Jun 30, 2020

Article #5 in a Five-Article Series >>>>> Culpability of Decision-Makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) for the Murder of George Floyd >>>>> Superintendent Ed Graff’s Cabinet Must Advocate for the Dismissal of Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, Dismantlement of the Department of Teaching and Learning, and the Ouster of Graff Himself if He Does Not Hire Academicians Capable of Designing Knowledge-Intensive Curriculum


Understandably, most people assume that if she or he is trained expertly in her or his field, other people claiming certain credentials that by nomenclature seem to indicate field proficiency, the same must be true for them.


 

Thus, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop is superbly trained in economics and public finance;  he likely assumes that MPS Superintendent Ed Graff, Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, and staff in the Department of Teaching and Learning, bearing degrees in education as they do, are experts in the field of education.

 

The same assumptions abide in all likelihood in the views of other well-trained specialists at the Minneapolis Public Schools, including Operations Chief Karen Devet, former Instructional Technology Chief Fadi Fadhil, current interim IT Chief Justin Hennes, Human Resources Chief Maggie Sullivan, and Associate Superintendent for Special Education Rochelle Cox.

 

This abiding assumption on the part of these supremely talented and well-trained MPS officials is incorrect and dangerous, the source of all that is wrong with the academic program at the Minneapolis Public Schools:

 

No one trained under those campus embarrassments dubbed education “professors” has any idea as to the impartation of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.

 

Ed Graff is an academic lightweight with degrees in elementary education and educational administration.

 

Aimee Fearing is trained in English language learning and holds graduate degrees in education.

 

Not a single staff member in the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning has an advanced degree in a subject area discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, history, political science, economics, psychology, English or world literature, music, or visual art).

 

Thus, not a single staff member at the Minneapolis Public Schools is a scholar or has any conviction that the pursuit of knowledge is important.  This is true of locally centralized school districts throughout the United States.  Given that most people are graduates of locally centralized school districts and that other K-12 institutions (charter schools, alternative schools, private schools) are no better and in the case of alternative and charter schools mostly worse, one should endeavor to grasp the enormity of the dilemma with which we are now gravely vexed: 

 

a woefully ignorant citizenry and body politic.

 

The United States has a wretched system of education that produces high school graduates who are lamentably deficient in knowledge of history, natural science, and all other academic subjects.  Those who hold bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees frequently have expert knowledge in a given field but are very little better broadly educated than are high school graduates:

 

In a nation in which even those of highest academic training are not broadly educated and typically feature poor grasp of science and history, we have then the phenomenon of voting on emotion rather than logic, simplistic responses to dramatic national events, and the unconscionable presidency of Donald Trump, with the morally abominable possibility that he could be elected again.

 

The good hearts and well-trained specialists at the Minneapolis Public Schools who sit on the superintendent’s cabinet must act.

 

They must act now, with vigor, according to the moral imperative that they are working for a superintendent and a system that are knowledge-aversive and that produce an intellectually and morally depraved public.

 

Curriculum at the Minneapolis Public Schools must be overhauled for knowledge intensity, delivered in logical grade by grade sequence, with teachers retrained so as to manifest the ability to impart such a curriculum.

 

Those at the Minneapolis Public Schools who are adept at their own fields can no longer afford the luxury of ignoring the deficiencies of those making decisions pertinent to the academic program:

 

They must advocate for the ouster of Aimee Fearing from her position as interim academics chief, the dismantling of the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning, and the dismissal of the administratively astute Graff if he does not acknowledge his own academic shortcomings and hire independent or university based field specialists to create and implement knowledge-based curriculum and oversee teacher retraining.

 

As good people and as professionally accomplished as Ibrahima Diop, Karen Devet, Justin Hennes, Maggie Sullivan, and Rochelle Cox are, they will be just as responsible as are the inept MPS academic decision-makers if they do not act to induce the imperative overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Massive national ignorance created the context for the murder of George Floyd. 

 

Public schools systems created an ignorant citizenry. 

 

Overhaul of preK-12 education is a moral imperative.

 

Anyone in a position to advocate for the needed overhaul who fails to do so is and will be increasingly morally culpable.  

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