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 “differentiated instruction”
and “personalized learning” likely have an appeal to readers inured with
American mythology of the rugged individual and the chimera of personal choice.
But these terms imply approaches to the delivery of knowledge that are
inefficient and unlikely in the extreme to impart common curriculum in
mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, world
and multi-ethnic literature, music, and visual art to students of all
demographic descriptors.
Jargon such as “differentiated instruction”
and “personalized learning” is harmful as to implied approaches to curriculum
and pedagog--- and likely to distract readers and hearers of
such verbiage from the most vexing dilemmas of the district, which emphatically
are that
curriculum at the Minneapolis Public
Schools is weak, with no plan for improvement;
and
average teacher quality is low.
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Included among the items given in the
academic portion of the MPS Comprehnsive Design are the following:
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Comprehensive
District Design
Improved
Academic Achievement
Overview
MPS Instructional Model
All students will be able to demonstrate
and articulate to parents their
>>>>> Individualized learning options for all
students
Improved Academic Achievement Planning
Recommendations
Academic Strategies
The Design will support academic strategies
that specifically promote
>>>>> Individualized approaches to instruction
>>> begins with pre-kindergarten with differentiated
high-quality coursework ligned to state
standards
The phrases, “Individualized learning
options for all students,” “individualized approaches to instruction,” and “differentiated high-quality coursework”
are education establishment euphemisms that connote a lack of confidence that
students of all demographic descriptors can master the common knowledge and
skill sets that describe excellent education across the liberal, technological,
and vocational arts. And the vow to
provide “equitable access to academic, arts, athletics, activities, service
learning, and career/college programming” lacks substantive details, thus
yielding no confidence in MPS strategies for providing educational excellence.
With regard to the statement above
concerning academic rigor and cultural relevance, there is a tendency for
readers to glide by such phrases without considering 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.
But do readers and those who hear
presentations from the inept academic decision-makers at the Davis Center (MPS
central offices, 1250 West Broadway pause to pconsider 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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Students of all demographic descriptors
should receive common knowledge sets in key academic areas.
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.
Approaches implied by jargon such as “differentiated
instruction” and “personalized learning” are unlikely to assure that students of
all demographic descriptors gain 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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The ongoing dilemmas in the academic program
of the Minneapolis Public Schools are thos of knowledge-deficient curriculum
and mediocre teacher quality, neither of which are addressed in the academic portion
of the MPS Comprehensive District Design.
There should be no “personalized”
curriculum.
Curriculum should be common to all students,
as given in the examples above.
Instruction should be “differentiated” only
in that most students at MPS are lagging in certain skills: The specific skills in which a given student
is deficient should be identified and addressed in dedicated classroom and, as
necessary, afterschool time, by teachers and tutors. But the correct approach then is to refocus
the student’s attention efficiently and adroitly on the common curriculum,
logically sequenced and imparted grade by grade.
Whole-class discussion of teacher-imparted
knowledge is the most efficient and engaging approach for the delivery of the requisite
knowledge and skill sets acquired in an excellent education.
Teachers should also have students conduct
individual research on subtopics germane to the common curriculum and impart understanding
of legitimate source material and proper citation. The results of research papers should be
revealed to and discussed by the whole class.
Such an approach results in the acquisition
of key information in mathematics, natural science, history, the social
sciences, literature, and the fine arts;
and scope for individual exploration;
without the temporal inefficiency and knowledge deficiency of approaches
implied by the verbiage of “differentiated instr4uction” and “personalized learning.”
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As utilized in the MPS Comprehensive District
Design, the terms “differentiated instruction” and “personalized learning”
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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