Article #2 >>>>> The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education's Knowledge-Poor Concept of K-12 Education

The contempt for knowledge prevalent among those responsible for the lives of our young people is deeply troubling.


Witness through my lens a disturbing event held in the early evening of Thursday, 10 March 2016"


On this evening, 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 2016) 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 two options, emphasizing in their answers the critical thinking component. The summary of their essential replies is as follows:


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 theretofore made by school board members at what was at that point in March 2016 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]; this academic periodical that 4 you dear subscribers are reading, 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.