Understanding the Importance of the Series Focused on the Strange Lexicon of the Education Professor for Evaluating the Academic Program of the Minneapolis Public Schools as Articulated by Ed Graff, Michael Thomas, Cecilia Saddler, Naomi Taylor, and Carey Seeley Dzierzak.

As you scroll on down to the next several articles on this blog, you will read five articles focused on the strange lexicon of the education professor.  This series has enormous implications for understanding the terrible academic program inflicted upon the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

The individuals most responsible for academic programming at the Minneapolis Public Schools are Superintendent Ed Graff;  Chief of Academics, Leadership and Learning Michael Thomas;  Deputy Chief of Academics, Leadership and Learning Cecilia Saddler;  Director of Secondary Education Naomi Taylor;  and Director of Elementary Education Carey Seeley Dzierzak.

 

None of these key articulators of the academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools is an academician or a scholar.

 

All have been trained by education professors.  Graff, Saddler, and Taylor majored in education throughout all of their university-based experiences.  Thomas trained in social work before seeking certifications and degrees in education.  Dzierzak majored in political science and sociology as an undergraduate but then did the entirety of her graduate work in education.  

 

All of these key decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools, then, have heavily imbibed the ideas and terminology utilized by education professors.

 

Remember that the education professor first made her and his appearance on university campuses in the early years of the twentieth century.  Previously, these trainers of teachers had operated out of institutions known as normal schools.  Few people living as the 19^th century turned into the 20^th century had sought education beyond the sixth grade;  a few went through the eighth grade;  a very small percentage went on to high school.  Teachers at grades one through eight stressed reading, fundamental math, and lessons in geography, history, civics, and literature found in books such as the McGuffey readers.  Teachers at the high school level were field specialists who trained student populations aspiring to college and university attendance.

 

Thus, well into the twentieth century, teachers saw themselves as imparters of knowledge in specific subject areas.  Many teachers, especially at the grades one through eight level, were not well-trained, but even they saw themselves as transmitting important knowledge and skill sets to students.

 

But university-based education professors had other ideas. 

 

Now finding themselves surrounded by professorial field specialists with much more knowledge than they, education professors began to stress pedagogy over subject area knowledge, process over content.  Terms such as “teaching the whole child,” “project method,”  and “child-centered education” conveyed in explanation and application the key idea that knowledge does not matter;  rather, education professors stressed the process of learning, with deference to the personality and capabilities of the individual child.  

 

Resonating with 19^th century literary and philosophical Romanticism touting the divine spark within the individual, the doctrines of education professors conveyed a naïve belief that children if left unfettered by their teachers would find their way to the education that they needed. Education professors faced challenges in convincing local parents and teachers to embrace their “progressive” approach to the education, but from the 1960s on their approach became deeply rooted in the locally centralized school districts of the United States.

 

Over time, subject-specific masters and doctoral degrees gave way to graduate degrees in education for those seeking advancement in the school district hierarchy.  At their core, staff at the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway) do not believe in the importance of knowledge.  Students learn very little at grades K-5, and curriculum is weak at grades 6-8 and 9-12.  Only in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses do students have a chance to get a substantive education, but by that time their academic foundation is weak;  and very few teachers have the knowledge to teach AP and IB courses.

 

Michael Thomas, among the group given above, shows promise as an educator who understands the knowledge deficiency and the intellectual damage that education professors have inflicted upon students who have suffered under systems replete with education professor acolytes.  But Graff, Saddler, Taylor, and Dzierzak would have to experience rapid  epiphanies followed by extraordinary academic effort on their own part in order to transform themselves into staff capable of making decisions pertinent to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.

 

Be aware of this situation at the Minneapolis Public Schools as you read the next five articles.

 

Understand how these terms represent the harmful approach of education professors that sends graduates of the Minneapolis Public Schools into the world and onto college and university campuses with so little academic preparation, necessitating remedial education for one-third of those graduates.

 

Please now read on,

 

carefully,

 

angrily,

 

with a commitment to change.