October 28, 2020
Reply to a Thoughtful Reader---
Pardon the hubris involved in answering your question honestly--- and be aware that the issue raised by your latest question is one of my driving concerns.
Willie Mays once said, “I am the best baseball player I have ever seen.”
Willie was just being honest. He was the best, hands down. No one equaled him at the time, no one equals him now, and among life’s near-certainties is the presumed fact that no one will ever equal Willie Mays for ability to field, hit for average, hit for power, steal bases, and manifest all of those intangibles necessary to win.
We are not accustomed to getting such hubris from teachers, who all are remunerated by the step and lane system, with no recognition for merit, just according to time spent in the system and whether or not the money is spent to purchase a cheap putatively graduate degree from a watered-down program in a department, college, or school of education--- rather than in a legitimate discipline.
So, brace yourself as I riff on Willie’s line:
“I am the best teacher I have ever seen.”
I studied through to a Ph. D. in Chinese and Taiwanese history, mastered Mandarin Chinese, and am an aggressive accumulator of knowledge. I utilize all technology germane to my purposes but do not waste time in the multiple social media distractions so evident in our times: I read, in all subjects, every day. This is the quantity and quality of knowledge that I am pouring into Fundamentals of An Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
I first decided to be a teacher of young people living at the urban core back in the spring of my sophomore year as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, and at that time started coordinating tutoring programs for SMU volunteer services and working myself in the classrooms of L. G. Pinkston High School in the West Dallas area, which featured demographic characteristics similar to North Minneapolis. That was in 1971. Since that time, I have mostly taught inner city high school students but along the way have taught in every situation of which most people are likely to think: a prison in Missouri; English as a Second Language (ESL) in Taiwan; a course on American college life for the Fulbright Foundation in Gaoxiong, Taiwan, via the linguistic medium of Mandarin; a total of four and half years at the college and university level, situations arising due to special invitation at the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, and St. Olaf College--- courses in East Asian history; three academic years in a small town; alternative schools in North Minneapolis; and now, for 27 years of a 49-year career, running my program for people living at the urban core of Minneapolis, mostly Northside students in preK-12 but also a number of adults. I am as comfortable teaching fundamental reading and math to a preK student as I am running a graduate seminar on the life of Taiwanese farmers in the course of the island’s rapid economic development.
I have authored eight formal publications (mostly imprints of Greenwood Publishing, now under the aegis of ABC/CLIO publishing in California, but also for the Minneapolis Urban league and others). My scholarly works have included matters pertinent to Taiwanese history and culture, African American history and culture, and preK-12 education.
When I walk into one of my academic sessions, I need no notes. I have my own plan for the day’s topic but always stand ready to address a particular student’s issues, academic and otherwise, at school. Working from a humble chalkboard, with reference to a simple wall map of the world, and via my own banter, we launch into two hours of densely packed information.
The New Salem Educational Initiative actually features two programs. I run a Tuesday evening program that is fairly conventional, mostly for New Salem youth, and with the assistance of three long-time, highly dedicated tutors. But for the small-group/individual program that runs seven days a week, I do all the teaching: No one has the capability in that setting to do what I do.
Anyone would be welcome to try, and I would upon invitation convey to people as much of my approach as possible. But my long-term plan is to induce transformation at the level of the locally centralized school district. In my writings, I have provided a detailed plan for curriculum overhaul and for teacher training to produce classroom teachers capable of imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum. The essence of the teacher training program is for the Minneapolis Public School administration to invite college and university based subject area scholars (most definitely no education professors allowed anywhere near the teachers that they have done their best to ruin) to run an intensive course to give teachers the knowledge sets they failed to get in their previous training; then teachers would spend a whole year as interns proving their mettle in the classroom.
Also understand that I have spent six years researching and writing the book on the Minneapolis Public Schools and have made many friends at the district who know that everything I say is true. In the revolutionary’s sense, I have “pierced the palace.” Many of the building’s key leaders await that signal when for careerist reasons they feel safe enough to respond to my signal--- at which time we move forcefully to exert the pressure to make the needed transformation.
Thus, there is a long-term plan that speaks to the issues you raise more completely than you could have imagined in raising your excellent question: The result of my effort will be to produce teachers capable of imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum. They will not replicate what I do, because that is impossible, as no one will ever be Willie Mays. But there have been other good and even excellent ballplayers, and there can be much, much better teachers.
I am the most assiduous critic of the public schools and the most ardent advocate of the public schools. I have little use for charter schools or for schemes such as vouchers. The great bulk of our students will be educated in locally centralized school systems, from which we will send students forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction--- creating a citizenry that acts and votes not on emotion but on the basis of facts.
Thanks very much, and if I can answer any other questions, you know by now that I will do that--- and more---
With best regards--
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
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