Analysis of the Members of Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education as to Specific Nature of Culpability >>>>> Six Who Should Resign Immediately and Three Who Give Faint Hope
Six Members of the MPS Board of Education Who Should Resign Immediately: Jenny Arneson, KerryJo Felder, Kim Ellison, Kim Carpini, Nelson Inz, and Bob Walser
Case Number Three for Resignation >>>>>
Bob Walser
The Silliest and Most Offensive of a Motley Crew
Bob Walser is the silliest, most offensive member on this and any school board that I have witnessed during my half-century of observation. This iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education is by far the worst that I have witnessed during my particularly close five-year scrutiny of this motley assemblage.
Walser is a disaster.
Walser was among the group recruited by Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Rebecca Gagnon to run for the MPS Board of Education in 2016. Gagnon eventually got caught in her political manipulations and was ousted in 2018. Inz remains as District #5 (South Minneapolis, east of I-35) representative and board chair; Ellison as one of three At-Large members. Inz, Ellison, and Gagnon recruited candidates friendly to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) to run against the independent voices of Josh Reimnitz and Tracine Asberry (the most assertive actor for better academic results); and for the At-Large seat vacated by Carla Bates.
Walser, who represents the toney areas of Bryn Mawr, Lowry Hill, and Linden Hills, is a salient example of that creature who assigns to himself the appellation of “progressive” on matters pertinent to preK-12 education, thus a participant in a sordid history traceable to Teachers College at Columbia University. Consistent with the various strands of this ideology, Walser rails against objective assessment of student performance and spouts the jargon of putatively child-centered education.
The most stupid verbal fodder spills from Walser’s mouth:
Two recent whoppers demonstrate the facile, grating nature of this lamentable school board creature:
>>>>> At one meeting that involved the fate of middle schools versus preK-8 schools in the district, Walser wondered why we have middle schools and asserted that we have only had this type of student grouping since the 1950s. In making this comment, Walser demonstrated the typically shallow nature of his reading and research. He had apparently come across a reference to the advent of the middle school (grades 6-8), which did from the 1950s mostly replace junior high (grades 7-9). But Walser’s reference maintained that grouping at the level of the middle grades did not begin until the 1950s. In fact, the first junior highs appeared in 1909.
>>>>> At the September meeting of the MPS Board of Education, Walser mentioned during the final, tortuous comments that members make on the cusp of each meeting’s adjournment that he had attended a number of community meetings lately and found the comment of one African American mother especially moving. Walser said that she identified the problems of the Minneapolis Public Schools as grounded in the northern European approach to education taken by the district.
I have been deeply embedded in the African American community for forty-eight years:
African Americans do in public forums occasionally have recourse to the same jargon of “cultural relevance” and “cultural competence” with assertions of Western bias as do hippy-dippy white liberals of the sort that my radical leftist inclinations find abhorring. But face to face, I never hear such jargon. When African American parents, the largest familial contingent in the New Salem Educational Initiative, come to me in behalf of their children, their plea is in essence, “Please impart to my baby the mathematical and reading skills that the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools fails to render, along with strong college preparatory knowledge sets that MPS does not deliver.” They
trust and know that I have a strong grasp of European-based culture and history and also the traditions of Asia, Africa, African America, and a bevy of other ethnicities. What they want for their children is the best education that can be had, so that those precious young people can be the vanguard that leads the family forth from cyclical poverty and centuries of abusive history.
Armchair white liberals of the Walser type are offensive to most African Americans. They sense that those who shout adoring phrases from afar are frauds, full of condescension and paternalism. Bob Walser has offended most African Americans in positions of leadership at the Minneapolis Public Schools. They know a fake and a patronizer when they encounter one.
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In any case, the approach taken by the Minneapolis Public Schools is not northern European, except inasmuch as it is through British conveyance that a curriculum consisting of knowledge gathered from the entire globe was delivered to American colonists and thence to the fledgling United States of America. The knowledge thus conveyed came prominently from southern (not northern) Europe, China, India, and from the Muslim empires of the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman dynasties. The best contemporary masters of modern curricula are students of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Note the absence in any of those references from the last two sentences of anything identifiable as northern European.
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Bob Walser is the silliest, most intellectually trivial board member I have witnessed on the MPS or any other board of education.
Walser needs to excuse himself for forging ahead of Jenny Arneson and Kim Ellison as he leads them with all appropriate haste out the Davis Center door.
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