When we send young people forth thusly into
the world, brains buzzing with information, bodies bursting with intellectual
and physical vitality, we maximize the chances that these precious specimens of
humanity will live happily, respect their fellows, and make high-quality
contributions to the local and national economies. They will be prepared to matriculate at and
graduate from the best colleges and universities in the land, even as some of
them opt for the training available in practical skills pertinent to the vital
trades on which so many of our contemporary lives depend. Whatever postsecondary training these young
people pursue, they will share a rich knowledge base that will serve as their
basis for mutual understanding, engaged citizenship, and confident interaction
wherever their paths cross.
These will be young people prepared to live
life to the fullest, and to lead humanity in the creation of a much better
world.
The Power of K-12 Education to Elevate the
Human Experience
Humankind is very young.
The universe banged into existence almost 14
billion years ago, expanding in those processes that created the earth almost
10 billion years later. Simple cells
took life comparatively quickly, just under a billion years after the earth
formed, but not until 500 million years ago did fish swim in the sea. Amphibians crawled onto the earth about 360
million years ago, and reptiles roamed some 60 million years after that; then about 200 million years ago mammals
moved across the surface of this planet.
Birds flew across the skies at about 150 millions years ago, and flowers
bloomed some 20 million years thereafter.
But not until 60 million years ago did the earth know primates, and the
Great Apes did not make their terrestrial entrance until another 40 million
years had transpired.
Not until 2.5 million years ago--- tens of millions of years after the
appearance of those Great Apes--- did
creatures of the genus homo appear,
and life ensued another million years before representatives of that genus
walked upright. Our more immediate progenitors,
of the genus homo and the species sapiens, trod the expanses of East
Africa for the first time only about 200 thousand years counting backward from
this year of 2020.
So we are very young.
No wonder that we’ve made so many mistakes in
this trial and error of a process called life.
We are, as the Lord Hamlet tells us, “a work of art,” “noble in reason,”
“infinite in faculty.” But we are still
learning how to shape ourselves into the works of art that will make us worthy
as the “paragons of the world,” to use our reason for creating conditions of
peace, to call upon our faculties to be all that in our enormous potential we
can be.
We have been so cruel to each other.
Even as we created marvelous works of early
civilization--- the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, the temple complex at
Angkor Wat, the Colossus of Rhodes, the aqueducts of Rome--- we beat up on each other, calling Alexander
and others “Great” for doing so. Even as
we asked searching questions and as compassionate thinkers conceived of
philosopher kings, enlightened beings, a King of Peace, we--- those same beings--- slaughtered each other by the millions. We fell before the legions of Caesar, the
armies of the Great Khan, the banners of white and red roses, the marauders of
the Aztec empire, the invaders of European colonizers, the ship captains of the
Middle Passage, the despotic purveyors of genocide in Germany and Cambodia, the
lynchers posing as citizens in what otherwise we have claimed to be the
greatest democracy on earth.
But we have also done much good.
We have created alphabets, aesthetically
pleasing written characters, presses that produce books. We have imagined ourselves at our
best--- in prayer, meditation, and good
works. We have made peace after war and
established institutions for promoting human understanding. We have sought the truth of earth’s place
among the planets, revealed the laws that govern motion and light and sound,
discovered the relativity of time in space.
We have probed the depths of our own mental processes and built machines
that see into our very brains. We have
made such technological advances that at any instant in this year of 2020 we
can call forth facts on any given subject of our whim. We communicate with our fellows in a
multiplicity of ways.
Now we must learn to communicate with as much
quality as we do quantity.
We must go to work on ourselves.
We do that through education.
Any worthy endeavor begins in one place and
spreads to others. So let us make
Minneapolis the place and the curriculum presented herein the basis for
creating a more culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally
satisfied human being:
When people have a thorough knowledge of
mathematics, they think more logically and reason with greater acuity.
When people have read the works of literary
masters, their neural pathways are alive with rhythms, symbols, and ideas that
elevate the quality of their own thoughts and the beauty of their personal
expression.
When people command a thorough understanding
of history; and evaluate the actions of
the human past in the manner of its wisest philosophers, theologians, and
religious teachers; they have a much
stronger sense of what is right and what is wrong among behavioral
options.
When women and men have a thorough grasp of
the natural sciences, they are better able to live with a sense of appreciation
and wonder at the sheer majesty of the universe, the celestial bodies, the
earth, human beings themselves.
And when people come to understand the beauty,
insight, and imagination embodied in the works of great painters, sculptors,
architects, and musicians, they glimpse into the art forms that they themselves
can be.
Let us make of ourselves works of artistic
beauty through the power of education.
Let us understand the religion of the other, the psychological
motivations of our fellows, the history that may give evidence of
misunderstanding, discord, and separation but that we can use to comprehend, to
empathize, to unite.
Through the power of education we can know
ourselves more thoroughly and walk more confidently into any arena of life:
We are culturally enriched, so we have a depth
of appreciation for the artistry of humanity anywhere we go.
We are civically prepared, so we understand
the nature of citizenship, and we dedicate ourselves to actions that improve
our individual lives and the circumstances of our fellow human beings.
And because our brains are filled with
knowledge and skills in magnificent array, we walk confidently and adeptly into
the workplace with results that contribute to our personal wealth, the material
wellbeing of our natal families, and the economic advancement of our society.
If we create ethically better and economically
more prosperous people in Minneapolis
by revolutionizing K-12 education, our
approach to curriculum moves centrifugally into other places where K-12
education is imparted. So do movements
grow, ideas spread, and a revolution change the very basis of the way we live
our lives. By creating the well-rounded
individual, alive in the world of knowledge and anchored in a firm sense of the
ethical, we establish that paragon toward which others cast an upward gaze. What once was local becomes national, then
international, and as people across the world become well-educated, the terror
that haunts too many human beings in their one chance on earth ends and
existence worthy to be called “life” begins.
We do this by believing in the potential of
every single human being.
We do this by enriching with knowledge the
brain of every student in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
We do this by offering as exemplars of
humanity those students who have been given the gift of an elevated life
through the power of education.
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