The Abject Ignorance of the American Populace Must Be Rectified Via the Impartation of a Knowledge-Intensive K-12 Education (Second Snippet from >PART THREE: Philosophy< of My New Book >> Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect)

A Note to My Readers

With the placement of this article, I now provide the second of several snippets that you will read from PART THREE:  Philosophy, of my new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect. 

 

In this second snippet from PART THREE, I discuss the costly ignorance of American society and point the way to a better day through the power of an excellent K-12 education.

 
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There is a dominant motif in K-12 Education that has violent impact on the lives of our children, as follows:

 

The call for education reform is received by many as a chance to advocate for innovation that challenges the structure and the competency of the traditional school framework.  But most charter schools are worse than the regular public schools, home schooling has as variable success as there is competency of parents to be teachers, and aside from putting in play the notion of increased parental options, the voucher system has gained little traction.  The notion that measurable results can be achieved with a shift to smaller schools or school communities;  and the idea that designing buildings for fluid spaces offering high-technology and fast-paced activities as a means for boosting student achievement;  have as yet yielded no measurable results.  National programs such as No Child Left Behind, Common Core, and Race to the Top are inevitably destroyed by a combination of political forces from the political left (under the sway of teachers unions and others within the education establishment) and the political right (who object to any federal or national level policy as an assault on local control).

 

This dominant motif that calls for better results, gives rein to many disparate groups for the achievement of student progress, and induces federal government action with the intent to improve student performance has resulted in little progress for our students.  The repetition of a whirlwind of mostly ineffective reformist action amidst competing political forces that vitiate any promising initiatives within the whirlwind---  has violent consequences for our youth and for the citizenry of United States.

 

We fail because very few advocating for reform have a clear conception of an excellent education and little understanding of the quality of teachers needed to impart an excellent education.

 

We fail because people of the United States have a fixation on local control that vitiates any national-level effort.

 

We fail because we have a low level of civic participation in our society, with few people involving themselves in those activities that will be necessary to overhaul K-12 education.

 

This failure has violent consequences:

 

Our young people are knowledge-starved.

 

The result for too many of our youth is a life in which there is dysfunction at home and unsatisfactory experiences at school, which is a terrible place to be:  These prevailing circumstances lead many young people to the life of the street, teenage pregnancy, gang affiliation, violent behavior, and a fast track to prison.

 

The American populace as a whole wanders through life on the basis of a very low cultural aesthetic and limited understanding of the ethical precepts that undergird the wisest among history’s philosophers and theologians.   Lives lived in ignorance and illusion are lives given to violent behavior in Florida, South Carolina, Missouri, everywhere in these United States.

 

There is a better way.

 

There is a better life.

 

There awaits for us a less violent society.

 

In education there is personal fulfillment.

 

In education there is personal control.

 

In education there is altruistic inclination.

 

We must take a stand for knowledge-intensive education imparted by intellectually astute and pedagogically skilled teachers retrained at the central school district level.

 

To induce central school district staff to define excellent education and train the teachers necessary to impart that education, we must act by exerting pressure on officials at the level of the locally centralized school district

 

Failure to do so will leave us with the ignorant, violent, and dissatisfied society that we now have.

 

Success in doing so will yield people who are culturally enriched, civically engaged, and professionally prepared, and who have little reason to want a violent and desultory life.

Rather, as knowledge replaces the abject ignorance of the American populace, citizens will have every reason to want to live as fulfilled individuals and community participants for whom violence is abhorrent and life is a magnificent gift to be treasured, honored, perfected.