Observations in a Highly Personal Context >>>>> Midweek Missive #404 (X-5) [to my son, Ryan Davison-Reed]

September 30, 2016


My Beloved Ryan---


I write to you today from a place that looks more like a beckoning autumn than was the case one week ago at that season's advent.


These last couple of days have featured highs near 70 degrees Fahrenheit, dry atmosphere, and radiant sunshine--- a very welcome assemblage of climatic factors, given the extraordinary amount of rain that we in Minnesota had in the now officially past summer. What I had been noting in anecdotal conversation with many folks is now headed for meteorological confirmation: This has been the wettest summer since Barbara and I arrived close to the North Woods lo now thirty-four years ago in the summer of 1982. Yesterday was one of those days that I have described as reaching out and giving everyone a big hug--- a day when good things seem magnificent and any challenges seem much more manageable. Since my day was filled with many good things, the day was one of those that might allow one to imagine that this is, in the parlance of Dr. Pangloss of Voltaire's prescient imagination, "the best of all possible worlds."


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But we may have to wait awhile for the best-world scenario to gain manifestation.


I marvel with virtually every step I take at how Malcolm X's dictum that "the chickens are coming home to roost" seems to be more pertinent now than when he uttered that comment at the assassination of JFK in 1963.


>>>>>   African Americans are declaring loud and clear that they are mad as Hades and they aren't gonna take it any more.


>>>>>   Donald Trump continues to appeal to far too many (albeit in reduced number, post-debate [see below]) ignorant or fact-indifferent folk, thereby revealing the appalling ignorance and anti-intellectualism that invest far too much of our society, detailed in Rick Shenkman's book, Just How Stupid Are We?, and summarized again in a recent post on my blog.


>>>>>   And decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) seem determined to press on with their hopeless Acceleration 2020 Plan amidst failure to grasp the principles relevant to knowledge-intensive curriculum, thoroughly retrained teachers, aggressive remedial instruction, family and community outreach, and central bureaucratic cutting that will be needed first to get all students up to grade level and then to move toward genuine excellence in education.


Because of the level of anger that I am accumulating regarding the cluelessness of decision-makers at MPS, I am rapidly moving toward a position of opposition to the funding referendum that will be on the ballot come 8 November. Officials at MPS, both central bureaucracy administrators and members of the MPS Board of Education, clearly need a wake-up call, with the signal to school board members that they took far too long to opt for Ed Graff as superintendent, in making that selection got a sturdy proponent of education-professor vacuity, and have no hope given present policy to achieve anywhere close to the excellence of education that our students must have.                                    


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As usual, these observations contrast strikingly with the joy I take in my interactions with students and families in the New Salem Educational Initiative.


I have reams of requests from folks seeking to enter the program and have been able to accommodate quite a few new participants. Abiding relationships with student and family participants are amazing. Many an emergency situation has been addressed, sometimes in the context of midnight calls and my unscheduled visits to quell life-storms and provide direction toward satisfying resolutions.


I recently posted a bevy of blog articles and published a new edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; recorded a new episode of the television show; and have now moved well into my eleventh chapter (Biology) in writing my fourteen-chapter Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.


What a blessing is mine that I am able to act meaningfully in these ways in the face of all the stark stupidity of the world.                                      


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With regard to the latter, the presidential debate does seem to have moved Nevada and Florida back in Hillary's column, so that the electoral margin would be 300 t0 238 were the election held today. That provides a level of comfort, above the 272 votes that I have indicated as solidly in Hillary's favor.


And then there are you and Barbara, who every day your feet hit the ground prove what life can be for those who hold stores of knowledge in their brains and use this treasure to forward the human enterprise.


Let's make sure that a conversation looms soon, during which we can move further toward a decision as to our mutual trip to Taiwan to see My Love, the most resplendent Professor Reed.


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


Gary