I
recently returned to Minnesota after a six-week sojourn in Texas, attending to
the affairs of my mom in the aftermath of her death. During that period I read the Dallas
Morning News rather than the Star Tribune, taking note of how the
struggles of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) were very much of
the same character as those of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). This is the reality in the United States,
where problems abide universally, from one urban school district to the
next; in rural, urban, and suburban
areas; and from the pre-K and K-12 years
through the college and university level.
Upon
my return, I went back through all of the issues of the Star Tribune that had
been published while I was away, marveling at the specific examples of the usual
fodder pertinent to education that appears in that publication: the reportorial banality (three-part series,
“Students in flight,” September 17, 20, and 25, 2017); the cluelessness of the editorial board (“More
competition can improve our schools,” October
5, 2017); the opinion pieces either
irrelevant as to focus (Counterpoints of
September 22 [Dale Vaillancourt, “Sure, you can weed out bad schools,
but it starts at home”] and October 23 [Marguerite Mingus, “You call it
‘fleeing’; I call it parent
empowerment”] or absolutely harmful in the case of that penned by Ted Kolderie
(October 11, “It’s not student flight if you exercise choice”).
Before
returning with me to the journalistically insipid or editorially errant pieces
cited above, consider this compact statement of educational excellence and how we
must transform schools:
An
excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum in the liberal, technological,
and vocational arts to students of all demographic descriptors. An excellent
teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical
ability to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors. The institutional conduits of an excellent
education should be the public schools of the locally centralized school
district, wherein all students should receive the same highly specified,
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum through grades K-5 and 6-8 and well
into high school. On the foundation of a
commonly abundant knowledge base, students at grades 11 and 12 should be given
a bevy of options according to individual interest across the liberal,
technological, and vocational arts. At
the level of the locally centralized school district, we need to institute
knowledge-intensive curriculum, train teachers capable of delivering such a
curriculum, allot time and resources each day for specialized study
opportunities (tutoring or academic enrichment) according to student need,
provide services directly or by referral to families struggling with issues of
poverty or dysfunction, and greatly pare the central bureaucracy so as to
capture the resources needed to provide excellent education and the necessary
support services.
Professional
staff at and contributors to the Star Tribune identified in the
articles mentioned above have all failed to embrace the responsibility to
define an excellent education and the excellent teacher. They have failed to envision a scenario
wherein adults would embrace the responsibility to decide collectively what citizens
should know, going forth then to design universally excellent schools. Were we to embark on this mission, students
in the United States would reach Program of International Student Assessment
(PISA) achievement levels in math, science, and reading attained by students in
most East Asian nations and in the nations (Poland, South Korea, Finland)
identified by Amanda Ripley in her revelatory book, The Smartest Kids in the World
(and How They Got That Way), which impart curriculum of uniform
substance and rigor to all students. And
if we followed the approach that I have identified as necessary for the
provision of a fully excellent education, students in the United States would
have nonpareil knowledge and skill sets across the liberal, technological, and
vocational arts.
The
three-part Star Tribune series described an important phenomenon but had
nothing to convey as to the nature of an excellent education, which is what
students and families are purportedly seeking in moving from one district to
the next. Competition does not improve
schools; rather, schools will improve as
conduits of genuinely excellent education when citizens, collectively and with
elevated intentionality, identify the knowledge and values that the human
community wants to bequeath to our children. We cannot just wish that all families will
send forth children prepared to be good students; rather, “common schools” as envisioned by
Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann would impart an excellent education to all
young people, regardless of demographic identifiers, ending cyclical poverty
and abetting the formation of families who understand the nature and importance
of education.
Parental
empowerment to do what one perceives to be good for one’s own child neglects
the responsibility to act as citizen working toward the educational betterment
of all young people.
Universal
educational excellence cannot be attained through “personalized learning” in
the “multisector system” of Kolderie-speak and education professor
verbiage; excellent education can only be achieved via knowledge-intensive
curriculum imparted to all students in universally superior public
schools.
I am
pursuing an array of activities to induce such change in the Minneapolis Public
Schools, so as to make of that district a model for other locally centralized
systems throughout the United States.
Via my direct instruction to students in the New Salem Educational
Initiative; in my blog and academic journal; in my monthly Public Comments at meetings of
the MPS Board of Education; and in my
nearly complete books, one presenting a complete liberal arts curriculum, the
other examining the inner workings of MPS;
I am doing everything I possibly can to induce the change that we need
in the United States toward the realization of the great purposes of public
education: the preparation of students
to live this one earthly sojourn as culturally enriched, civically prepared,
and professionally satisfied citizens.
Via the
creation of such schools and such a citizenry, we can then legitimately aspire
to the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
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