My
students in the New Salem Educational Initiative demonstrate an abiding hunger for knowledge that matches my own,
driving me to accumulate ever more knowledge, and to convey abundant
information about the human past and present to the economically poorest of the
poor in Minneapolis who flock to my instruction.
I am
already making generous use of my advanced draft for Fundamentals of an
Excellent Liberal Arts Education Prior to provide compact courses to my
students in the key subject areas of economics, psychology, political
science, world religions, world history, American history, African
American history, literature, English language usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology,
chemistry, and physics--- concerning which none of which the students who
come to me have very much understanding, even having spent as many as thirteen
years in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Tired
of inevitably having to provide spontaneous mini-courses to deliver necessary
background information on the content of any article or piece of literature that
we might be reading during our two-hour academic sessions in the New Salem
Educational Initiative, I ultimately decided to write the book that would make
the provision of those mini-courses more efficient.
My
students are riveted when we are doing our weekly exercises in
the joy of knowledge. Week after week, I
find that, as in the case of Joshua Williams (data privacy surname--- scroll down to immediately following article)
the have never had such head-spinning two hours of knowledge accumulation as
during our weekly gatherings:
Time
after time, my students, coming from the most economically and functionally
challenged families of Minneapolis, demonstrate a thirst for the knowledge
that I possess and have elevated ability to convey--- as has every young person who has
come into my academic sphere for over forty years.
I will
via my instruction and then in the gift of Fundamentals of an Excellent
Liberal Arts Education satisfy that knowledge-hunger on the part of young
people for the remainder of my days--- and I will exert tremendous
pressure on putative educators at the Minneapolis Public Schools to do the
same.
I am ever
inspired by the extraordinary display of student interest in multiple subject areas,
met by my own interest and instruction, during the remarkable week of Sunday, 2
April through 8 April 2017.
During that
amazing week my students and I covered a tremendous range of skills,
subjects, and items of mentorship. Academically there were upper
elementary mathematics fundamentals; high school trigonometric ratios
and sine, cosine, and tangent values for various radian angle
measures on the unit circle; the African American folktale,
"The People Could Fly"; readings on the lives
and essential contrasting ideas of Isaac Newton and Albert
Einstein; a compact version of homer's Odyssey; lengthy
discussion of the differences between deficit and debt; distinction
between fiscal and monetary policy; close look at a recent federal
budget; technical meaning of economic recession; discussion of the Syria
dilemma and the concomitant problems of Bashar Hafez
al-Assad and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS); analysis of diplomatic and military issues pertinent to
the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, South Korea, and North Korea, with
the danger of pending nuclear capability in the latter (and globally more
generally); and a survey of the map of the world, focusing on the
locations of the above nations, trouble spots, and other areas of the
globe.
To a
person, my many students sought information, understanding, and
asked for more and more and then more again.
Thus doe my
vow strengthen to do what Educators at the Minneapolis Public Schools Do Not--- while exerting enormous pressure on those claiming
to be educators to do what they should do.
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