Janaan Ahmed is the current student
representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education. She officially occupied the position as of
the January 2019 board meeting.
Ahmed is the fifth student representative to
serve. In order, with full calendar
years beginning each January during which they served given in parentheses, the
representatives have been the following:
Noah Branch (2015), Shaadia Munye (2016), Gabriel Spinks (2017), Ben
Jaeger (2018), and Janaan Ahmed (2019).
Three of the student representatives (Branch, Munye, Ahmed) have been
students at Henry High School; Spinks
was a student at Edison High School, Jaeger at Roosevelt High School.
I have the same high expectations of these
young people that I do for my students in the New Salem Educational
Initiative. Each of the representatives has
ultimately been disappointing to me as potential agents of change who have not
seized the moment. These students all
attend high schools at which the median ACT score is approximately 16 (at the
20th percentile by national standards); at which major modes of teaching are to distribute
packets, show videos, group students together for projects in the absence of
contextualizing information, or send them singly to computers to seek
information on topics for which they similarly have little background
knowledge; where teacher burnout leads
to long-term substitutes with tangential subject area expertise; and from which students graduate with
insubstantial knowledge and skill sets and often need remedial coursework if
attending colleges or universities.
And yet not one of these students has
articulated the grave problems at her or his high school. Some had their moments of eloquence but to no
ultimate effect. Jaeger in particular
presented himself as an advocate for those student groups for which academic achievement
has lagged; he did not, however, seem to
grasp the fundamental reasons for the lag or to have any compelling suggestions
for improved achievement.
Thus, Ahmed has been the typical
unproductive student representative, rather than bearing particular
culpability.
Ahmed’s most consistent point of advocacy has
been to call for the change of name for Patrick Henry High School, on the
grounds that Henry was a slaveowner.
This appeal jibes with the temper of our times, in which we change names
while leaving historically mistreated groups still suffering from various
ongoing gaps in social wellbeing. The
appeal in this case is also simplistic, as are most such entreaties. If one considers the American Revolution a positive
occurrence (and there were Loyalists who did not, with Native Americans and African
Americans having internally opposing views), then Henry was one of the most
forceful. Further, George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson each famously owned more slaves than did Henry. As a leftist revolutionary, I view the hippy
dippy liberal tendency to launch attacks on people out of historical context
while failing to address injustices today unseemly and frequently infuriating.
Ahmed did have one bright moment, at a recent
meeting of the MPS Board of Education Committee of the Whole. Her incisive comment came when the subject of
new ethnic studies courses came up. At
issue was whether to offer these new courses as electives or as permissible replacements
for core subjects such as American history.
Ahmed said that she has a passion for ethnic studies but that ethnic
specific courses would be unnecessary if subjects such as United States history
were taught as they should be, with that history as necessarily entailing the
participation of multiple ethnicities in all past events.
Janaan Ahmed had is an apparently very
bright young woman whose ability and capacity for public leadership and
engagement will stand her in good stead during her postsecondary life.
She has, though, contributed very little to
a regular board membership of adults who are variously ignorant, corrupt, or in
denial. Those adults had great need of a
an incisive, oppositional student force that Ahmed--- like her predecessors--- did not provide.
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