>Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> Volume VI, No. 6, December 2019 >>>>> Article #4 >>>>> On the Matter of the Student Representative to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education

Student Representative Janaan Ahmed   >>>>>   One Major Bright Moment, But Mostly the Typical Wasted Opportunity

 

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 mean ACT score is approximately 16 (at the 20^th 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 slave owner.  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 proponents of the break with Great Britain.   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 United State 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 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.