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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