Astonishingly, These are the Best of Times: So We Must Look Leftward and Do Much Better

To understand history is to be an activist revolutionary and a radical feminist. 

 

The future of humanity lies around a sharply leftward bend.

 

Some combination of my ongoing research into the history and present of education in the United States, generally and in Minnesota particularly;  a bevy of reading on the history of the United States and a vast array of fiction and nonfiction on all manner of topics;  rumination at virtually every moment of the day on the prehistory, history, and current condition of humankind;  has given me a deep sense that there is an abiding misunderstanding among human beings as to their own natures and reason for being.

 

Inasmuch as my reading and contemplation have given me an enormous store of information and philosophical insight upon which to draw, I marvel more as each day transpires how thinking people could ever be conservative or reactionary---  by definition intending to either preserve life as it is, or go back to some imagined better time.  Regrettably, there was no better time than now, even when the attractions of pre-technological and pre-industrial life are considered:  Life at those stages, featuring more honest and less-impeded human interactions, nevertheless was, following Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.”

 

In the United States, as I consider the history of that nation, a police state prevailed over vast portions of the population until, let’s say 1968, since that year seems to be a dismal reference point for conservatives.  Until that year, environmental abuse was rampant;  planned obsolescence and other corporate shenanigans were rampant and induced among many a lot of winking and nodding;  many women’s lives were unbearable;  Native and African Americans had been knowingly brutalized;  and most of our initiatives as a world power had served to prop up autocrats who similarly brutalized their own people.  

 

But in 1968, the lid came off a pot of nasty soup, we saw all of our transgressions and brutality even if we wished and often tried to turn away, and the consequences poured forth, giving us the perceived and material dilemmas that we have today.

 

But seeing matters more clearly puts our problems starkly before us as undeniable reality, giving us a chance to set about the task of making of ourselves a better people and of creating across the global expanses more hospitable places for Nature and for humankind:

 

Astonishing, these are the best times the world has ever seen. 

 

Environmental awareness is keen, even if we are still doing terrible things to Nature.  We have moved through autocracy and aristocracy to proto-democracy.  Capitalism, though rapacious and inducing greed, has given us material prosperity and a middle class that, if jerked from personal universes of distraction, pretension, and petty amusements, is positioned to begin the process of democratization.  Long abused people will never again accept the level of ill treatment due to matters of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or any other biological or demographic identifier that they have in the past.

 

Thus, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to transform the world that we see before us.  We must progress from capitalistic greed and firm inclination toward self-centeredness, toward an ethic that considers all women sisters, all males brothers, all children our own.

 

The only life acceptable is that which we now have the opportunity and responsibility to create.

 

For that to happen, all people must be educated.

 

Deep knowledge and shared ethics are the conduits to the world that we can and have the obligation to envision, materialize, and spiritualize.

Lacking Verity, You Assuage Your Guilt by Giving to Charity

You have the temerity

to give to charity,

but in verity,

you lack moral clarity,

and the intended

beneficiaries know

those balls are

all for show:

 

You get your photo op,

then you’re off to shop,

but the bright light

is ever glaring

on your moral plight,

your pretension of caring,

your deeds of callowness,

your ethical shallowness.

In Your Professional Demise, You Will Not Be Mourned: Just Universally Scorned

Degrees bought,

morally fraught,

nothing taught,

status sought,

now caught,

in all of your

lying,

and though

you’ve been

trying,

there will

now be no

denying,

you’ve lost

your sinecure.

your supposed

grand prize,

and trapped in

your lies,

you face

professional demise,

for which

you’ll not be

mourned,

just universally

scorned.

Two Options: Ethical Epiphany or Professional Annihilation

Though you’ve been to

college,

you’re lamentably short on

knowledge,

having non-trained

in departments of

education,

you are non-brained,

on protracted intellectual

vacation,

so now you

must have an

epiphanous

realization

or confront your

imminent

professional

annihilation.

Sudden Exposure

You’re a moral

waif

who thought you were

safe

cowardly

cowering,

self-deceptively

glowering,

ever

showering

destruction

on children’s lives.

 

No more:

 

The K-12 revolution

will soon be

sweeping

the halls
where you are

creeping
to your nook of

fancied

repose,

bringing to a

close

your long unexamined

reign

and all of the

pain

you have rendered

will be examined,

relentlessly

shown,

so that

all of that pain

you have caused

will now be your
own:

 

For you’ll be forced

into

accounting

for the sins continually

mounting

for all of your

rot,

for what you are

and mainly are

not,

in that place

where you

linger,

malinger,

presumably

reposed,

but now

factually,

relentlessly,

conclusively

exposed.

If the U. S. of America Be Great, It Be Not Again

Nineteen Sixty-Eight:

 

The lid came

off a pot

exposing a

land of hate,

a democracy

that was not.

 

Do not endeavor to

romanticize

the time before

that year,

fantasize

justice

where

mainly

there

reigned

and

rained

fear.

 

Never wish we were

returned

to a time when most were

spurned,

when their requests

for

decency

were buried beneath

white shrouds

of

secrecy.

 

Journalists are mere public

exciters

for whom,

as for opinion

writers,

history

remains a

mystery:

 

Despite their rendering  

of the

news,

there would be
much to lose,

nothing to

gain,

by returning to

the police state

before 1968

again.

Distant Bright Light of Knowledge

Morally deluded.

intellectually denuded,

socially secluded,

traveling unobtruded

toward a   

Dead End.

 

Then

ethically sagging,

mentally lagging,

they spy

back around

the

Great Bend

a faint

shimmer,

just enough for a

glimmer

of the only way out

of this losing bout,

thus they

head toward the

Glowing:

 

the

Bright Light

of

 

Knowing.

Wasted Lives

Ever caught in the

Lie,

constantly expelling a

sigh,

concerning

personal

woes,

imagined

foes,

thinking

rarely,

feeling

sparely,

never learning the

joy of giving,

internally crying,

terrible at

living,

even worse at

dying.

No Trailblazing While Navel-Gazing

Should need no

sting of the

taser,

no reasoning

sharp as a

razor,

should not

be considered

amazing,

needs no elliptical

phrasing,

to comprehend why

there is so little

trailblazing,

when people spend

their time

navel-gazing.

The Ignorant President an Ignorant Citizenry Deserves

Amazing

audacity,

sheer

mendacity,

in the

capacity

of a

citizenry

historically

given to

rapacity,

feigning

surprise

at all of the

lies,

the

crudeness,

lewdness,

when for all

the striking

of

public nerves

that

ignorant public

finally got the

ignorant president

that an

ignorant public

deserves.

On the Importance of Practical Revolutionary Action

Working to achieve fundamental change is an incessant endeavor. 

 

There is no room for idle chatter, unfocused activity, or lack of clarity as to the goals for change and the means utilized to transform the established order.  Working to attain revolutionary transformation requires research for the acquisition of details pertinent to the abiding institutions to be overhauled;  long-term strategy consistent with the revolutionary goals;  and multiple, carefully targeted tactical actions consonant with the strategy.  Opposing forces must be weakened over a long period of time with the application of persistent pressure and cogent articulation of the revolutionary plan;  those in opposition should be made to feel constantly on the defensive, increasingly insecure, and ready to fall once the final blow is rendered. 

 

Those within the establishment who are amenable to the goals for change should identified, alliances should be formed, and those with the capacity to understand the need for the revolutionary outcome must be made to feel that they can play a positive role in the revolution and in the new order that takes form in the aftermath of the revolution.  To a point, this is the tactic of the United Front;  at a certain point alliances formed at the stage of the United Front must be transformed, so that the allies themselves are converted fully to the cause of revolution.

 

This is the way that overhaul of curriculum and teacher quality will be achieved at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  Via my multiple platforms (television show, academic journal, this blog, Public Comments at each meeting of the MPS Board of Education, other public appearances, and my substantially complete book on the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools) for delivery of the revolutionary message, I have exerted constant pressure on those occupying roles in the current system and have prepared for that day when she or he will either embrace the revolutionary program or relinquish any claim for a place in the new order.

 

The revolutionary must be constantly attentive to the details of relentless action while keeping the ultimate goal firmly in view.  She or he cannot be distracted by those who fancy themselves to have similar concerns but whose positions may not even be as close to one’s own goals as are those of one’s opponents.  This is certainly true in the case of the revolution that I am waging for knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education delivered by knowledgeable teachers to young people of all demographic descriptors served by the locally centralized school district.  I have no time for gadflies advocating solutions for the dilemmas of public education that in their ignorance fail to realize were espoused a century ago by the likes of William Heard Kilpatrick and Harold Rugg--- and that continue to be spouted by those campus low-lifers known as education professors.

 

The revolution that I am waging, then, has followed an intensively practical and relentlessly intentional course.  I began observing and collecting data four years ago;  I have now amassed that data and interpretive comment into a major tome.  Over those four years, I have attended more major functions of the Minneapolis Public Schools than have some members of the MPS Board of Education.  I have interviewed most major figures at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) and have gotten to know numerous staff members.  I was consistently in attendance, persistently applying pressure, ever delivering the message of the failures of the Minneapolis Public Schools on the basis of unassailable logic and a massive body of facts.  I swatted away gadflies from charter schools, sent advocates for vouchers packing, and let the misguided descendants of Kilpatrick and Rugg know that I had no time for their banter.

 

The locally centralized school district must be compelled to deliver a common body of broad and deep knowledge to all of our precious children.

 

This nation must become the democracy that it has only fancied itself to be.

 

For that to happen, the current membership of the MPS Board of Education and MPS staff must be transformed or jettisoned.

 

The flaws of these actors in the current system are as apparent as if they were the proverbial emperor absent his proverbial clothes.  Beginning in August, continuing in November, and with the squeeze of an ever tighter vise thereafter, these actors must respond affirmatively to change or bear witness to the system that they have upheld being swept away.

 

That is the outcome of practical effort for lasting revolutionary transformation.

 

Importance of the Primary in August 2018 for Establishing the Slate of Candidates to Vie for MPS Board of Education in November

Please be aware that next month (August) there will be a primary that will winnow down to four a list of five candidates hoping to compete in November for two at-large seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education.

 

We have apparently lost our chance to oust the second worst political hack on that board, Nelson Inz, who is running uncontested for his District 5 seat.

 

Jenny Arneson and Siad Ali are also running uncontested, for the District 1 and District 3 seats respectively.

 

Rebecca Gagnon is the most shameless political hack on a board that generally does the bidding of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party.  Her defeat should be our paramount goal in the August primary.  Gagnon, having hoped to secure Democrat Farmer Labor (DFL) party endorsement for a seat in the Minnesota Legislature, had decided against another school board campaign;  but when she failed to secure the endorsement, she decided to make the school board run, after all.

 

For the coming elections, the candidates who are our best possibilities for getting members on the board who are not controlled by the MFT-DFL cohort are found in the two at-large seats.  Here is the line-up of five that will appear on the ballot for the August primary, to be pared to four for the general election:

 

School Board At Large (2 seats – going to Primary)

 

Doug Mann

Sharon El-Amin

Kimberly Caprini

Josh Pauly

Rebecca Gagnon

 

Be prepared to vote against Gagnon. 

 

I will then be making recommendations for the general election.

 

Caprini and Pauly are the DFL-endorsed candidates.  Gagnon is heavily tied to both the DFL and the MFT, both of which called and canvassed heavily for her in her 2010 and 2014 campaigns;  presumably, such political assistance will not be forthcoming in 2018, given the formal support already tendered to Caprini and Pauly.

 

Ed Graff has been a good administrator but needs lots of guidance on matters of curriculum, teacher quality, skill remediation, and family resource provision and referral.  Graff, Eric Moore (Chief of Research, Assessment, and Accountability), and other members of the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) cabinet understand the need for objective assessment of student performance, but such assessment is strongly opposed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, which currently strongly influences all school board members but Don Samuels, who is not running for reelection to his current at-large position.

 

Jenny Arneson and Siad Ali may be able to resist some MFT/ DFL pressure to support objective assessment, knowledge-intensive curriculum, and teacher retraining.  But current board members KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser, Ira Jourdain, Nelson Inz, and Rebecca Gagnon consistently do the bidding of the MFT/ DFL cohort.

 

We must defeat Gagnon and get the best two candidates for the two at-large positions that we can, impressing upon them the need for knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher retraining.

 

School board contests are the most important in any general election: 

 

Were school board members to do their jobs properly, seeking superintendents who understand the need for curriculum overhauled for the delivery of knowledge and skill sets specified grade by grade;  and retraining teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum;  we would lift citizens in the United States from the abyss of ignorance in which they are now mired, toward an elevated standard of citizenry, the members of which make decisions not on the basis of emotion and fear, but rather on firm bodies of information pertinent to the array of issues currently facing our society.

 

People who desire change must commit their own energy to make change happen.

 

In a nation possessing a governmental framework with for the potential realization of democracy, government can never be the problem: 

 

Citizens are the government;  they are the society.

 

That government and that society are as good or bad as their citizenry.

 

Right now both government and society in the United States are at a low point.

 

The needed transformation will only occur with the achievement of knowledge-intensive education for all of our precious children.  That means electing school board members who will seek and support administrators who are ready to design and implement programs embodying the needed change.

 

This means you should be highly attentive to the August primary and the November general election.

 

You are the government.

 

You are the society.

 

You must dedicate yourself to making the needed change, beginning with the ouster of Rebecca Gagnon in August and an astute casting of your vote in November.

  

Ode to the Historically Totalitarian USA in the Aftermath of Fourth of July 2018

In the USA,

most are

striving

to survive,

to stay alive

or thriving

on those

who are

so striving.

 

In either

case

they have no

base of

information

just

elation  

on their day

of celebration,

ahistorical,

merely

rhetorical,

the annual

ritual

become

habitual:

 

Fourth of July

 

Ignorant

of the

totalitarian

past of the USA,

content to play,

shuffling on feet

beyond a past

so dirty,
so replete
with lies,

the public

merely replies:

 

But ain’t the

watermelon sweet

and the

fireworks perty?