Reflections on the Woeful World Cafe Event of Thursday, 23 February 2017

I had a busy day in Minneapolis on 23 February 2017, working very productively with Grade 3 Aniya Robinson  (data privacy pseudonym) as she continues to master at a very high level the material necessary for her first experience with the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and with Grade 7 Markesha Reynolds (data privacy pseudonym) on algebraic equations---  then going over to something called a "World Café" event, sponsored jointly by the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and the Richfield Public Schools (RPS).

 

I didn't know exactly what this was going to be upon arrival.   My experience with a "World Café" has been a live music show I catch on NPR (IPR) in Iowa featuring very interesting musical acts playing for a sophisticated and appreciative audience.  This event, save perhaps for the fact that we were grouped at tables and interacting with each, was not so very similar:  The acts, in a manner of speaking, were talking heads from MPS and RPS introducing the event and posing three questions for discussion;  the audience was a mix of parents, school personnel, and in general an audience that did not match the sophistication of those of the NPR/IPR World Café.

 

The questions posed were as follows:

 

1) Describe your vision of an equitable, integrated, and excellent education.   

 

2)  As you think about the challenges we face to build an equitable, integrated, and excellent education for all students, what is at the heart of the matter for you?

 

3)  (Two-part question)

 

What are the most urgent changes we need to make to be successful in our work?

What barriers do we need to move out of the way so that our work has the chance to be successful?

 

We moved to a different table as each new question was posed.

 

I organized each of my responses around the critical matters in my five-point program for the K-12 Revolution:  1) curriculum, 2) teacher training, 3) tutoring for students functioning below grade level, 4) greatly expanded outreach with directly rendered and referred services to struggling families, and 5) paring of the central bureaucracy.  Veteran readers of this blog can surmise the essence of my responses to the questions, using these five points as referents.  

 

There was an intelligent participant who happened by coincidence to be in the third group, a parent with children at Lyndale K-5 and Washburn High School who is on a citizen curriculum review committee, has heard me speak at meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, and has contacted me on matters pertinent to curriculum.  The administration at Lyndale K-5 uses a Core Knowledge curriculum on which this man and I are in agreement as to efficacy;  and we are simpatico on many matters pertinent to a knowledge-intensive education.

 

Most other participants offered diffuse responses that showed little knowledge of educational philosophy and featured a lot of expressed concern for matters such as lack of staff diversity and lagging ethnic integration, without any connection to the core components of an excellent education.   

 

To this revolutionary leftist, there was a lot of hippy-dippy white liberalism in all of this, and such sentiments and expressed concern continued with comments in the aftermath: 

 

The first commenter dissed standardized testing, with the hackneyed "can't capture what a child knows on a test in a given day" mantra;  the second said that we should be teaching more world peace and not be so concerned with falling behind other nations in science. 

 

I kid you not on that latter comment.  The person was so naive and earnest, I fought hard not to laugh out loud.

 

I was the third commenter, telling people with regard to the first of those comments to go to the Minnesota Department of Education website, check out (for example) the Grade 5 MCAs for the Item Sampler for mathematics covering material that looks like, yup, what a student should know at that level;  and for reading note that the passages are, yup, appropriate as indicators of Grade 5 comprehension.  As to the second of those comments, I mentioned that some knowledge of Sunnis and Shiites;  and the histories of Iraq and Afghanistan;  might help in avoiding policy decisions detrimental to world peace.

 

I marveled throughout this sad exercise in muddled and murky group-talk that the whole event illustrates the lack of professional leadership in K-12 education.  Can you imagine a cardiac surgeon convening a World Café seeking recommendations from the public on techniques and procedures for heart surgery?  Can you imagine an attorney specialist in tort law convening a World Cafe seeking public recommendations on effective approaches for arguing wrongful injury cases?

 

Wow, 

 

Wow.

 

I understand better all the time how we live in a nation with an electorate that dwells in the kind of ignorance capable of electing a Donald Trump as the leader of said nation.           

 

.................................................................................................

 

Meanwhile, an article appeared in the Star Tribune covering a Bush Foundation's (no relation to the Texas-based political Bushes) announcement that it is making $7,000,000 in grants, most of its philanthropic outlay, for programs that promote individualized learning and educational technology.

 

For that latter one, see again my five-point program for the K-12 revolution and many articles riffing on the insights of Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann that a successful democracy requires citizens possessing common knowledge.

 

Or see my next article as you scroll on down this blog.