Apr 23, 2020

Article #1, >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VI, No. 8, February 2020 >>>>> Grating Jargon of “Cultural Relevance” and Ill-Defined “Academic Rigor” Saliently Represent the Empty Verbiage of the Design’s Academic Section


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.

 

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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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