Bob Walser is the silliest, most offensive
member on this and any school board that I have witnessed during my
half-century of observation. This
iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education is by far
the worst that I have witnessed during my particularly close five-year scrutiny
of this motley assemblage.
Walser is a disaster.
Walser was among the group recruited by
Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Rebecca Gagnon to run for the MPS Board of
Education in 2016. Gagnon eventually got caught in her political manipulations and
was ousted in 2018. Inz remains as
District #5 (South Minneapolis, east of I-35) representative and board chair; Ellison as one of three At-Large members. Inz, Ellison, and Gagnon recruited candidates
friendly to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) to run against the independent
voices of Josh Reimnitz and Tracine Asberry (the most assertive actor for better
academic results); and for the At-Large
seat vacated by Carla Bates.
Walser, who represents the toney areas of
Bryn Mawr, Lowry Hill, and Linden Hills, is a salient example of that creature
who assigns to himself the appellation of “progressive” on matters pertinent to
preK-12 educatioen. I have detailed in Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future
Prospect, on my blog, and in my academic journal the sordid history traceable
to Teachers College at Columbia University of those who appropriated the term “progressive’
for a knowledge-impoverished approach to education that has had most
unprogressive consequences. Consistent
with the various strands of this ideology, Walser rails against objective
assessment of student performance and spouts the jargon of putatively
child-centered education.
The most stupid verbal fodder spills from
Walser’s mouth:
Two recent whoppers demonstrate the facile,
grating nature of this lamentable school board creature:
>>>>> At one meeting that involved the fate of
middle schools versus preK-8 schools in the district, Walser wondered why we
have middle schools and asserted that we have only had this type of student grouping
since the 1950s. In making this comment,
Walser demonstrated the typically shallow nature of his reading and research. He had apparently come across a reference to
the advent of the middle school (grades 6-8), which did from the 1950s mostly replace
junior high (grades 7-9). But Walser’s
reference maintained that grouping at the level of the middle grades did not
begin until the 1950s. In fact, the
first junior bighs appeared in 1909.
>>>>> At the September meeting of the MPS Board of
Education, Walser mentioned during the final, tortuous comments that members make
on the cusp of each meeting’s adjournment that he had attended a number of
community meetings lately and found the comment of one African American mother
especially enlightening. Walser said that
she identified the problems of the Minneapolis Public Schools as grounded in
the northern European approach to education taken by the district.
I have been deeply embedded in the African
American community for forty-eight years:
African Americans do in public forums
occasionally have recourse to the same jargon of “cultural relevance” and “cultural
competence” with assertions of Western bias as do hippy-dippy white liberals of
the sort that my radical leftist inclinations find me abhorring. But face to face, I never hear such
jargon. When African American parents,
the largest familial contingent in the New Salem Educational Initiative, come
to me in behalf of their children, their plea is in essence, “Please impart to
my baby the mathematical and reading skills that the district of the Minneapolis
Public Schools fails to render, along with strong college preparatory knowledge
sets that MPS does not deliver.” They
trust and know that I have a strong grasp of European-based culture and history
and also the traditions of Asia, Africa, African America, and a bevy of other
ethnicities. What they want for their
children is the best education that can be had, so that those precious young
people can be the vanguard that leads the family forth from cyclical poverty
and centuries of abusive history.
Armchair white liberals of the Walser type are
offensive to most African Americans. They
sense that the rhetoric of those who shout adoring phrases from afar are
frauds, full of condescension and paternalism.
Bob Walser has offended most African Americans of positions of leadership
at the Minneapolis Public Schools. They know
a fake and a patronizer when they encounter one.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
In any case, the approach taken by the
Minneapolis Public Schools is not northern European, except inasmuch as it is
through British conveyance that a curriculum consisting of knowledge gathered from
the entire globe was delivered to American colonists and thence to the fledgling
United States of America. The knowledge
thus conveyed came prominently from southern (not northern) Europe, China, India,
and from the Muslim empires of the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman
dynasties. The best contemporary masters
of modern curricula are students of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Note the absence in any of those references
from the last two sentences of anything identifiable as northern European.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Bob Walser is the silliest, most intellectual
trivial board member I have witnessed on the MPS or any other board of
education.
Walser needs to excuse himself for forging ahead
of Jenny Arneson and Kim Ellison as he leads them with all appropriate haste
out the Davis Center door.
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