Jul 1, 2020

Introduction >>>>> Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota >>>>> Volume VI, Number 1


Introductory Comments

 

Human moral standards vary over time and are still a work in progress.

 

Political and social arrangements follow the prevailing moral ethos at a particular time in history.

 

Until the late 17th century, monarchical rule, including the expanded imperial form of hereditary governance, prevailed over much of the globe.  Simpler village, village cluster, and clan organization characterized other societies in islands of the great oceans and in areas that remained remote from global interaction and competition;  but these societies, too, became swept up in imperial systems as political entities of formidable military power took aim at peoples previously living distantly from the interacting world.   

 

Britain’s dramatic national ruckus of 1688-1689, dubbed the “Glorious Revolution,” brought enhanced power to Parliament and thenceforth asserted the advantages of limiting monarchical power.  John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government served as theoretical inspiration for that power shift;  in the 18th century, Montesquieu would posit the advantages of three-branch governance, with a judiciary positioned equally alongside executive and legislative bodies.

 

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson maintained Locke’s idea of “life” and “liberty” as natural rights while changing “property” to “the pursuit of happiness.”  In the United States Constitution, James Madison also wrote under the inspiration of Locke and incorporated Montesquieu’s three-branch organizational principal, with a central government much more powerful than had been the case with the ephemeral Articles of Confederation but nevertheless conferring notable prerogatives on state and local governments, and on the “people.”

 

But composition of the “people” was only very slowly expansive:   

 

Jefferson and Madison were guilty and ideologically conflicted slave-owners who for pecuniary reasons lived with their guilt.  Andrew Jackson was a slaveholding abuser of Native Americans who nevertheless expanded the electorate to include white men of humble means.  These imperfect promoters of democracy created a system that by 1865-1877 was capable of including men of all ethnicities as formal citizens;  but territorial acquisition and political compromise negated the value of the formality, so that not for another century would a judicial, executive, and legislative consensus form that Native Americans, African Americans, and white women should gain full human dignity, with legal recourse when traditional societal attitudes conflicted with statutory and constitutional law.

 

Those traditional attitudes, including those of particular racial and sexist virulence, had major moments of reassertion from the 1980s into this very year of 2020.  Of a sudden, though, abuse of people according to ethnic and gender identification seems no longer acceptable to a majority of the now greatly expanded citizenry.

 

But a tenacious minority clings to prejudice as a guiding principle for life and will not fade in the absence of an effective combination of persuasive and punitive measures.

 

Both those who have embraced the expanded notion of citizenship and those maintaining reactionary stances mostly dwell in abject ignorance as to history, government, and natural science.

 

Only the overhaul of K-12 education can maximize the possibility that social and political advancement can proceed so that persuasive measures exceed punitive, and so that the future may be envisioned on the basis of fact and shared ethics, rather on the ethos of illogic and moral morass describing our national condition in 2020.

 

The needed overhaul must begin at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

For that to happen, fundamentally good people are going to have to behave better.

 

To behave better, leaders at the Minneapolis Public Schools are going to have to discover heretofore untapped sources of courage and action.

 

This July 2020 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution shows these good people the root of the dilemma and the route to the sources.                  

 

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