Jul 9, 2018

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.

 

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