A Note to My Readers
For the
education establishment, including those at the Minneapolis Public Schools such
as Superintendent Ed Graff, Deputy Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin, and
Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Macarre Traynham, “critical
thinking” and “lifelong learning” are mere shibboleths that have no grounding
in reality. They are mantras, learned
from those intellectual university campus lightweights--- education professors--- who have vitiated K-12 education for decades,
denying students the knowledge-rich education that they deserve.
I have
demonstrated on these pages, and am emphasizing in my nearly complete book, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect that the facts pertinent to the university-based
training of these decision-makers reveals little of academic substance, that
their actions indicate that they do not welcome critical analysis of their own
processes, and that their personal knowledge base is slim for those who claim to be
proponents of lifelong learning.
Meanwhile,
many gadflies in the putative education change crowd (witness Ted Kolderie, Jay
Haugen, Jeff Ronneberg, Lisa Snyder, Les Fujitake, and Lars Esdal) ironically
cling to the same outworn sloganeering, placing a technological cloak on their
current iterations of education professor-speak.
Thus it is
that I present to my readers just one of many of my daily exercises of critical
analysis and lifelong learning. Even as
I am on the throes of completing another book, Fundamentals of an Excellent
Liberal Arts Education, which is powerful testimony to my lifetime of
learning and features abundant critical analysis; I remain active in my formal Ph. D area of
scholarship focused on East Asia, especially on Taiwan.
Please read
now a summary of a talk that I will be giving on 25 March 2017 to my friends at
the Reading Yams group at the University of Minnesota. This wonderful group has asked me to speak,
along with another learned presenter, on that day. There is a great deal of critical analysis
and ongoing learning apparent in such gatherings that put the likes of those
infesting the education establishment and too many of those in the education
change crowd to shame.
Here take
insight into my ongoing life as a critical analyst and lifelong seeker of
knowledge:
Gary Marvin Davison
Description of Topic for Reading Yams Talk
on 25 March, with Professional and Personal Information
PART ONE
Description of Topic for Reading Yams Talk
on 25 March
My talk on
25 March will assert the case for the national uniqueness of Taiwan from a
historical perspective. I will present
an overview of Taiwanese history, and in the course of that presentation I will
indicate the unique and formative experiences of the Taiwanese people, from the
arrival of Austronesian people about 4,000 BCE forward. Subsequent to coverage of the entry of these yuanzhumin
or yuanzhu minzu, I will proceed to an analysis of the impact of
the Dutch, Zhang family, Qing, Japanese, and Guomindang (Kuomintang) periods of
control.
I will argue
that with the brilliant superintending of democratization by Li Teng-hui, the
creative aspiration for self-government by the Taiwanese people, which had lain
like a volcano beneath the surface of these periods of external control, burst
into the open and gave life to an assertion of national consciousness
that will endure, now and in the near future as the expression of de
facto nationhood, and in the course of time as the spirit of a de
jure and internationally recognized independent nation.
My comment
at the end of many of my works is the following:
If
the Taiwanese people should ever declare independence, such a declaration could
only be dishonored through the force of arms, under the watchful eye of an
international community that chooses to side with military might over
historical right.
PART TWO
Personal and Professional Information
Gary Marvin
Davison was born in 1951 in Dallas, Texas, USA, and graduated from high school
in Houston, Texas, after short periods of familial residence in Missouri and
Arkansas.
He received
his B. A. in political science, with other concentrations in history and
psychology, from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, in
1973. He received his M.A. in Chinese
history from the University of Iowa in 1979;
and his Ph. D. from the University of Minnesota in 1993.
Dr. Davison
has in the course of those years of academic training, and in the aftermath of
attaining the doctorate, taught in a variety of situations, emphasizing work
with inner city youth but also teaching in a prison, in a rural high school,
and for a total of five years in the lecture halls of the University of Iowa
and the University of Minnesota when pursuing graduate degrees at those
institutions.
Gary has
lived for three periods (1980-1981, 1985, and 1988-1990) in Taiwan and has
returned for prolonged visits in 1995, 1998, 2003, and very recently, in
December 2016. During the 1980-1981
phase, he taught English as a Second Language;
and during 1988-1990 he gave lectures using the medium of Mandarin
Chinese for the Fulbright Foundation, conveying information useful for
Taiwanese students aspiring to attend graduate school in the United States.
During this
period of 1988-1990, Dr. Davison lived for a year in Taipei (son Ryan
Davison-Reed was born at Taiwan Adventist Hospital near the end of the Year of
the Dragon, on 30 January 1989) before moving to Tainan City for the second
year. During the months from July 1988
through August 1989, Gary daily rode first his bicycle then his motor scooter to
a village in Guantian Xiang, where he formed great friendships with Taiwanese
farmers and learned about their lives in the context of Taiwan’s rapid economic
development. He also corresponded with
and interviewed Academic Sinica and university scholars and officials at all
levels of governance in Taiwan and collected vast reams of oral and written
material for his dissertation, Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990.
Dr. Davison
has always combined a keen interest in teaching students at the K-12 level with
the training and production of a university scholar.
He has
written numerous books, including the following:
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan (Greenwood Press, 1998 with coauthor [and wife] ,
St. Olaf College Professor Barbara Reed)
A
Short History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger Press, 2003)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited Press, 2004)
The
State of African Americans in Minnesota 2004 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
The
State of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2008)
A
Concise History of African America (Seaburn Press, 2008)
Gary is
currently assembling material for two nearly complete books, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect; and Fundamentals
of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education . Gary has also conducted interviews for the
production of another book, The History of the African American
Community of North Minneapolis.
Dr. Davison
has for twenty-four years served as Director of the New Salem Educational
Initiative, a program of total academic support for economically challenged
youth in North Minneapolis.
Gary avidly
reads scholarly literature and news sources in English and Chinese on matters
pertinent to Taiwan and is contemplating a variety of topics for future works,
including an update of A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence.
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