The Ambitious Twelve Months Ahead in the New Salem Educational Initiative

In the next twelve months I intend to exert even more pressure on decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to overhaul curriculum, teaching, and administration so as to impart excellent education to the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.


When the current system is revolutionized, the Minneapolis Public Schools can then offer this particular school district as a model of national and international emulation.


Key to the revolution will be the following >>>>>


 >>>>>   publicizing of the results of my research into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools, with recommendation for the elimination of specific jobs at the central offices of this school district at 1250 West Broadway so as to achieve a 50% reduction in personnel and expenditure in the overladen bureaucracy;


>>>>>   continuance of meetings already begun during the last two academic years with officials of the school district, especially those responsible for curriculum, teacher training (now limited to those who superintend “professional development”), tutoring (now a diffuse and ill-coordinated effort [and lack thereof]), and community outreach--- but also those responsible for data collection, testing and assessment, and administration at the top of the managerial hierarchy;


>>>>>   likely recommendations, based on the results of this research and conferencing, for particularly heavy cuts in the Office of Teaching and Learning (which has been responsible for the low level of teaching and learning) and in the upper administration (most of which can be eliminated, beginning with all six associate superintendents and their salaries totaling $849,000);


>>>>>   vigorous advocacy for the development of Focused Instruction as a conduit for a Core Knowledge curriculum of the type found in the publications of the Core Knowledge Foundation;


>>>>>   similarly assertive advocacy for thorough retraining of teachers at the K-5 level and for the mandatory acquisition of subject-specific masters degrees by teachers providing instruction at grade levels 6-8 and 9-12. This training will result in Masters of Liberal Arts Degrees superintended by the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and master’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., math chemistry, history, English literature, fine arts) acquired by all secondary level teachers. All teachers considered for employment by the school district will spend a full year of internship and gain job offers only upon successful completion of internship as demonstrated by performance.


The fully detailed specifications advocated for curriculum and teacher quality are given in the second and third editions (August and September 2014) of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.


In support of these activities of advocacy, I intend to make numerous writing and speaking initiatives. Most of the writing activities and all of the speaking events will be specifically in line with the program for advocacy and obvious to those reading this communication.


Know, then, that the others in some way pertain to issues of social justice and are also designed to raise funds for the now burgeoning program of the New Salem Educational Initiative.      


Those publication and speaking initiatives, which include those of clear relevance to the overhaul of K-12 education, as well as those advocating for social justice and intending to produce revenue for funding the expanding programmatic efforts of the New Salem Educational Initiative, are as follows.


>>>>>  completely edited and polished final version of the fourteen-chapter Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education;


>>>>>   completion of a twelve-play volume, Twelve Plays from the Bard: A Dozen Dramas from William Shakespeare, compressed with original Elizabethan language for 30-Minute Student Performances (I already have six of these completed, four of which my students have performed at our annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet;


>>>>>   an article, followed by a book, focused on crimes against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DNC)--- a project that I have been asked to take on by Dr. Edwige Mubonzi and Rev. Kubisa Sosthene Muzenende in behalf of Mwendo Congo, a group organized to publicize the rape of and mutilation of women in the DNC by Congolese militia (both pro- and anti- government), militia from Rwanda, DNC government forces, representatives of business interests from the United States and Europe, and (the account of which especially galvanized my own interest) putative peace-keeping forces of the United Nations (including soldiers from the United States);


>>>>>   The K-12 Revolution: Becoming the Democracy That We Imagine Ourselves to Be;


This is the title under which I will give talks of up to one hour (and I could speak longer) as part of a speaking tour that I am now aggressively planning, to start with churches, community organizations, and colleges & universities in Minnesota--- then at my three alma maters of Southern Methodist University (B. A.), University of Iowa (M. A.), and the University of Minnesota (Ph. D.), and at many venues across the nation;


>>>>>   numerous journalistic articles on challenges faced by young people and their families living at the urban core in Minneapolis and other urban centers, and as I travel a bevy of other articles based on observations in Ferguson, Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; Baltimore Maryland; Orlando, Florida; and numerous other communities where calamitous events have induced in my brain numerous contemplations, most of them tied to the notion that if we were to produce a more educated populace, we could avoid much of the fear, folly, and failure that describes our nation and our world at this juncture of history.


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I have already utilized material for the first four of these projects, now underway and due for completion in the course of academic year 2015-2016.


One need only consider my simultaneous activities detailed in the pages above for the New Salem Educational Initiative and multiple previously published books to know the work ethic that will make completion of these current projects realizable.


The latter category of journalistic articles will flow naturally from my travels on the speaking tour and as explicitly identified destinations. These are the sorts of articles that have reached 278 in number on my blog and that I tap out in response to any situation I deem important.


What I am planning for the months ahead represents a full onslaught on business as usual at the Minneapolis Public Schools, and by extension at all locally centralized school districts in the United States, for which the Minneapolis Public Schools will serve as model. 


I have planned and continue to plan carefully for the avalanche that is about to tumbled down on K-12 education as previously practiced in the United States.


Think Mao, Gandhi, and Alinsky.


The mission is of paramount importance, the very foundation for making of this nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.


The mission is the most important imaginable.


I am fully dedicated to the cause.