In this
neighborhood there resides one of the foremost bundlers of donations in
Minnesota, those people capable of getting on the phone and raising money in an
instant for any cause deemed worthy.
Nearby lives the beneficiary of a large family inheritance who is known
for promoting numerous worthy causes, most especially those pertinent to
climate change.
And so it
goes along this stretch of South Girard north of West Franklin, with many
personal and familial stories different in detail, similar in theme.
Some of
these people send their children to those public schools of Minneapolis that
yield the best test scores and ultimately send the most students to
college; the schools are no better than
those on the Northside, and in many cases not as good as Patrick Henry Senior
High School in far North Minneapolis, but the demographic indicators accurately
predict better MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment) and ACT scores; despite serving the poorest students no
better than do the more challenged schools of the Northside, these schools of
Lowry Hill and Linden Hills get the reputation for better academic
results. Such schools are adequate for
the aspirations of the upper middle class and wealthy classes, providing some
foundation upon which training under private tutors or around the dinner table
of university graduate parentage can produce those results likely to abet
attendance at first-tier colleges and universities.
But many of
these people residing in the neighborhood north of the West Franklin-South
Girard junction pay lip service in support of the public schools while sending
their children to the private schools Blake, Breck, and St. Paul Academy. Many of these people are good hippy-dippy
liberals who voted for Betsy
Hodges or
her opponent Mark Andrew in the last mayoral election, who dutifully send Mark
Dayton and DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) members to important political
positions, and as strong supporters of Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis
Federation of Teachers fancy themselves advocates for public education.
Thus do
those near West Franklin and South Girard manifest their shallow understanding
of K-12 education:
The DFL and
the national Democratic Party are no better than the Republican Party on issues
of public education. Democrats are
bought and paid for by teachers’ unions and the Republicans place a forlorn
faith in local control and school choice.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans tackle--- and may not have the wit to tackle--- the core problems vexing public education: abominable teacher training, an abased
education professor ideology, and the resulting knowledge-poor curriculum and mediocre
teacher quality.
Yet on the
upper middle classes surge with their hippy-dippy liberal lives, voting for
progressive candidates, raising funds for good causes, mugging for photo shots
at socialite fundraisers, doing the occasional stint in a food line, or even
going off to New Orleans, Haiti, or Central America as two-week saviors of the masses--- all while maintaining their fondness for imposing
homes and a plethora of material trinkets.
So it is
that they continue sending their children to private schools and hiring private
tutors while professing support for public education, posing as defenders of
the teaching establishment, and dutifully voting for those liberal Democrats
who are better (from my perspective as a leftist revolutionary) on most issues than
Republicans. But with each vote for a
DFL candidate, each production of a governor such as Dayton, for every instance
of faith placed in the frivolous promises of a Betsy Hodges, each hope that R.
T. Rybak will do what he never did as mayor, the scions of the upper middle and
wealthy classes demonstrate their cluelessness on K-12 issues.
Scions of
the upper middle and wealthy classes have absolutely no experience with what it
means to awake to shots in the night, police and fire trucks racing nightly
down one’s residential street, the need to constantly dodge creditors, the
imperative to seek constantly for cheaper housing, the thin line between
survival and doom, the forces of history that have carved out the urban ghetto.
There are many culprits who are complicit in maintaining the
state of public education as manifested in our local iteration, the Minneapolis
Public Schools. Deep in the thought
processes of the morally sensitive but ingenuous folk who reside north of the West
Franklin and South Girard junction there is a crisis of conscience rooted in their
comfortably complicit culpability for the state of public education.
A resolution of that crisis would abet the cause of community-based
activists who understand the nature of the dilemma in K-12 education and are
prepared to commit their lives to the cause.
In the absence of any epitome leading to such a resolution, we activists
will do what we need to do on our own:
not just talk or vote or
volunteer in do-gooder
fashion but to act to
induce fundamental change.
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