Bob Walser, who in November 2016 narrowly edged Josh Reimnitz
for the District #4 seat that the latter had held for four years on the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, is the most objectionable occupant
of a generally terrible compositional membership of that board.
Walser repeatedly wastes school board meeting time with trivial
thoughts, and much of what comes out of his mouth is harmful in the
extreme. Walser has deeply imbibed the
poisonous ideological brew concocted by education professors, who occupy the
lowest rung of status on any college campus.
These putative education professionals
spout rhetoric devaluing the knowledge that they themselves lack, sending forth
teachers severely deficient in knowledge and skill sets who cannot possibly
give our students the knowledge and skill that their teachers do not possess.
Remember now that Amanda Ripley, in her insightful, The
Smartest Kids in the World (and How They Got That Way) (2013), provides
a lively summative account of facts available for many years now regarding the
superiority of East Asian educational systems and others across the
international landscape.
After reviewing the superiority of systems in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Shanghai (China), Ripley ultimately follows
three American exchange students to the high-performing nations of Finland and,
South Korea, and to Poland, whose students have been on a steady academic
ascent in the course of the last twenty years.
Ripley cites several factors that abet elevated academic
performance of students in these three nations.
These nations all have the following characteristics:
1) rigorous national curricula;
,
2) excellent teachers,
selected from the top of their high school classes for training in prestigious,
academically demanding programs specific to their fields;
3) a lack of emphasis on
sports;
4) parents who are
engaged in the academic lives of their children rather than PTA-type activities
and athletic boosterism;
5) students who as a
matter of internalized ethic know that perseverance and diligence are more
important than natural intelligence or ability;
6) whole-class
instruction;
7) grade by grade
coherence of curriculum;
8) class sizes that are
large by the standards of the school systems of the United States;
9) an assumption that all
students can succeed.
With regard to the latter aspect of the most successful educational
systems in the world, the children of immigrant populations and economically
impoverished populations of these nations do well, because the systems are designed
to serve all students in uniformly excellent schools, each institution staffed
by well-paid and high-status teachers who have gained certification in highly
selective teacher-training programs.
Students of these nations regularly far exceed the performance
of students in the United States on the PISA (Program of International Student
Assessment), an exam largely designed by the physicist and educator Andreas
Schleicher, a German by birth who lives in Paris, where the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (the entity that sponsors PISA) is
located. The PISA exam requires a great
deal of factual knowledge, with an emphasis on application and critical
analysis. In placing a great deal of
importance on critical analysis and creative application, Schleicher of his own
convictions constructed an assessment that answers the typical criticism of
those who oppose standardized tests and are quick to offer excuses for the
abysmal performance of students in the United States.
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Bob Walser is wont to voice the ideological expostulations of
education professors that run counter to the features noted in the most successful
public school systems in the world.
Walser probably does not understand for how long we in the
United States have had to endure the education-professor-speak that he delivers
as if the verbiage-primed robot of these campus low-lifes.
Our educational dilemma in the
United States is traceable to the lamentable postulations of William Heard
Kilpatrick, who at Teachers College of Columbia University from the 1920s
perpetrated the anti-knowledge rhetoric that has ruined generations of
teachers, victims of the erroneous expostulations of education professors. Kilpatrick himself was under the influence of
19th century Romanticism, with its unscientific but firm faith in
the potential of the unfettered individual to live well if unmarred by the
strictures of society.
Thus do we in the United States cling to a putatively
“progressive” philosophy of education that has had decisively unprogressive
consequences. Those in our education
establishment and reform camps alike emphasize individualization or student and
teacher generated curriculum based on personal interest, rather than on the
commonly provided knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that has moved
Finland, South Korea, Poland and a bevy of other nations far ahead of students
the United States on such objective measures as the PISA exam.
We in the United States should take our cue from Meiji japan
(1868-1912) and from Taiwan during the latter’s remarkable economic ascent of
the 1965-2000 era. These geopolitical
forces each surveyed the world for the best available approaches to
governmental policy, catalyzing unprecedented advances in health and
education. Were we in the United States
to do that, we could make everyone, including the American
exceptionalists, happy by designing a system of K-12 public education that even
students, families, and the general public in Finland, South Korea, Shanghai,
Taiwan, and Singapore would view with awe.
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Readers should remember that in the November 2016 elections, Nelson
Inz, the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education member from District #5,
endorsed Walser’s candidacy against that of Reimnitz, a former Teach for
America participant who discerns many of the problems of the education system
of the United States and understands the international context given above.
Hence, Inz is deeply implicated in the abomination that is
Walser’s presence on the current board. Unless
we can exert enough pressure on Walser to resign, or unless by some fortunate
turn of events he should decide to do so, we will have to endure both Walser’s
silliness and his errant rhetoric for another three years. But we will have the chance in November 2018
to oust Inz, along with Rebecca Gagnon and Don Samuels--- in the meantime evaluating the candidacies of
Jenny Arneson and Siad Ali.
The
K-12 Revolution that will sweep the halls of the Davis Center (central offices
of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway) will bring
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and thoroughly retrained teachers
to students who have been awaiting an excellent education for a very long time.
As we
bring that overhaul for excellence, we will redesign the Minneapolis Public Schools
(MPS) as a model for the locally centralized school district, and will place on
the MPS Board of Education members who are aware of the international models
for excellence and supporters of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
Nelson
Inz will be gone, and Walser will be overwhelmed with observations as to his
foolishness and the insidiousness of his views.
