The Importance of Being a Scholar for the K-12 Educator

I gave a talk this past Saturday, 25 March, at the University of Minnesota, for a gathering of great new friends from Taiwan, most of them either young students now studying in the USA (predominately in our own state, at the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities), young professionals and scholars making their home in the United States, or middle aged or older immigrants from Taiwan who have thrived economically as professionals in the USA and now identify as Taiwanese Americans.

The group of note is called Reading Yams, which riffs on the shape of Taiwan as yam-like, the fact that the agricultural product of reference has been important in the production structure of the Taiwanese agrarian economy, and the fact that Taiwanese people are avid readers and thirsters after knowledge, the latter quality an admirable trait that the abominably ignorant United States populace would do well to emulate.  

I continue to regard the matter of scholarship for the K-12 educator to be important for readers of this blog to understand.  I have detailed how the level of academic training for those making decisions at the Minneapolis Public Schools is very low, the quest for knowledge limited in the extreme, and thus the influence on our precious young people in Minneapolis deleterious.

The following, which I provided to the Reading Yams group before my talk, provides another summary and update as to my own scholarship, of the kind that would be beneficial for more K-12 educators to possess.

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, Zheng 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 Academia 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.