Introduction to Lyrical Observations on the Fate of Rebecca Gagnon, Ed Graff, and Other Decision-Makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools

The poems that you will read by scrolling on down this blog most recently total six in number.  These expressions in verse offer in lyrical form a multiplicity of observations on the state of public education from the viewpoint of the K-12 revolutionary.  These poems are in a thematic range consistent with prior entries that include “The Entreaty of Melissa McCoy,” “Don’t Know Much About Nothin’ At All,” and “Education.”

 

But the most recent poems entered on this blog focus more acutely on Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff and MPS Board of Education Chair Rebecca Gagnon.  I had been trending more positive on the policies and future prospects for Ed Graff, but he has recently given me new cause for concern;  Gagnon is an impediment to academic improvement at the Minneapolis Public Schools and must be given notice by the public for termination in her position during the next voting cycle.  

 

And these two are just salient representatives of the woes that beset public education, with the Minneapolis Public Schools an iteration of the locally centralized school district, the leaders of whom preside over such terrible academic results for students in the United States.  There is no one on the current MPS school board who inspires much confidence.  In particular, we must work assiduously for the ouster of Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Bob Walser , and Kerryjo Felder in the relevant election cycles;  and we should be monitoring the performances of Jenny Arneson, Don Samuels, and Ira Jourdain---  all of whom have some potential to acquire the wisdom of the Japanese oligarchs on the Tokugawa-Meiji divide, who gain reference in the pages below.  Of the current membership, as matters stand right now, only Siad Ali serves a clearly useful purpose, in this case commendable service to his Somali community;  Mr. Ali also demonstrates a willingness to listen, learn, and respond to incisive critical comment.

 

With specific reference to the lyrical observations given most immediately as you scroll on down this blog, please note these introductory comments:

 

In “National Debt,” I urge readers to consider the cost that we have borne by failing to apologize for abuse perpetrated on members of our populace, to whom we must now express our contrition and our regret by defining and imparting the excellence of K-12 public education that we have never come close to offering most people in the United States.     

 

In “The Ancien K-12 Regime is Doomed,” I compare the current leadership at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and by extension the leadership of locally centralized public school districts throughout the United States, to those monarchical regimes that sat smugly protecting the prerogatives of aristocratic privilege, so isolated from the general public that revolutions overwhelmed them before they even had time to consider the danger that would soon envelope them.  I specifically urge Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff and Board of Education Chair Rebecca Gagnon to consider lessons from the Japanese oligarchs (who superintended the quite remarkable Tokugawa-Meiji transition), or go the way of their less adroit Romanov, Stewart, Bourbon, and Manchu counterparts.       

                                                                               

In “Last Gasp of the K-12 Monarchy,” I allude to the would-be king and queen mentioned above, catching them in that moment of quiet doom when presumed normality became startling reality.                                 

In “Face of Our Time,” I begin with an image from one of our most abhorrent social phenomena to assert the harm that our terrible institutions of public education heaps on our precious young people. 

 

And in “Illusions of Power in the Tower,” I further advance the thematic comparison of holders of petty power succumbing to the revolutionary activism of an abused public, seemingly inert, now assertively converting potential energy into kinetic expropriation of the expropriators.                               

 

Undergirding these lyrical observations is the conviction that by successfully waging the K-12 revolution we will excavate the foundation of our most pressing domestic dilemmas and replace that decaying lower layer with a new base upon which an unprecedentedly high quality of life can ensue.  These observations are consistent, then, with the conviction that has driven my writing in two nearly complete books, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect; and Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  These exhaustive works of research represent my dual programmatic approach to the K-12 Revolution, the one examining in penetrating detail the elements of our current system of public education that make the product so wretched;  the second detailing the knowledge and skill sets that will provide academic excellence in the model of the locally centralized school district that we will observe in the transformed Minneapolis Public Schools.    

 

Please, then, carefully read the following poems that provide lyrical insight into the problems of and the prospects for K-12 education in the locally centralized school district, with specific reference to the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Know then that in the United States, where the mantra of local control abides, all meaningful change must take place in our locally centralized school districts.

 

Then, if you care and can, preferably commit to the necessary course of action yourself;  secondarily, follow and firmly support those working to replacing the ancien regime of public education with a system that will provide cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction to all citizens, whatever their historical and demographic descriptors.