Curricular shibboleth and erroneous
pedagogy pervade the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District
Design.
The paramount goal of
the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive Design should be to improve
academic proficiency rates for students.
But that is the
problem. The core mission is the
impartation of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum by excellent
teachers to students of all demographic descriptors. Those captured resources cannot be properly
directed unless a promising academic plan is in place.
And the proposed academic plan is
ultimately full of jargon of the sort to which the education establishment
always resorts and the lack of substance that inevitably characterizes academic
initiatives of that establishment’s devising.
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Under “Academic Achievement Goal” there is
nothing that instils confidence that
“MPS will graduate students with a
well-rounded education regardless of zip code.”
Terms such as “academically rigorous’ and
“culturally relevant” are frequently used but ill-defined throughout the
document. The vow to assure “equitable
access to ‘high quality’ academic offerings” assumes that curriculum is in
place to deliver high quality academic offerings and that teachers are trained
for the delivery of such a curriculum---
but, emphatically,
curriculum at the Minneapolis Public
Schools is weak, with no plan for improvement;
and
average teacher quality is low.
Be reminded that the academic portion of
the MPS Comprehensive District Design states the following as key goals for
raising student achievement:
Academic
Achievement Goal
MPS will graduate students with a
well-rounded
education regardless
of zip code
>>>>> PreK-12
curricular offerings will support MPS’s academic goal
>>>>> Programming and pedagogy will be academically
rigorous and culturally relevant
>>>>> Students
will have equitable access to high quality academic offerings
>>>>> Students and families will experience
safe, welcoming, and respectful interactions in
all MPS schools,
sites and services
All readers, especially hippy-dippy white
liberal types, should pause and consider carefully what
the architects of the MPS Comprehensive
District Design mean by the statement,
>>>>> Programming and pedagogy will be academically
rigorous and culturally relevant.
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As a leftist radical, hippy-dippy white
liberal types grate on me the most.
They are all too susceptible to that sort
of white guilt that has them feigning cultural sensitivity when they have
little experience with the people associated with most cultures other than that
of the hippy-dippy white liberal.
With regard to the statement above concerning academic rigor
and cultural relevance, there is a tendency for the hippy-dippy white liberal
to sign off on such a phrasing without stopping to consider implications for the
development of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum of educational excellence.
If students of all demographic descriptors
were to be offered an academically rigorous curriculum, this certainly would
include
>>>>> a mathematics
program that proceeds through the four basic operations, fractions, decimals,
percentages, ratios, proportions, simple probability, graphs, tables, and
charts before then sequencing in middle (grades 6-8) and high (grades 9-12)
school courses in algebra I, geometry, algebra II, pre-calculus (trigonometry
and statistics), and calculus
and
>>>>> a science
program that starts at the elementary (preK-5 level) to introduce fundamental
concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics and then intensifies instruction in
those subjects through middle and high school so that
in addition to Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus,
all students but those facing truly daunting mental challenges (and those
students should still be offered academically challenging special education
curriculum) would have the training necessary to score at a high level on AP
exams in biology, chemistry, and physics.
Certain word problems and exercises in
advanced mathematics and natural science can be phrased in ways that resonate
with a diversity of cultures, but for the most part academic rigor in these
subjects is the same for students of all cultural and demographic descriptors.
Neil DeGrassy Tyson would affirm as much.
Does the hippy-dippy white liberal think
deeply enough to consider that academic rigor for one culture is essentially
the same for students of other cultures?
Usually not.
Parents of African American, Somali, Hispanic,
and Hmong cultures should also think and speak clearly when they refer to wanting
the same academic rigor as they imagine has been rendered to affluent white
students. If they do, they should
understand that this will mean succeeding in mathematics through calculus and
natural science through physics. Such
parents have a right to demand culturally sensitive teachers with an
understanding of the backgrounds of all students in their classrooms.
But as to mathematics and science as
academic disciplines, the curriculum must be the same for students of all
cultural backgrounds.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
Culture looms larger in history,
literature, and the fine arts.
Here, too, though, the curriculum should be
the same for students of all demographic descriptors.
World history should, for example, teach
all students about the Hmong people of the Laotian highlands, before and during
the Vietnam War; the history of the Horn
of Africa going back to the civilizations of Axum and Nubia and continuing to
the present day cultures and conflict in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia; the historical experiences of all cultures of
the world before the advent of European imperialism; and the general attitudes and policies
embedded in European imperialism, as well as the specific consequences of
individual societies.
Similarly, for example, American history as
taught to all students should include the historical experiences of indigenous
cultures that became the Iroquois confederacy, the Five “Civilized” Tribes, the
Three Fires Confederacy, the Mississippian Mound Builders, the Anasazi Cliff-Dwellers
and Pueblo cultures, and the indigenous cultures of the northern and southern
plains, the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, and California. That history should also include the relationship
of what became Mexico to what became the United States and the ensuing
experiences of Hispanic and Anglo cultures separately and in interaction with
one another. All students should
understand the immigrant experiences of West Europeans, East Europeans, Jews,
and those who came from many parts of Asian Africa, and Latin America. Students of all demographic descriptors should
gain factual information relevant not only to slavery but also and especially to
the failure of Reconstruction and the advent of Jim Crow, vigilante groups and lynching,
and the nature of the southern police state that induced the Northern Migration.
Literature classes should, for example,
include the works of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Maya Angelou, Toni
Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, August Wilson, James
Baldwin, and Te-Nehisi Coates; as well
as those of Jane Austin, Emily Bronte, George Elliot, Mark Twain, Herman
Melville, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Margaret Atwood, and William Shakespeare.
Students of all demographic descriptors
should hear and learn about the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven; Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald,
and Miles Davis; Beatles and Rolling Stones;
Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson, and Aretha
Franklin; NWA, Jay-Z, and Beyonce.
Cultural relevant curriculum should only be
culturally particular at the advanced level, once all students have gained
knowledge and sublime reading and listening experiences with the literature and
fine arts of the many cultures that comprise the historical and cultural legacy
of a world populated by many peoples.
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As utilized in the MPS Comprehensive District
Design, the terms “academically rigorous” and “culturally relevant” curriculum
are mere shibboleths, typical of the debased lexicon of teachers and administrators
who have no idea of the specific features of a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum.
No one who now occupies a sinecure at the
Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) has any idea how to construct
and articulate such a curriculum.
Only university or independent scholars in
key academic disciplines will be able to construct the logically sequenced
knowledge-intensive curriculum that would necessarily be “academically rigorous”
and “culturally relevant” in substance rather than shibboleth.
Once this morally corrupt and intellectually
debased MPS Board of Education votes to adopt the MPS Comprehensive District
Design devised by the academic lightweights who dominate at the Davis Center,
university or independent scholars should
be hired immediately to do what those lightweights who generated the jargon of
the Design’s academic portion have no chance of doing.
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