the program.
Participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative attend institutions of the Minneapolis Public Schools, overwhelmingly those of North Minneapolis. All of my students qualify for free or reduced price lunch; many are young people from families facing the challenges of dysfunction or the array of difficulties presented by economic impoverishment. Such students almost always need very aggressive tutoring to rise to grade level performance.
>>>>> Once students are performing at grade level, I launch them on a college preparatory curriculum. Except for students still at levels K-3, the young people in my program now study the chapters of my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, as their chief source of knowledge at a level of sophistication and with the breadth and depth necessary for embracing college and university classes.
The book features fourteen chapters, focused individually on economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts (visual and musical), mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.
We also read and discuss articles from newspapers, magazines, and academic journals--- either from original print versions or from online sources printed out in hard copy form. I introduce my students at grades 4-12 to high quality literature such as the plays of Shakespeare, Greek drama (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides), the epics of Homer, poetry and fiction from the Harlem Renaissance, and great 20th and 21st century playwrights such as Arthur Miller and August Wilson.
As my students enter Grade 8 I start training them explicitly in the skills specific for taking the ACT college readiness exam, for which the foundation has already been established in my challenging curriculum, which contains sophisticated vocabulary associated with university level material.
With younger students, I use mathematics and reading materials that I generate myself, augmented by high quality literature and material drawn from the Core Knowledge series edited by E. D. Hirsch. I always have a vision for my K-3 students leading to the knowledge intensity of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education and other college preparatory materials.
>>>>> I do anything necessary to assure that students who will be first-generation university students stay on a course leading to that status. Students whose family lives are described by poverty or dysfunction require adroit and specific care.
Thus, in superintending the New Salem Educational Initiative I memorize three or four telephone numbers for each student, via which I can get hold of adults with some association with the young people. I know not only their residence of most frequent occupation but also other homes or places where I am likely find them on any given day. I counsel my students and their family members; help them to work through any difficulties in human relationships; provide labor and physical assistance around the home as requested, and refer them to services necessary to deal with the array of difficulties faced by people mired in the circumstances of poverty.
>>>>> Thus, my students have via participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, preparation for advanced knowledge acquisition that follows the four principles that I have been emphasizing for extrapolation by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Student participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative are presented with
1) carefully sequenced knowledge-intensive curriculum throughout the K-12 years;
2) a teacher who has trained assiduously to provide knowledge-intensive curriculum;
3) aggressive tutoring as necessary for establishing the grade-level knowledge and skills in mathematics and reading that are required for advanced learning;
4) an array of services that extend right into their homes, upon firm relationships established with family members, and involving thorough knowledge of the life circumstances of each young person.
.............................................................................
Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must follow these four principles to achieve success in behalf of every single precious life under their care.
Failure to do so would be that of inept professionals at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The students themselves are eager for knowledge, masterful teaching, supplementary academic instruction, and attention to home and community. They have been waiting a long time for lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction toward which excellent K-12 education leads.
Education professionals have heretofore failed them.
I will not let this situation continue.
The future of the Minneapolis Public Schools must entail excellence of education in accordance with the four principles manifested in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
Hence, I am exerting pressure via several media to impel revolutionary change in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Articles soon following upon this one will provide further detail as to my efforts to revolutionize the K-12 experience of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Waging the Revolution in K-I2 Education: The Four Essential Facets for Emphasis
Just under two years ago, in July 2014, I began to make appearances on the second Tuesday of every month at the meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, with the purpose of exerting pressure on the superintendent and board members to recognize the problems of the school district, address those problems, and implement the academic program necessary to impel change.
I came with a style and a message never before witnessed by any of the board members or the superintendent.
I consistently and persistently advocated for subject-specific curriculum implemented grade-by-grade throughout the K-12 years. My emphasis during the K-5 years has been and is on the liberal arts subjects of mathematics, natural science, history & economics, literature & English usage, and fine arts (visual & musical). History and economics are clustered together as the subject areas of emphasis within the area typically given the amorphous appellation of “social studies”; similarly, the specification of literature and English usage replaces the less definite nomenclature of “language arts.”
I also relentlessly advocated for better teacher training. My message in this area has focused on the totally inadequate training given teachers at the K-5 (elementary) level in departments, schools, and colleges of education; on the low academic standards set for secondary teachers, who do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines but who now almost universally proceed to master’s degrees in education rather than in subject-specific fields.
In my inaugural issues (July and August 2014) of Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota (launched as part of a multimedia campaign to exert maximum pressure on the education establishment), I detailed the necessary advances in curricular and teacher quality.
The curriculum that I detail in the first issue results in students graduating from Grade 5 possessing great knowledge in the five areas of liberal arts emphasis; from Grade 8 having the skill and knowledge sets that now typify high school graduates; and from Grade 12 having received the kind of academic, technological, and vocational training that give students the knowledge and skills conventionally attained during two years of an academic college course of study and two years descriptive of technical college training.
As the months ensued, I also advocated for more aggressive, cohesive, and effective tutoring for students languishing below grade level; and for much better outreach to the families and communities of students so as to reach young people right where they live.
Thus, as I tap out this communication in June 2016, the message that I am hammering home focuses on these four items as paramount:
I. Curriculum
II. Teachers
III. Tutoring
IV. Family and Community Outreach
Tellingly, in specifying these essential elements for making the Minneapolis Public Schools a model for K-12 excellence, I am bringing attention to members of the school board, administration, and teachers a clarity of focus that they have never before demonstrated, much less conveyed:
So low are the goals set for attaining quality education that the chief aim seems to be closing the vaunted achievement gap, endeavoring to ensure that students of all demographic descriptors are achieving grade level performance for reading and math.
I approach all matters, most passionately those relevant to the attainment of K-12 excellence, with unrelenting logic. I believe in properly sequencing goals, laying necessary foundations, and ascending in aspiration and implementation from that foundation. Thus, in my four-point emphasis for change, I assert the necessity of
1) having a comprehensive and logically sequenced curriculum in place;
2) training teachers of necessary quality to deliver that curriculum;
3) aggressively tutoring students who have not achieved grade level competence as required by the curriculum, in all subjects, with math and reading as foundational; and
4) establishing relationships with families right where they live so as to understand the issues that individual students bring with them to school.
My own goal, then, for achieving excellence in K-12 education is to facilitate the rise of students through the K-12 years to the high academic level that I identified in my first issue of Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The goal of ensuring that all students attaining grade level performance in mathematics and reading should be viewed as an embarrassing redress of past systemic failures, not an ultimate goal. Similarly, making sure that all students graduate from high school should be an assumed goal, not a proud achievement.
We must not be satisfied with the recovery of foundational skills for all students:
We must set our goals much higher as we target a comprehensive knowledge-intensive education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts for K-12 students of all demographic descriptors.
In Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in articles posted on this blog, on my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM, Channel 17, Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN]), and at numerous speaking venues, including second-Tuesday monthly appearances at meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education); I give ongoing commentary flowing from my four key points of emphasis.
I powerfully buttress these verbal expressions with action, teaching as I do students from a network that now rises to 125 people in seven-day weeks of small group academic sessions and the Tuesday Tutoring Program, both programs part of the New Salem Educational Initiative, a program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the physical building of which at 2507 Bryant Avenue North in Minneapolis contains the classrooms where most of my weekly 17 small-group academic sessions and instruction in the Tuesday program are conducted.
The principles that I apply in superintending the programs of the New Salem Educational Initiative constitute a model to which decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should refer in overhauling K-12 education at the level of the central school district.
In many articles previously posted on blog I give exposition of these principles. I will be reviewing these principles again in articles soon to come.
I came with a style and a message never before witnessed by any of the board members or the superintendent.
I consistently and persistently advocated for subject-specific curriculum implemented grade-by-grade throughout the K-12 years. My emphasis during the K-5 years has been and is on the liberal arts subjects of mathematics, natural science, history & economics, literature & English usage, and fine arts (visual & musical). History and economics are clustered together as the subject areas of emphasis within the area typically given the amorphous appellation of “social studies”; similarly, the specification of literature and English usage replaces the less definite nomenclature of “language arts.”
I also relentlessly advocated for better teacher training. My message in this area has focused on the totally inadequate training given teachers at the K-5 (elementary) level in departments, schools, and colleges of education; on the low academic standards set for secondary teachers, who do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines but who now almost universally proceed to master’s degrees in education rather than in subject-specific fields.
In my inaugural issues (July and August 2014) of Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota (launched as part of a multimedia campaign to exert maximum pressure on the education establishment), I detailed the necessary advances in curricular and teacher quality.
The curriculum that I detail in the first issue results in students graduating from Grade 5 possessing great knowledge in the five areas of liberal arts emphasis; from Grade 8 having the skill and knowledge sets that now typify high school graduates; and from Grade 12 having received the kind of academic, technological, and vocational training that give students the knowledge and skills conventionally attained during two years of an academic college course of study and two years descriptive of technical college training.
As the months ensued, I also advocated for more aggressive, cohesive, and effective tutoring for students languishing below grade level; and for much better outreach to the families and communities of students so as to reach young people right where they live.
Thus, as I tap out this communication in June 2016, the message that I am hammering home focuses on these four items as paramount:
I. Curriculum
II. Teachers
III. Tutoring
IV. Family and Community Outreach
Tellingly, in specifying these essential elements for making the Minneapolis Public Schools a model for K-12 excellence, I am bringing attention to members of the school board, administration, and teachers a clarity of focus that they have never before demonstrated, much less conveyed:
So low are the goals set for attaining quality education that the chief aim seems to be closing the vaunted achievement gap, endeavoring to ensure that students of all demographic descriptors are achieving grade level performance for reading and math.
I approach all matters, most passionately those relevant to the attainment of K-12 excellence, with unrelenting logic. I believe in properly sequencing goals, laying necessary foundations, and ascending in aspiration and implementation from that foundation. Thus, in my four-point emphasis for change, I assert the necessity of
1) having a comprehensive and logically sequenced curriculum in place;
2) training teachers of necessary quality to deliver that curriculum;
3) aggressively tutoring students who have not achieved grade level competence as required by the curriculum, in all subjects, with math and reading as foundational; and
4) establishing relationships with families right where they live so as to understand the issues that individual students bring with them to school.
My own goal, then, for achieving excellence in K-12 education is to facilitate the rise of students through the K-12 years to the high academic level that I identified in my first issue of Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The goal of ensuring that all students attaining grade level performance in mathematics and reading should be viewed as an embarrassing redress of past systemic failures, not an ultimate goal. Similarly, making sure that all students graduate from high school should be an assumed goal, not a proud achievement.
We must not be satisfied with the recovery of foundational skills for all students:
We must set our goals much higher as we target a comprehensive knowledge-intensive education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts for K-12 students of all demographic descriptors.
In Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Articles and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in articles posted on this blog, on my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM, Channel 17, Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN]), and at numerous speaking venues, including second-Tuesday monthly appearances at meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education); I give ongoing commentary flowing from my four key points of emphasis.
I powerfully buttress these verbal expressions with action, teaching as I do students from a network that now rises to 125 people in seven-day weeks of small group academic sessions and the Tuesday Tutoring Program, both programs part of the New Salem Educational Initiative, a program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the physical building of which at 2507 Bryant Avenue North in Minneapolis contains the classrooms where most of my weekly 17 small-group academic sessions and instruction in the Tuesday program are conducted.
The principles that I apply in superintending the programs of the New Salem Educational Initiative constitute a model to which decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should refer in overhauling K-12 education at the level of the central school district.
In many articles previously posted on blog I give exposition of these principles. I will be reviewing these principles again in articles soon to come.
Jun 2, 2016
To Understand the Perniciousness of the Notions Proffered by Earl "Sook" Holbridge, Review This Article
On Wednesday, 1 June 2016, another opinion piece appeared in the Star Tribune that espoused the same vacuous approach to education foisted on future teachers by professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education. Offered as an article touting a school that putatively operates according to principles dramatically different from those of the public schools, the author (Earl "Sook" Williams, in "Students Stuck in a Dysfunctional System," Star Tribune Opinion Pages, 1 June 2016), in fact demonstrates just how pernicious is the Constructivist philosophy of education professors that devalues knowledge in a charade that purports to advance critical thinking and lifelong learning as the chief principles of K-12 education.
In fact, knowledge must be at the core of an excellent education. Critical analysis and a true lifelong love of learning depend on amassing a great deal of knowledge in the course of one's K-12 experiences. Intellectual laziness and a great probability of knowledge deficiency on the part of Ted Kolderie, Dane Smith, Robert Wehl, Jay Haugen, Jeff Ronneburg--- and Earl "Sook" Holdridge in fact drive them to present their vacuous ideas in the name of reform.
I will most likely eventually address Holdridge's notions and claims directly, but for a sense of just how harmful are his feel-good shibboleths, please review the following article, previously posted on this blog on 9 March of this very year 2016 >>>>>
"Excellent Education Is Defined by Student Mastery of Commonly Shared Knowledge--- and, Thus, Beware the Acolytes of Ted Kolderie"
In their article, “The Way to Design Schools So That All Can Succeed” (Star Tribune, March 7, 2016), Robert Wehl, Jay Haugen, and Jeff Ronneburg tout bad ideas that are consistent with those espoused by professors in our terrible departments, colleges, and schools of education; and that emanate directly from Ted Kolderie, whose vapid notions often appear on these pages. They should be recognized for their vacuity as a guide to the overhaul of K-12 education.
First consider the meaning of an excellent education and what actually prevents our students from receiving the education that should be theirs as human beings in community with others.
Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting well-defined knowledge and skill sets in the liberal, industrial, and technological arts to students of all demographic descriptors in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.
An excellent teacher is a professional of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When our K-12 students go across the stage at graduation, their brains should be alive with commonly shared knowledge that is their human inheritance. From their K-5 years forward, all students should especially gain a bevy of information in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, English usage, the fine arts, and world languages. From the middle school years (grades 6-8) forward, student knowledge and skill sets should include those pertinent to industrial arts such as plumbing, auto mechanics, carpentry, electrical circuitry, and construction; and those germane to the use and application of computer and electronic technology.
But for at least four decades, professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education have espoused a “constructivist” approach to learning that focuses on immediate student interest in the context of that person’s individual life experiences. Education professors devalue knowledge as defined by well-defined, sequentially learned, commonly shared knowledge and skill sets. One can always look up that sort of knowledge, they say, with the help of classroom presences functioning as information “facilitators,” rather than as true teachers.
These same education professors give us K-5 teachers whose programs are the least rigorous on college and university campuses; such teachers have very little subject area knowledge. Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines; but the standards for licensure are low, and the system is rigged to impel them toward master’s degrees in education, rather than in the subject areas that they teach. Education departments, schools, and colleges are “cash cows” for universities.
Thus it is that education professors promote the shibboleths of “critical thinking” and “life-long learning” that actually act in tandem as a smokescreen for teaching our students very little:
Students have little knowledge, for example, as to how the Federal Reserve System works; why people do what they do according to Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Abraham Maslow; the doctrinal and cultural difference between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam; what Reconstruction was and why it failed; how the dramatic phrasings of August Wilson soar to Shakespearean heights ; and how Einstein’s calculations pertinent to the universe challenge the earthbound laws of Newtonian physics.
This is the context in which readers should reject the ruminations of Wedl, Haugen, and Ronneburg. Their references to “customized student learning,” flexible rather than universal standards, multiple measure assessments rather than objective testing, empowered teachers, and autonomous school sites are verbal constructions that resonate pleasantly in many ears but echo the insipid pronouncements of education professors.
We need not less, but more centralization, of the sort that has made students in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Finland the most knowledgeable in the world. We need commonly shared knowledge bases that will give all students lives of cultural enrichment, professional satisfaction, and civic preparation. We must have objective testing, which is the fairest and most dependable way to measure student learning. We need universally well-trained teachers able to impart vital knowledge and skill sets to all students. And we need locally centralized school systems that must be surrogates for national centralization in a nation fixated on local control.
In this age of cybernetic friends communicating in physical isolation and alienated people perpetrating violence on their fellows, know that we need informed citizens interacting in the context of community.
Know that the fanciful ruminations of Ted Kolderie acolytes cannot give our students what they need in commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community.
Know, most importantly, that only via commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community can students go forth to thrive both as individually fulfilled human beings and as citizens responsible for the good of all humanity.
In fact, knowledge must be at the core of an excellent education. Critical analysis and a true lifelong love of learning depend on amassing a great deal of knowledge in the course of one's K-12 experiences. Intellectual laziness and a great probability of knowledge deficiency on the part of Ted Kolderie, Dane Smith, Robert Wehl, Jay Haugen, Jeff Ronneburg--- and Earl "Sook" Holdridge in fact drive them to present their vacuous ideas in the name of reform.
I will most likely eventually address Holdridge's notions and claims directly, but for a sense of just how harmful are his feel-good shibboleths, please review the following article, previously posted on this blog on 9 March of this very year 2016 >>>>>
"Excellent Education Is Defined by Student Mastery of Commonly Shared Knowledge--- and, Thus, Beware the Acolytes of Ted Kolderie"
In their article, “The Way to Design Schools So That All Can Succeed” (Star Tribune, March 7, 2016), Robert Wehl, Jay Haugen, and Jeff Ronneburg tout bad ideas that are consistent with those espoused by professors in our terrible departments, colleges, and schools of education; and that emanate directly from Ted Kolderie, whose vapid notions often appear on these pages. They should be recognized for their vacuity as a guide to the overhaul of K-12 education.
First consider the meaning of an excellent education and what actually prevents our students from receiving the education that should be theirs as human beings in community with others.
Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting well-defined knowledge and skill sets in the liberal, industrial, and technological arts to students of all demographic descriptors in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.
An excellent teacher is a professional of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When our K-12 students go across the stage at graduation, their brains should be alive with commonly shared knowledge that is their human inheritance. From their K-5 years forward, all students should especially gain a bevy of information in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, English usage, the fine arts, and world languages. From the middle school years (grades 6-8) forward, student knowledge and skill sets should include those pertinent to industrial arts such as plumbing, auto mechanics, carpentry, electrical circuitry, and construction; and those germane to the use and application of computer and electronic technology.
But for at least four decades, professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education have espoused a “constructivist” approach to learning that focuses on immediate student interest in the context of that person’s individual life experiences. Education professors devalue knowledge as defined by well-defined, sequentially learned, commonly shared knowledge and skill sets. One can always look up that sort of knowledge, they say, with the help of classroom presences functioning as information “facilitators,” rather than as true teachers.
These same education professors give us K-5 teachers whose programs are the least rigorous on college and university campuses; such teachers have very little subject area knowledge. Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines; but the standards for licensure are low, and the system is rigged to impel them toward master’s degrees in education, rather than in the subject areas that they teach. Education departments, schools, and colleges are “cash cows” for universities.
Thus it is that education professors promote the shibboleths of “critical thinking” and “life-long learning” that actually act in tandem as a smokescreen for teaching our students very little:
Students have little knowledge, for example, as to how the Federal Reserve System works; why people do what they do according to Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Abraham Maslow; the doctrinal and cultural difference between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam; what Reconstruction was and why it failed; how the dramatic phrasings of August Wilson soar to Shakespearean heights ; and how Einstein’s calculations pertinent to the universe challenge the earthbound laws of Newtonian physics.
This is the context in which readers should reject the ruminations of Wedl, Haugen, and Ronneburg. Their references to “customized student learning,” flexible rather than universal standards, multiple measure assessments rather than objective testing, empowered teachers, and autonomous school sites are verbal constructions that resonate pleasantly in many ears but echo the insipid pronouncements of education professors.
We need not less, but more centralization, of the sort that has made students in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Finland the most knowledgeable in the world. We need commonly shared knowledge bases that will give all students lives of cultural enrichment, professional satisfaction, and civic preparation. We must have objective testing, which is the fairest and most dependable way to measure student learning. We need universally well-trained teachers able to impart vital knowledge and skill sets to all students. And we need locally centralized school systems that must be surrogates for national centralization in a nation fixated on local control.
In this age of cybernetic friends communicating in physical isolation and alienated people perpetrating violence on their fellows, know that we need informed citizens interacting in the context of community.
Know that the fanciful ruminations of Ted Kolderie acolytes cannot give our students what they need in commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community.
Know, most importantly, that only via commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community can students go forth to thrive both as individually fulfilled human beings and as citizens responsible for the good of all humanity.
Jun 1, 2016
Students Living in the Depths of Poverty Ascend to the Stratosphere of the Sublime Via the Power of Shakespeare
On a recent Sunday afternoon, after I had attended services at my church (pastor Jerry McAfee’s New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in North Minneapolis), I drove over to the East Side of St. Paul for a scheduled meeting with Evelyn Patterson (data privacy pseudonym, as with other names in this article), the mother of Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1), and the significant other of Marcel Gifford. I have chronicled my eight-year relationship with this economically and functionally challenged family in other articles posted on this blog.
This had been a particularly rough week for the family. Evelyn has struggled for years with many mental issues and demons from her past. A decade ago, her mother died just as a rapprochement had begun to develop between the two after many years of estrangement, a separation that had robbed Evelyn of her birth mother during the critical years of late childhood and adolescence. Evelyn’s maternal grandmother filled the role with reasonable rectitude, in a motif familiar to many African American families in the course of the last three decades. But the absence of her mother had been ever painful. The loss of her mother just as they were getting to know each other again seemed another cruel blow delivered by some hovering oppressive force in a life that had also known two incestuous rapes, one by a maternal uncle, the other by her own father.
The tenth anniversary of her mother’s death had occurred just eight days before my arrival on this Sunday afternoon. The event brought an array of disturbing memories to the fore, and the intervening days had been tumultuous for the family. Evelyn had manifested her deep sorrow and heightened rage by lashing out at Damon, Javon, and Marcel. She skipped her medications numerous times. Her behavior was erratic and largely irrational. The responses her outburst elicited from her sons and Marcel unfortunately matched her own angry verbiage and occasional physical ferocity.
Riding the turbulent waves of a week gone wrong, Evelyn signaled to me that she could not make our 2:00 PM Sunday meeting for the sort of academic session that she and I had been maintaining for several weeks, according to a plan to prepare Evelyn for community college and the pursuit of a degree (first associates, eventually bachelor’s) in business. I had been constantly on the phone with Evelyn, Damon, and Marcel throughout the week, and I had made numerous trips to their apartment to quell some disturbance. I love these people. They trust me. There has been too little love and trust in their lives. My words have moral suasion:
I finally convinced Evelyn to keep our scheduled 2:00 PM academic session.
The power of Shakespeare very well may be the transformative force in a life that badly needs transformation:
I picked Evelyn up at her apartment in East St. Paul at 2:00 PM and drove the fifteen minutes back to New Salem, where I hold my 17 one-on-one and small group academic sessions spread over seven days a week. We settled in for an hour of multi-step algebraic equations and workaday applications. Then we turned to reading.
For three academic years now my students and I have performed one of my compressed versions of classic Shakespearean plays, using the original Elizabethan language of the bard, with each play shortened for presentation in a 30-minute format. Over these three academic years, spanning 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015, we have performed King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth; and we have attended performances of these dramas at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona (Minnesota) and at the Guthrie and Jungle theaters in Minneapolis. At this year’s Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, the students and I will perform my compressed version of Julius Caesar.
Damon, Javon, and Evelyn are all my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. This is Damon’s seventh year in the program; Javon has officially been my student for two years, following my observation of his entrance into the world and experiences as a pre-kindergartener. For Evelyn, this is her first year of participation, just as our reading of my 12-page version of Julius Caesar is her first ever introduction to the foremost master of the English language.
Evelyn loves the majesty of the language and marveled that, with a few key definitions and explanations by me, she could understand the text entirely. The themes of human fickleness, the treachery of erstwhile friends, and the mixed motives that guide human action resonated for one whose life has known all of these.
Evelyn knew that Damon is playing the part of Brutus, and that little Javon is playing the role of Strato, the military assistant to Brutus who holds the sword upon which he runs fatally when the battle at Philippi is lost to Antony, Octavius, and their lesser partner, Lepidus. Shy and even agoraphobic as she is, Evelyn brimmed with pride when I suggested that she take a small role as one of the citizens whose evanescent loyalties go quickly from Brutus to Antony when the crafty oratory of the latter moves the crowd sympathetically to the cause of striking at Caesar’s assassins.
Evelyn had arrived in my car sullen and very close to clinical despondence. Her mood, though, was transformed by her successes in algebra and, especially, the revelation that she could read Shakespeare with alacrity and could feel the emotional power of these transcendent literary works with such resonance to her own life experience.
This is the power of education.
This is the capacity of knowledge to transform lives.
This is the transcendent ability of K-12 education to elevate the lives of people who have known mainly the darkness of prejudice, abuse, and failure, into the radiance that is acceptance, empathy, and success. When properly taught, the language and themes of Shakespeare reach people of all demographic descriptors, especially those who have felt the tragedy in their own lives that they witness in dramas by the master.
Evelyn knows that she and her family can always depend on my love and my teaching. And part of that is knowing the majesty of Shakespeare, with all of the power of great literature to transform lives often lived behind the restrictive borders of the banal into experiences in this one earthly sojourn that ascend to the Sublime.
This had been a particularly rough week for the family. Evelyn has struggled for years with many mental issues and demons from her past. A decade ago, her mother died just as a rapprochement had begun to develop between the two after many years of estrangement, a separation that had robbed Evelyn of her birth mother during the critical years of late childhood and adolescence. Evelyn’s maternal grandmother filled the role with reasonable rectitude, in a motif familiar to many African American families in the course of the last three decades. But the absence of her mother had been ever painful. The loss of her mother just as they were getting to know each other again seemed another cruel blow delivered by some hovering oppressive force in a life that had also known two incestuous rapes, one by a maternal uncle, the other by her own father.
The tenth anniversary of her mother’s death had occurred just eight days before my arrival on this Sunday afternoon. The event brought an array of disturbing memories to the fore, and the intervening days had been tumultuous for the family. Evelyn had manifested her deep sorrow and heightened rage by lashing out at Damon, Javon, and Marcel. She skipped her medications numerous times. Her behavior was erratic and largely irrational. The responses her outburst elicited from her sons and Marcel unfortunately matched her own angry verbiage and occasional physical ferocity.
Riding the turbulent waves of a week gone wrong, Evelyn signaled to me that she could not make our 2:00 PM Sunday meeting for the sort of academic session that she and I had been maintaining for several weeks, according to a plan to prepare Evelyn for community college and the pursuit of a degree (first associates, eventually bachelor’s) in business. I had been constantly on the phone with Evelyn, Damon, and Marcel throughout the week, and I had made numerous trips to their apartment to quell some disturbance. I love these people. They trust me. There has been too little love and trust in their lives. My words have moral suasion:
I finally convinced Evelyn to keep our scheduled 2:00 PM academic session.
The power of Shakespeare very well may be the transformative force in a life that badly needs transformation:
I picked Evelyn up at her apartment in East St. Paul at 2:00 PM and drove the fifteen minutes back to New Salem, where I hold my 17 one-on-one and small group academic sessions spread over seven days a week. We settled in for an hour of multi-step algebraic equations and workaday applications. Then we turned to reading.
For three academic years now my students and I have performed one of my compressed versions of classic Shakespearean plays, using the original Elizabethan language of the bard, with each play shortened for presentation in a 30-minute format. Over these three academic years, spanning 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015, we have performed King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth; and we have attended performances of these dramas at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona (Minnesota) and at the Guthrie and Jungle theaters in Minneapolis. At this year’s Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, the students and I will perform my compressed version of Julius Caesar.
Damon, Javon, and Evelyn are all my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative. This is Damon’s seventh year in the program; Javon has officially been my student for two years, following my observation of his entrance into the world and experiences as a pre-kindergartener. For Evelyn, this is her first year of participation, just as our reading of my 12-page version of Julius Caesar is her first ever introduction to the foremost master of the English language.
Evelyn loves the majesty of the language and marveled that, with a few key definitions and explanations by me, she could understand the text entirely. The themes of human fickleness, the treachery of erstwhile friends, and the mixed motives that guide human action resonated for one whose life has known all of these.
Evelyn knew that Damon is playing the part of Brutus, and that little Javon is playing the role of Strato, the military assistant to Brutus who holds the sword upon which he runs fatally when the battle at Philippi is lost to Antony, Octavius, and their lesser partner, Lepidus. Shy and even agoraphobic as she is, Evelyn brimmed with pride when I suggested that she take a small role as one of the citizens whose evanescent loyalties go quickly from Brutus to Antony when the crafty oratory of the latter moves the crowd sympathetically to the cause of striking at Caesar’s assassins.
Evelyn had arrived in my car sullen and very close to clinical despondence. Her mood, though, was transformed by her successes in algebra and, especially, the revelation that she could read Shakespeare with alacrity and could feel the emotional power of these transcendent literary works with such resonance to her own life experience.
This is the power of education.
This is the capacity of knowledge to transform lives.
This is the transcendent ability of K-12 education to elevate the lives of people who have known mainly the darkness of prejudice, abuse, and failure, into the radiance that is acceptance, empathy, and success. When properly taught, the language and themes of Shakespeare reach people of all demographic descriptors, especially those who have felt the tragedy in their own lives that they witness in dramas by the master.
Evelyn knows that she and her family can always depend on my love and my teaching. And part of that is knowing the majesty of Shakespeare, with all of the power of great literature to transform lives often lived behind the restrictive borders of the banal into experiences in this one earthly sojourn that ascend to the Sublime.
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