Curricular shibboleth and erroneous
pedagogy pervade the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District
Design.
Of the many pretensions pertinent to avowed
goals and convictions, none is more worthy of exposure as shibboleth than the
professed value of critical thinking.
Critical thinking through the debased
ideological lens of education professors and those whom these campus
embarrassments inflict upon the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools in
the form of administrators and teachers, is a sham. Education professors have none of the
knowledge that do academicians in subject area disciplines (e. g. mathematics,
physics, history, literature, and music), so they advance a corrupt stance that
a set body of knowledge is not important and that instead the goals of
education should be to develop critical thinking skills and lifelong learning.
But critical thinking can only take place
on a firm base of information.
And to become a lifelong learner one must
first acquire and treasure a broad and deep base of knowledge, and from a
person’s formative years forward inculcate an ongoing love of learning.
………………………………………………………………………………..
If students of all demographic descriptors
were to be offered an academically rigorous curriculum, this certainly would
include broad and deep knowledge of mathematics and the natural sciences.
Only upon such a solid mathematical
knowledge base can students critically think about problems for which they must
opt for the correct operations when deciding whether to apply processes
pertinent to
>>>>> 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 in considering the impact of salt
intake on the body, the environmental impact of excess carbon in the
atmosphere, or at what point Newtonian rules of motion must give way to
Einsteinian calculations, students must
have sequentially experienced
>>>>> 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.
Students of all demographic descriptors
must receive common knowledge sets in key academic areas.
They then can critically analyze
information bases pertinent to questions such as
>>>>> Why did so many Hmong people come to the
United States from the 1970s forward;
and what challenges will they face due to cultural background in the
Laotian highlands so different from the customs and traditions across the
varied geographical expanses fo the United States?
>>>>> Why do animosities abiding among peoples in
the Horn of Africa lead to situations inducing immigration to the United
States, and how do the experiences of various African peoples impel them to
move to the very nations that created so many of the problems witnessed in
their villages, clans, and nations of origin?
To think critically about these questions,
students of the Minneapolis Public Schools should have a knowledge base
relevant to
>>>>> 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.
Consider also these questions necessitating
genuinely acute critical thinking:
>>>>> Why did Native American groups from one to
another react differently upon the arrival of and interaction with Europeans,
depending on factors of geography, spirituality, political organization,
economy, and kinship?
>>>>> What set of historical experiences over
many centuries created the conditions for the Great Northern Migration and the
circumstances of inner city life in the United States today?
To answer these questions from an adequate
base for critical analysis,
>>>>> 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; and 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.
Consider also these questions to which the
processes of genuine critical thinking must be appl;ied:
>>>>> How does African American literature of the
Harlem Renaissance and the ensuing decades of literary creativity rank with
major authors of the Anglo-Western tradition?
Such a question necessitates a firm
knowledge base founded on 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.
>>>>> What are the roots of hip-hop in African
American work songs, blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues; and how are we to rate these and other
popular music genres by comparison with the Western Romantic, Baroque, and
Classical traditions?
To answer such a question via acute and
discerning critical analysis, students of all demographic descriptors must 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.
…………………………………………………………………………………
But the knowledge base of students in the
Minneapolis Public Schools does not prepare them to answer question
necessitating complex critical analysis.
In the hallways and classrooms of MPS
administrators and teachers, the notion of “critical thinking” is mere
shibboleth, just a term from the extensive list of jargon from the education
professor’s lexicon.
And decidedly, those making academic
decisions at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway), those
intellectual lightweights who devised the academic portion of the MPS
Comprehensive Design, are not themselves academicians of broad and deep
knowledge, nor are they critical thinkers capable of defending their
postulations upon questioning from scholars of major subject area disciplines.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
As utilized in the MPS Comprehensive
District Design, the term, “critical thinking,” is mere shibboleth, 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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