A Note to My
Readers >>>>>
Most articles
pertinent to K-12 education published in the Star Tribune are mediocre and of tangential importance. Very few articles broach matters of
curriculum and teacher quality that go to the core of the K-12 dilemma. No questioning of Davis Center (Minneapolis
Public Schools central offices, 1250 West Broadway) staff quality or
effectiveness gains coverage in the Star
Tribune. There is an absence of any
mention of educational philosophy or structural impediments preventing the
impartation of an excellent education.
An excellent education is not defined.
Editorial board and staff writers typically resort to generalized
terminology much in the contemporary conversational ether, mere shibboleths
offered in the absence of any genuine understanding of
K-12 education.
Those who write opinion
pieces and secure publication in the Star
Tribune focus on particularistic concerns of the moment but rarely discuss
the most fundamental factors abiding in the education establishment that impede
movement toward K-12 excellence.
Because of the lack
of knowledge betrayed by Star
Tribune staffers, and the particularistic concerns of opinion writers that rarely go to the core of the K-12 dilemma, readers must be ever attentive to subtext and the underlying
issues.
Please now read another article with my interspersed analysis of subtext, this one by Julia Hill & Dana Bennis, in which the authors range themselves against Kersten's opinion piece, "Undisciplined," that also drew Cassellius's reply.
Julia Hill and Dana
Bennis, “Let’s Discuss Race Issues in Schools--- Calmly:
Katherine Kersten’s recent commentary on school discipline brought the
fear, not the facts. It won’t
work--- people know better.” (Star
Tribune, Opinion Exchange, 20 March 2018)
Katherine Kersten’s
contemptible March 18 commentary “Undisciplined” was yet another attempt to
create fear of people of color in order to further dangerous and racist
policies--- in this case a fear of
students of color in order to instill even harsher school discipline policies.
Yet Minnesotans can
see through her scare tactics, her misleading claims and her cherry-picking of
data.
Kersten begins by
making up a false argument: that those
working to reduce racial disparities in
school suspensions believe that racist teachers are to blame. In her mind, there has to be someone to
blame, so rather than teachers she blames the students of color themselves,
allegedly proving her case by selecting a few incidents.
This is the typical
dog whistle meant to portray people of color as either lazy or violent. The truth is there is no one person or group
to blame. Disparities in school
suspensions exist for the same reasons we have mass incarceration of people of
color: an incredible wealth gap between
white people and people of color, disparities in rates of homeownership and
much more--- the pervasive,
centuries-long history of institutionalized and systematic white supremacy and
racism.
This is not the time
for a blame game. This is a societal
reality whose existence and solution involves every one of us.
My Comments >>>>>
This apparently is the time for the blame game, despite
pretensions to the contrary by Hill and Bennis.
The blame placed by Hill and Bennis is on a society pervaded by institutional
and systematic (they might have added, in many cases, individual) white
supremacy and racism.
Indeed they are right.
More specifically than the authors convey, the blame should be on American
society in history, with key terms being Middle Passage, slave auctions, Civil
War, Reconstruction failure, vitiated Reconstruction Amendments (13th,
14th, 15th), Plessy v. Ferguson, vigilante lynching,
Northern Migration, restricted housing covenants, urban poverty concentration,
cyclical poverty, wretched K-12 education (weighing most heavily on the urban
poor).
Julia Hill and Dana
Bennis continue >>>>>
Kersten then brings
out the tired statistics about out-of-wedlock births and the myth that fathers
of color are not involved in their kids’ lives.
In fact, a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
found that black fathers are actually more involved in playing with, reading,
and feeding their children than are white fathers, whether or not they live
with their children.
What’s most important
to know here is what Kersten conveniently left out: that schools and districts around the country
are implementing policies to reduce racial disparities in suspensions using
research-based practices such as restorative justice and circle processes that
are tremendously effective. They provide
young people and educators with the chance to see one another as humans, to
look at the reasons behind the actions, and to seek out solutions that result
not only in reduced violence but also greater understanding of how to sustain
strong communities of support and trust.
Furthermore, in the
St. Paul Public Schools in particular, where 82 percent of the teaching staff
is white while 79 percent of students are children of color, the district and
the St. Paul Federation of Teachers are trying to take on the real work of
supporting teachers to own and understand the role that white privilege and
institutionalized racism play in the struggles we face in public education.
My Comments
>>>>>
Despite Hill and Bennis’s meager claim to the contrary, out
of wedlock births, lack of father figures, and absence of male role models do
in fact weigh heavily on many children living at the urban core. Statistics pertinent to single mother
households in the aggregate are daunting by comparison to those relevant to
two-parent households. Children emanating
from the former are more likely to flounder academically, fail to meet even
meager standards for graduation, live wandering and dangerous post-graduation
lives, repeat deleterious patterns from the households of their nativity in
establishing their own families, end up on the public dole, and maintain
behavioral patterns leading to incarceration.
But what neither Kersten nor Hill & Bennis observe is
the culpability of our systems of K-12 education in maintaining the injustices
of our linear history and the patterns of cyclical poverty by delivering an
academically insubstantial curriculum.
Knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education delivered by
the locally centralized school district should provide the means by which
children of poverty break the familial cycle.
As my readers have had a chance to review at many places on this blog,
the breakthrough would come with a revolutionized system producing curriculum
overhauled to provide logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets, thoroughly
retrained teachers, academic enrichment with aggressive skill remediation as
necessary, resource provision and referral for struggling families, and paring
of the central office bureaucracy. The
first, second, and third parts of this five-point program are academically
central to the revolution; the fifth is
needed to capture scarce resources for the other parts of the program; and the fourth is absolutely essential in
resolving the environmental impediments for children from families facing
challenges of finances and functionality.
We must play the blame game lest we be victims of the
vicious games played by actors in history and the present. We must blame society past and present. We must create conditions whereby no blame
will be necessary in the future, because we have overhauled K-12 education for
the provision of abundant knowledge and skill sets to all of our precious
children, of all demographic descriptors, so that all go forth to lives of
cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.
Julia Hill and Dana
Bennis continue >>>>>
Scare tactics and dog
whistles won’t work any longer. People
are wising up and rising up.
My Final Comments
>>>>>
We can jettison dog whistles but we need to be scared.
People, most of all decision-makers at locally centralized
school districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools, show no sign of wising
up.
So you, my readers, need to rise up and join me in the K-12
Revolution.
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