Interlude >>>>> Nativity 2021

 

Nativity 2021

 

Three sets

of

dichotomous realities

in a

national history

struggle                                                                                                                                        

for

resolution:

 

Rationality versus Superstition,

Liberty versus Bondage,

Knowledge versus Ignorance.

 

From the

Darkness

to the

Light

run those

long

 

abused

refused

defused

 

but

 

no more:

not without

 

contention

dissension

reinvention.

 

And in that

Struggle

waged

in the Light

of the Light

for the Light

the Light

shall

Prevail.

 

 

GMD

Christmas 2021

Interlude >>>>> Article #2 of a Two Article Series >>>>> Christmas as an Indicator of the Cross-Cultural Values for Impartation to All United States Citizens, with the Public Schools as Major Conduit

Pertinent to my vision for a nationwide, highly intentional focus on ethical values to be embraced by all clear-thinking citizens of humanist and various religious orientations--- with the public schools as major conduit---  I observe that the Christmas spirit at its best includes those values that we should want to proffer as candidates for widespread dissemination.

 

There is the proclaimed reason that we celebrate Christmas   >>>>>  the birth of Jesus, who was offered in Divine Sacrifice and who Divinely Sacrificed His earthly opportunity for life in the interest of Life for all---  metaphor for selfless action in behalf of the General Good, an exalted state that incorporates individual joy into Happiness for all humanity.

 

There is peace on earth, peace as an abiding general and individually internalized state of being in which the mere thought of violence is abhorrent and any violent action beyond comprehension.

 

There is joy to the world, the whole world of human beings in familial bond living on this one earthly sojourn with shared hope for the well-being of all---  all, the aggregate of each, regarded as sisters and brothers loved as fervently as those in consanguineous relationship.

 

There is silent night, holy night, when all is calm, all is bright---  the capacity to be enthralled by those serendipitous moments when one feels that all is well in her or his personal universe and perceives intimate connection to a world graced with a moment of universal calm, a vision of a world in which that sense of calm is frequent, considered perpetually possible.

 

Implicit in values exalting selfless individual action in behalf of all humanity, all living creatures;  embracing peace as abiding reality in thought and action;   elevating joy into an ethereal space to be experienced by human beings who regard one another as sisters, brothers, family;  and proclaiming the necessity of a state of psyche and spirit in which individual and collective calm may be attained at any moment desired----  implicit in these four values is a fifth, a sense of gratitude for living in such a world, a gratitude of that sensibility abiding when one realizes one's immensely good fortune at Christmas gatherings full of familial love, abundant food, and excellent health.

 

And thus does Christmas at seasonal best suggest to us those values of selfless action, abiding peace, universal joy, attainable calm, and life in identity with gratitude---   worthy of dissemination throughout the nation, across the world.

 

Interlude >>>>> Article #1 of a Two-Article Series >>>>> Organizing for Impartation of Cross-Cultural Societal Values, with the Public Schools as Major Conduit

 Synchrony of imagination and reality is possible.

 

To imagine the possible is to assert that the imagined is attainable.

 

Some people imagine their ideal future life and devise a plan to realize the life envisioned.

 

That is what we must do as a society  >>>>>  decide what we want and devise a plan for achieving our goals.

 

We as a society must decide what we want

 

and

 

devise a plan for achieving our goals.

 

...............................................

 

I have always admired thinkers who accumulate massive detail in the service of a unifying principle  >>>>>

 

Einstein  >>>>>  Energy is the product of an object's mass times the square of velocity.

 

B.F. Skinner  >>>>>   Behavior is produced when genetic inheritance encounters experience.

 

In this spirit, I assert that the quality of the human future will be determined by deciding what we want and devising a plan.

 

But this will not be easy.  

 

........................................................

 

An initial vanguard of activists will have to realize the necessity of deciding the goals and devising the plan.  

 

The vanguard must then issue an initial statement of goals and the essence of the plan for realization. 

 

Others should be invited to comment on the goals and the plan.  

 

Multiple groups considering evolving goals and plan should form, first locally, then across a given state, then across a given region, then under the aegis of a national organization.  

 

A consensus should be formed in national meetings of representatives to the national organization.

 

Local affiliates must advocate for the goals and plan in churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples----  inviting comment from religious leaders.  

 

This advocacy should be publicized so as to invite comment among scholars and among interested members of the public.

 

The national organization should issue a statement of the maturing goals and plan.

 

This statement should be embraced and promulgated in religious institutions, on university campuses, and in civic groups.

 

The national organization should establish a committee for advancing the maturing consensus as a guide to curriculum and teacher training in preK-12 public school districts.  

 

Subcommittees should be organized for advocacy at the level of the locally centralized school district.

 

With religious, post-secondary, civic, and preK-12 institutions united as to societal goals and plan, consensus will widen and pursuit of societal goals will gain ever greater force and speed.

 

A peaceful and compassionate society of fulfilled individuals will result  >>>>>

 

Joy to the world.

 

Peace on earth.

 

This can happen.

 

Interlude >>>>> The Hopelessness of the Minneapolis Public Schools Under Current Leadership

The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) constitutes a locally centralized school district in disarray.  

Superintendent Ed Graff has never had a viable plan for providing a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete academic program, nor for meeting the needs of those demographic groups---  students on Free/Reduced Price Lunch and those of African American, Latina/Latino, American Indian, and Hmong ethnicity--- who have been even more ill-served than the general student population.  

To provide knowledge-intensive education, a scholarly superintendent would dismantle the Department of Teaching and Learning and its 27 members, then she or he would commission university-based or independent scholars in major academic disciplines to design logically sequenced knowledge-intensive curriculum for grade-by-grade implementation throughout grades preK through twelve.  

Subject area emphasis at preK-5 would be on mathematics;  biology, chemistry, and physics;  history, government, geography, and economics;  Western classic, world, and ethnic-specific literature;  music and the visual arts;  and health and physical education.

This emphasis would continue at grades 6-8, with increasing student access to courses in world languages and in the vocational and technological arts.  

At grades 9-12, all but those students with grave learning challenges would be prepared to take Advanced Placement courses in all major subjects and  otherwise to select courses according to driving interest and life vision.  All high school students would produce a minimum 10-page research paper based on multiple sources and with proper citations.

...........................................................

To implement these changes, Ed Graff would be released as superintendent;  the Department of Teaching and Learning and the Office of Black Sudent Achievement would be dismantled;  the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education would be overhauled for staffing with subject area expertise; and tbe position of associate superintendent would be terminated. 

Replacing ineffective central office bureaucrats would be a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral, led by current Office of Black Student Achievement director Michael Walker and staffed with people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of families facing elevated challenges of finances and functionality.

Teachers at all levels would have to be retrained in order to impart the new knowledge-intensive curriculum.

.......................................................

As matters currently stand, Graff's four-point program of social and emotional learning, multi-tiered system of support, literacy, and equity is a predictably massive failure.  Neither this program nor the academic portion of the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) has academic heft.

The academic portion of the CDD is full of jargon emanating from education professors at such institutions as the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).  Overwhelmingly, academic decision-makers, principals, and teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools have been trained in such programs and share the anti-knowledge ideology that has academically abused public schools students for at least four decades. 

That Graff and staff would therefore turn to the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development to improve academic results at the Minneapolis Public Schools demonstrates complete failure to grasp the source of the district's failures and the nature of the needed overhaul.

Article #12 >>>>> Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Educatiion Throughout the United States

The Demise of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Vacuity of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and the Return to Unabashed Intellectual Corruption in American Public Education

As soon as No Child Left Behind legislation was passed (2001) and implementation began (2002), the education establishment and politically purchased left of center politicians in the Democratic Party moved to undermine the effort to establish logically sequenced, measurable academic standards.

Predictably, hordes of students failed to demonstrate grade level proficiency in mathematics, reading, and science;  and many schools theretofore considered to be good or even excellent were identified as failing due to dismal results revealed in disaggregated data.  

When this happened, teachers unions such as the Minneapolis Federation.of Teachers (MFT), Education Minnesota, and similar local and state unions across the United States blamed the messenger, claiming that NCLB and standardized tests (objective assessments) were at fault, rather than curriculum, teacher quality, and skill remediation (or lack thereof) in failed schools.

Then former NCLB supporters among Republicans began to receive political pressure of their own, from constituencies lamenting loss of local control under NCLB;  and from voucher proponents contemptuous of public education and having no interest in the necessary overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality.  

Thus did forces of tbe left and of the right work with antipodal impact to terminate No Child Left Behind.  Early in the Obama administration, states were offered opt-out under the new Race to the Top program from NCLB, with the opportunity to submit aternative plans for ending differential results by income and ethnicity.  In Minnesota, this induced development of the intellectually corrupt North Star Accountability System that included the inept, ludicrously named Regional Centers of Excellence.

But the race was to the bottom, there was no accountability under the North Star, and there was no regional excellence pertinent to public education in Minnesota.  

In 2015, the United States Congress voted to replace NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), another mere proclamation with no correspondence between appellation and fact.

After the evanescent hope offered by the standards movement and NCLB, public education in 2021 remains a travesty, the United States a nation at risk.

Article #11 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Demise of the Promising Standards Movement, 1983-2008

In 1983 the United States Commission on Excellence in Education, having been charged by U. S. Secretary of Education T. H. Bell to assess the state of public education, revealed that state to be so abysmal as to entitle the document summarizing the Commission's findings, A Nation at Risk.

The Commision found teaching quality highly variable from school district to school district and frequently poor;  curriculum typically ill-articulated from grade to grade;  assigning of grades wildly inconsistent and often unreflective of achievement levels;  issuance of diplomas to a substantial proportion of students who lacked basic skills and in many cases were fuctionally illiterate;  and a cluster of conditions in urban districts that rendered public education of students, especially nonwhite, particularly.ineffective and discriminatory.

The report engendered a number of highly disparate, contradictory responses >>>>>

>>>>>   Those who misleadingly appropriated the appellation, "progressive," doubled down on the approach responsible for putting the nation at risk, arguing for more schools  in which curriculum was flexible, assessments by portfolio and demonstration, and classrooms presided over by teachers in the role of project guides, rather than bearers of knowledge.

>>>>>  Some, identifying as conservative and generally distrustful of government, argued for the design and implemenration of voucher systems that would allow students across economic class to attend private schools of their selection.

>>>>>  Others advocated for charter schools, publicly funded schools started and managed by citizens (community members, parents, students, teachers) so as to meet certain requirements but to gain exemption from many regulations.

>>>>>  And then there were those who wanted to address the problems identified in >A Nation at Risk< directly, by establishing grade by grade standards, objective assessments for determining student skill levels with data disaggregated by income and ethnicity, and consequences for schools in which students of various demographic descriptors failed to meet grade level standards.

Voucher advocates never got very far with their proposals.  Here and there putative progressives established new schools, in which students mostly did not demonstrate grade level skills across income and ethnicity.  Charter schools were launched.in Minnesota in 1991, over time evidencing even lower student achievement levels than those witnessed in conventional public schools.  

The standards movement gained great momentum throughout the 1990s and in the United States Congress gained legislative manifestation in the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), a bipartisan initiative led by Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Representative John Boehner.

This promising legislation mandated that states establish objectively measurable grade level standards, with appropriate assessments, and specifying consequences for schools in which students identified according to disaggregated data did not meet standards.  

State systems went into effect beginning in 2002 and for a half-decade offered great promise until rendered moribund by forces of both the political left and the political right by the year 2008.

Interlude >>>>> The Cluelessness Revealed in the Decision by Minneapolis Public Schools Officials to Seek Guidance from the University of Minnesora College of Education and Human Development

The recent decision by officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to seek advice from staff at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) for addressing inequities in student achievement saliently demonstrates the incompetence of MPS academic decision-makers.

Education professors at the CEHD are the biggest culprits in producing wretched systems of public education such as that found in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

These are the people who have given us knowledge-bereft, slimly specified curriculum in preK-5 schools;  the notion of middle schools as centers of socialization rather than academic advancement;  high school teachers possessing lightweight Masters of Education (M.Ed.) degrees rather than M.A. or M.S  degrees in major academic disciplines;  invented spelling and whole language reading (over explicit instruction in phonics);  pseudo-philosophical notions such as metacognition and constructivism (rather than mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, and probability); inefficient group projects rather than individual acquisition of logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets;  and portfolios rather than objective assessments.

These approaches are traceable to those advanced by Harold Rugg, Wiiliam Heard Kilpatrick, and others at Teachers  College/Columbia University from the 1920s, pedagogic features of which finally gained prominence in school districts across the United States during the 1970s.

At the Minneapolis Public Schools we witness the deleterious effects:  35% student proficiency rates in math, 46% in reading,with rates under 25% for many demographic groups;  and, among those who actually manage to graduate, students who walk across the stage woefully deficient in knowledge pertinent to mathemstics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, geography, economics, psychology, classic and ethnic-specific literature, English usage, music, visual art, and the vocations.

And across the landscape of the United States we witness an ignorant citizenry, at least a quarter of which is mired in superstition, vulnerable to all manner of fact-bereft explanations in lieu of data-replete information from carefully constructed scientific research.

The tenure of Ed Graff is viewed negatively by four of nine members of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  This recent linkage to failed approaches  emanating from the CEHD should be grounds for other board members to oust Graff and other academic decision-makers at MPS, acting then to bring forth scholars from key academic fields to design knowledge-intensive curriculum and the training of teachers capable of imparting such curriculum.  

There are lives in the balance at.the urban core and a nation at stake in the next decades of the 21st century.

Article #10 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Manifold Harm Inflicted By Knowledge-Deficient Publlic Education Observable During the 1990s

By the 1990s, multiple occurrences synchronous with education professor ideology could be witnessed across the landscape of the United States.  

In classrooms across the nation, ill-trained teachers of limited knowledge bases were imparting very little information pertinent to mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, geography, economics, literature, music, and tbe visual arts.  Curriculum tended to be determined by teacher and student whim.  Group activities typically constituted the pedagogical emphasis, with individual achievement given increasingly less attention.

The middle school movement had largely succeeded in achieving objectives of reconfiguring grade alignment from grades 7, 8, and 9 to 6, 7, and 8;  and moving from the junior high concept emphasizing academic training for high school to the middle school concept deempasizing academics (on the basis of the pseudoscientific notion that preteen and early teen brains had reached an intellectual plateau) in favor of social and psycho-emotional stage development.

There also arose by the 1990s the idea that praise was to be lavished on students, regardless of level of academic achievement and even in the absence of consistent good behavior.  Students were to be made to feel high self-esteem on the basis of praise, ratber than attainment of academic and behavioral objectives that would establish self-esteem on a firm and enduring foundation.

By the 1990s, terminal master's degrees of academic rigor for those in key disciplines who did not intend to study for a Ph.D. gave way to master's degrees of little subject area substance, bestowed by departments, schools, and colleges of of education.  Masters in mathematics gave way to the masters in teaching mathematics;  and the masters in teaching social studies, rather than masters in history, political science, geography, or economics;  and similar phenomena pertinent to other fields.  

Thus did knowledge-deficient high school teachers, charged with the four-year responsibility of giving students all tbe knowledge that they did not get in elementary and middle school, prove increasingly incapable of even approaching fulfillment of that responsibility.  Knowledge-challenged themselves, utilizing whimsical curriculum and employing the inefficient group project methods of their elementary and middle school counterparts, high school teachers and similarly trained administrators sent even those students who managed to graduate across tbe stage to claim a piece of paper that was a diploma in name only.

The 1990s constituted  a particularly bad time for the insidious notions of outrageously mislabeled "progressive" education to become so firmly embedded in public education   >>>>>

>>>>>  At the urban core, community maladies associated with the pervasive peddling and use of crack cocaine became painfully evident.  Gang and criminal activity reached unprecedented levels.  Welfare dependency had become endemic.  Cyclical poverty was a fixture of life.  The contrast in the two realities of African American middle class versus impoverished class life became starker than ever.

In response to the manifest consequences of knowledge-deficient public education, various reform movements developed.  

As we shall see, these movements were as much at odds with each other as with the reactionary pose of the now tragi-comedically.exposed education establishment.

And, despite vigorous advocacy for knowledge and skill based standards, the counter-push from others appropriating the reformist appellation and from the education establishment have bequeathed to us the still wretched quality of public education observable in 2021.

Interlude >>>>> Inducing the Exit of Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff--- Then Proceeding with the Necessary Overhaul of Curriculum and Teacher Quality

The Academic Hopelessness of the Ed Graff Tenure

Ed Graff was doomed to failure as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) from the beginning of his tenure on 1 July 2016.

Numerous duties pertain to the role of superintendent of a locally centralized school district;  among those duties, academic leadership, toward creation of knowledge-intensive curriculum and training of teachers capable of imparting such curriculum, is paramount.

Graff could never have been such a leader.  

His academic training is insubstantial.  

Graff's undergraduate degree (B. A, 

University of Alaska/Fairbanks) was in elementary education, entailing the most academically unsubstantial course of study on any university campus.  His graduate degree (M.Ed., University of Southern Mississippi) was in educationl administration---  an online professiional degree involving no substantial academic training.

Thus, despite Graff's commendable trust in superlative Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop to put MPS

finances in order with structurally balanced budgets, and reliance on the strengths of Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet and Senior Information Technology Officer Justin Hennes in their respective areas, Graff has not overseen the development of the academic program that is at the core of the mission of any locally centralized school district.

The Unfortunate Decision to Install Aimee Fearing as Senior Academic Officer

No one with the proper qualifications has occupied the post at the top of the academic division during the tenure of Ed Graff.  His early decision to oust the incapable Susanne Griffin was correct, but Graff soon installed Eric Moore in the position.  

Oppositon to that move by inept staff in the wasteland known as the Department of Teaching and Learning could be construed as a compliment, but for entirely different reasons Moore was not the person for the role.  Moore's gifts, still utililized as Senior Accountability, Research, and Equity Officer, is in data collection and analysis, not in matters of curriculum design and teacher training.

Graff retreated for many months to a state of affairs in which he acted as senior academic leader, then he quixotically turned to former Wellstone International High School Principal Aimee Fearing, who for many months held the title of Interim Senior Academic Officer;  just a few weeks ago, Graff removed the interim designation.

Fearing has no training in any key academic subject (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, geography, literature).  Her undergraduate training is in English as a Second Language (ESL);  both her master's and doctorate were conferred by education programs.

The Academically Insubstantial Program of Ed Graff

The four major components of Graff's acadenic program have been woefully inadequate from the beginning.  

The components are social and emotional learning (endeavoring to ensure that students are socially and emotionally prepared to receive academic instruction), multi-tiered system of support (MTSS, seeking to remove all nonacademic impediments to student learning and focusing instruction on each student's most critical needs), literacy, and equity.

But social and emotional learning, even if effectively implemented (which has not been the case) is only preparatory to academic learning.   

Multi-tiered system of support has been hazy as to detail and ineffective as to implementation.  

Literacy is an embarrassing low academic bar that has even more embarrassingly not been achieved (only 46% of MPS students at grade level in reading [with only 35% at grade level in mathematics]).  

Equity will only come by providing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors.

And while the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) admirably rationalizes transportation routes, centrally locates magnet programs, and induces attendance at neighborhood schools, the academic section is full of education professor jargon and bereft of specifics as to curriculum and teacher training.

Ed Graff's failure is grievous and manifest.

He must go.

The Qualifications Needed in the Next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools---

and the Imperative Overhaul of Curriculum and Teacher Quality

No one who possesses a superintendent's license is on the basis of that formal requirement likely to be the needed academic leader of the district  >>>>>

Her or his graduate training will have emphasized educational administration, not a key academic subject area.

Therefore, the next superintendent

must hire as senior academic officer a university-based or independent scholar to oversee 

>>>>>  the development of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum for logically sequenced implementation across grades preK though 12;

>>>>>  and the training of teachers capable of implementing such a curriculum.

The central office bureaucracy should be slimmed and refocused on the impartation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.  

The Department of Teaching and Learning should be disbanded, to be replaced by scholars selected for design of knowledge intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts and for the training of teachers capable of delivering such a curruculum.  

Upon the basis of curriculum in history and literature that necessarily includes all cultures, the ineffective Office of Black Student Achievemen should be eliminated and the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education restaffed with academicians.

Included in bureacratic slimming should be the dismissal of associate superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno, with the return of Rochelle Cox to special education leadership.  

The position of administrator, office of the superintendent (currently designated for annual remuneration in excess of $190,000), should be jettisoned, entailing tbe dismissal or reassignment of Suzanne Kelly.

While diminution of central office bureauracy should proceed vigorously, a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral should be established, staffed with people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families struggling with dilemmas of finances and functionality.  Current Director of the Office of Black Student Achievement Michael Walker is qualified to lead this new department.

............................................................

Ed Graff's tenure as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools must end.

A new program featuring knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher-scholars must be implemented.

There are lives in the balance.

The time is now.

Article #9 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Terrible Toll of Knowledge-Deficient Education on Students at the Urban Core During the 1980s  

By the 1980s, the anti-knowledge ideology inflicted by education professors on curriculum and teacher training was taking a terrible toll on students in locally centralized school districts throughout the United States.

The toll taken could be observed in several sets of dichotomies categorizing the American public  >>>>>

>>>>>   Some of those who had been able, by nature of family influences, personal reading habits, and college or university matriculation, to gain a relatively strong base of factual knowledge developed a rational approach to life consonant with principles of the Enlightenment present in the thinking of the Founders at the nation's inception;  others, bereft of personal inclinations and influences external to their public education, developed an approach to life synchronous with that superstitious, irrational, fact-resistant strain that was also present from the early decades of United States history.

>>>>>   Some of those capable of rational thought and inclined toward scientific and logical analysis were able to observe and process the manifold advances in American life by women, African Americans, Latinas/Latinos, and Native Anericans so as to impel society toward more nonsexist, racially pluralistic modes of thought and action;  but others, variously cowered in resentment or openly hostile, expressed their opposition to the advancement of women and nonwhite groups either bluntly or in coded language.

>>>>>   And within the African American community there developed stark contrasts between those positioned to seize the opportunities provided by civil rights, fair housing, and equal employment legislation of the 1960s to attend universities, rise to positions as physicians and attorneys and business managers, and select from an array of residential options;  and those left behind, sullen and hopeless, at the urban core.

On these latter, the toll taken by wretched public education fell particularly hard.  

Denied knowledge and skills necessary to become culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied citizens, those mired in cyclical familial poverty with no route of escape too often lived out their lives on mean streets leading to death or incarceration.  

Multiple deleterious phenomena gained witness at the urban core:  proliferation of crack cocaine;  the perceptible opportunity but ultimate disaster of easy money;  lives lived in a haze of addiction;  welfare dependency;  the decline in two-parent families;  tbe decrease in committed life relationships;  greatly increased gang activity;  rising rates of crime, inducing both Black-on-Black crime and ignorantly brutal police response.

Wretched, knowledge-bereft public education undergirded all of these unfortunate developments.

Widespead public ignorance produced both the three sets of dualities and the despair at the urban core. 

A major, data-abundant study published in 1983 found public education so indequate as to deem the nation's economic and societal future to be at risk.

The risk persisted and became more disastrously manifest in the years and decades thereafter.

Wretched public education renders the nation more at risk than ever in the year 2021.

Article #8 >>>>> The Origins and of Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Lamentable Triumph of Anti-Knowledge Ideology, Circa 1980

Tapping into the zeitgeist of the 1960's, education professors were during the 1970s increasingly successful in gaining adoption of the anti-knowledge creed that they had been advocating ever since the days of Harold Rugg and William Heard Kilpatrick at Teachers College/Columbia University during the 1920s.

Particularly in elementary schools, curriculum became extraordinarily week, knowledge-bereft as to government, history, geography, natural science, and quality literature.  In mathematics, student training in calculation skills for addition, subtraction, and multiplication languished, while long division was on the way to becoming a lost art.  Elementary teachers, many themselves math-phobic, began to introduce calculators as early as Grade 4.  

Math education professors, those intellectual lightweights possessing nowhere close to the mathematic ability and advanced training of professors in university departments of mathematics, were increasingly successful in pushing their insidious ideas, namely that

>>>>>  calculation skills do not matter;

>>>>>  students need to spend large amounts of time in "metacognition" examining their thinking process as they perform mathematicsl tasks;

>>>>>  students should be guided to construct the mathematic context in which their tasks are performed on the basis of their life experiences.

All of this nebulous verbiage, inflicted on students just in grades K-5, emanated from mathematically untalented education professors posing as grand philosophers.  Such insubstantive notions would leave generations unable to add, subtract. multiply, divide, or to work with fractions, decimals, and percentages.

Increasingly elementary teachers also succumbed to the pedagogy of "whole language learning," which deemphasizes explicit instruction in phonics and grammar while stressing natural acquisition of these skills via reading engaging material.  But reading material was typically unchallenging and academically insubstantive---  and little acquisition of English usage, properly advancing vocabulary, or spelling skills (further undermined by the fanciful notion of "invented spelling") occurred.

Concomitant with these developments was the increasing imposition of the ideas of the gadflies in the middle school movement, who advanced absurd notions of preteen brains at intellectual plateaus, in need of social skills more than academic substance---  and for grade realignment at 6-7-8 to replace the 7-8-9 configuration of more academically substantive junior highs. 

Thus did students increasingly arrive at high school needing to acquire 13 years worth of knowledge in just four years, but depending on curriculum and teacher quality incapable of imparting the requisite knowledge and skill sets.

No student fared well as the notions of education professors advanced.

But for those left behind at the urban core circa 1980, confronting midfle clzss flight, crack cocaine, and ascending gang activity, the specter of doom loomed.

Article #7 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Disastrous Implementation of Education Professor Ideology from the 1970s Forward

Thus did the very favorable developments during the 1960s, dramatically exposing the racism in United States history and contemporary society;  advancing the position of women;  activating African American, Latina/Latino, and Native American communities in assertion of full citizenship;  and providing enhanced public health care via Medicare and Medicaid---   nevertheless harbor ill for public education.

Truly progressive education at this juncture would have entailed further advancement of teaching as a profession, providing academic rigor in the undergraduate and graduate trainimg of elementary school teachers of broad and deep knowledge, requiring all middle and high school teachers to get master's degrees in legitimate subject area disciplines, and raising teacher emoluments for this professionalized teaching force to a truly professional level of remuneration.

But the distrust that young people harbored  for the adult white establishment found expression in ways that would ironically undercut such progressive development of the teaching profession for the implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.  

The knowledge sets that had for many decades been fixtures in the curriculum were essentially sound in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, government, economics, and geography.  

Curriculum in history and literature was also fundamentally well-conceived but incomplete, needing expansion to include the objective truth about the experiences and creative works of nonwhite cultures.

But the general distrust of the white male adult establishment induced an attitude that students must be given more voice, and in some formulations even the leading role, in determing curriculum.  Understandable in terms of historical and contemporary grievance, the notion of ill-educated young people deciding curriculum was and is objectively absurd.

The trends of the times, though, provided the perfect opportunity for the decades-long hopes of education professors to implement their falsely labeled "progressive" ideology, which held that curriculum should not be set but rather guided by student interest;  and that those presiding over classrooms should not be knowledge-imparting teachers but rather "guides" for students pursuing their own driving interests.

The anti-knowledge ideology of education professors has a certain facile appeal but in the guise of child-centeredness constitutes an abdication of adult responsibility to provide knowledge, wisdom, and ethical instruction to the genuinely loved child. 

The insidious ideology of education professors fell hardest on young people living at the urban core  >>>>>

>>>>>

Given fair employment and housing legislation, those from previously dispossessed groups who were positioned to stake their claim on the middle class dream very well might gain a highly remunerstive income and a residence in the suburbs.  

But left behind at the urban core were those mired in cyclical familial poverty.

For young people of the central cities from families facing grave challenges of finances and functionality, the only way to reverse decades of cyclical poverty and associated life circumstances was  the acquisition of knowledge and skill conducive to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.

But given imposition of the education professors' anti-knowledge ideology in locally centralized school districts throughout the United States, 

few students would fare as well as they should;

for many the consequences would be grave;

and for young people living at the urban core, doomed to lives on mean streets or in prison, 

the decidedly unprogressive consequences of an errant and misnamed ideology would be disastrous. 

Interlude >>>>> Assessing the Likelihood of Ed Graff's Resignation as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools

At the Minnespolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education monthly.meeting of 12 October, four members voted against holding discussions that would lead to a new contract for MPS Superintendent Ed Graff that would inaugurate another three-year term on 1 July 2022.

Those voting against negotiating a new contract with Graff were Sharon El-Amin (District 2), Siad Ali (District 3), Adriana Cerrillo (District 4), and Josh Pauly (At-Large).

Voting for negotiations were Jenny Arneson (District 1), Nelson Inz (Distruct 5), Ira Jourdain (District 6), Kim Caprini (At-Large), anf Kim Ellison (At-Large).

Given the majority vote, contract talks will be entered officially on fhe docket.

But Ed Graff most likely will resign well before July 2022.   

A four to five tally falls well short of a vote of confidence.

Discontent at the Davis Center (MPS central offices) is rife.  An already widespread disssatisfaction deepened to demoralization with the 5-4 vote.  

Should Graff continue as superintendent, staff departures would ensue.  

Should the departures include staff at the ineffective Department of Teaching and Learning and others in the Academuc Division, the departures would constitute a favorable development.  But those departures would most likely involve many talented key figures outside the Academic Division whose loss would be lamentable in the extreme.

Currently only 35% of MPS students are proficient at grade level in mathematics;  only 44% read at grade level;  fewer than 25% of students on Free/Reduced Price Lunch and in key demographic categories function at grade level in those skill areas.

Nothing in tbe MPS Comprehensive District Design articulates a viable plan for academic progress or for the design of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum for logically sequenced implementation throughout the pre-K through 12 grades.

Ed Graff is a failure as an academic.leader;  he should---  and in all likelihoid will---  do what most superintendents who receive such a slim vote of confidence have done  >>>>>

resign.

Article #6 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

Disastrous Timing for the Emerging Dominance of Anti-Knowledge Ideology During the 1970s

The anti-knowledge ideology advanced by education professors at Teachers College/Columbia Univsity and other education schools from the 1920s forward gained unfortunate resonance with public school administrators in the context of the 1960s zeitgeist.

Until the 1960s, leaders at public school districts typically resisted the anti-knowledge creed. Most decision-makers and teachers had themselves attended schools with curriculum featuring clearly specified, logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets.  Elementary school teachers embraced the role of broadly knowledgeable purveyors of academic information, and secondary teachers viewed themselves as field specialists.

School boards were similarly inclined toward academically substantive curriculum.  European immigrant and African American northwardly migrant populations viewed education as their conduit up the ladder of social and economic mobility, attained on the basis of knowledge and skill mastery preparatory to college or university attendance.

From 1954 forward, the United States underwent much dramatically favorable change, induced by the Brown v Board Supreme Court decision (1954), the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), the wrenching aftermath of the Emmitt Till murder (1955), the federalization of troops to protect the Little Rock Nine (1957), the first lunch counter sit-ins (1960), James Meredith's, struggle to attend the University of Mississippi (1962), and the culmination of the first stage of the Civil Rights Movement with the March on Washington (1963), Civil Rights Act (1964), and the Voting Rights Act (1965).

In the late 1960s came fair housing and employment legislstion, the second wave feminist movement, and energized African American, Latina/Latino, and Native American populations advocating more thorough change.  

Despite assertive federal government activity undergirding legislative and judicial change, this was a time of growing distrust in government and authority figures in general, precipitated by Vietnam War policy, generational conflict, racial tension, and gaping ideological divisions.  

Student activists on college and university campuses demanded disinvestment in abusive corporations and governments, and they called for women's and ethnic-specific studies, along with greater student input in curriculum.

Lurking within these favorable developments, though, were notions inimical to K-12 public education.  The legitimate call for curricular change and greater student input gave impetus to one attitudinal strand maintaining that all education should be student driven. 

Thus did a 1960s zeitgeist with so many favorable features for social change harbor ill for knowledge-based K-12 education.  Loving young people, listening to them, incorporating their suggestions, and giving scope for their creativity should not mean denying them the genuine wisdom of adult mentors or the academically substantial knowledge of professors and teachers acquired via many years of disciplined study.

But education professors saw in the zeitgeist of the late 1960s the moment for which they had been waiting. 

The deleterious impact of anti-knowlege ideology on K-12 policy of the 1970s would fall hardest on those mired in poverty at the urban core.

Article#5 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Endurance of Academically Substantive Curriculum Amidst Warning Signals from Anti-Knowledge Education Professors, 1920-1970

Five decades ensued before the insidious anti-knowledge creed emanating from Teachers College/Columbia University--- and then education schools across the nation--- became the dominant influence in curriculun and pedagogy in the United States.

Knowledge-based, well-specified curriculum taught by subject area specialists continued to dominate in  school districts of the United States well into the 1960s.  Teachers varied in quality, and those of true excellence were not properly remunerated, but the ideal of knowledge-based education consonant with the Thomas Jefferson-Horace Mann vision persisted.  

Teachers in training had to endure anti-knowledge ideology spouted by education professors in courses necessary for certification, but most secondary teachers earned bachelor's degrees in major academic disciplines and, when they sought master's degrees, they did so in legitimate, field-specific, academic departments (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, English literature, music, visual art, particular world language).

Elementary teachers had to endure more time spent with education professors, but the curriculum taught in their school districts featured specified knowledge and skill sets that imparted to students information in mathematics, natural science, history, geography, literature, spelling, grammar, and calligraphy.  And as was the case with many secondary teachers of this era, discrimination in business and the professions drove many a brilliant woman toward teaching and into the classroom.

The misappropriation of the appellation, "progressive," eventually belied by unprogressive consequences for students, was also revealed in the racism and classism demonstrated in the writing and pronouncements of many education professors.  The anti-knowledge creed took different forms in the course of 1920-1970 with, though, an array of consistently anti-progressive notions at each stage expressing doubt that African Americans and those immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were capable.of mastering academic subjects  >>>>>

Tracking according to academic versus  vocational curriculum was common, with typically those of western European provenance considered most fit for academic, college preparatory study. 

This racist, anti-immigrant attitude was an early and abiding signal that the moniker, "progressive," was ridiculous nomenclature for the ideology promulgated by education professors.

More unfortunate signals loomed in the 1960s and in the disaster that defined public education during 1970-2021.

Article #4 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

The Unprogressive Consequences of Putatively Progressive Education

John Dewey in the course of the 20th Century became a favorite of those campus embarrassments known as education professors, who transmitted their ideological inclination to the adminstrators and teachers whom they intellectually corrupted.

But if these education edtablishment mainstays had actually spent much time reading Dewey' s works, they would have realized that he was an awkward writer and projector of nebulous ideas who at best managed to communicate that teachers should relate curriculum to student experience and that students should be actively engaged with the subjects learned.

Other promulgators on matters of curriculum and pedagogy associated themselves with Dewey but asserted much more damaging notions: 

William Heard Kilpatrick authored a book dubbed The Project Method (1922) in which he maintained that curriculum need not consist of set bodies if knowledge and skills but should be generated spontaneously.on the basis of student interest and pursued through group projects.  

Harold Rugg coauthored a book entitled, The Child-Centered School that rapsodized over the merits of centering education on the natural curiosity of the child, whose interests should determine curriculum, rather than any well-defined body of knowledge.

William C. Bagley, who like these others taught at Teachers College/Columbia University, mounted a vigorous counter-argument in synchrony with the Thomas Jefferson-Horace Mann vision of commonly shared citizen knowledge, arguing forcefully for the importance of mathematics, natural science, history, government, geography, and literature.

And indeed this view of education as knowledge-based continued to guide curriculum in most United States school districts into the 1960s.  But education professors were relentless in touting their anti-kniwledge creed, for which they misappropriated the appellation, "progressive."

But when this creed found resonance  with the zeitgeist of the 1960s and became dominant thereafter in public schools as a guide to curriculum and pedagogy, the academic and in many cases the actual death knell was struck for students across the nation.

The misnamed ideology of education professors had most decidedly unprogressive consequences for generations of students and the ill-informed citizenry they became.

Article #3 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

Failure to Fully Implement the Thomas Jefferson-Horace Mann Idea of the Common Schools

Thomas Jefferson, he who personified the contradictions of the dual reality of the United States polity, offered many ideas for circulation on the nobler side of that reality.

As an advocate for the empowerment of the citizenry as the only safe depository of governmental authority, Jefferson asserted that if citizens did not exercise their power with a wholesome discretion, the remedy was not to take power from them but to inform their discretion through public education.

Thinker, activist, and member of the House of Representatives Horace Mann (1796-1859) took up the Jeffersonian charge as an advocate for common schools, public institutions to be established in every community for the impartation of that knowledge necessary for the wbolesome exercise of citizenship.  Mann's vision was in part realized in the increasing number of states establishing free public schools.  But these schools varied widely in quality.  Teacher training, eventually in institutes dubbed normal schools, also varied and often sent forth teachers capable only of dispensing very rudimentary skills.

Still, the aspiration was to give the general public some approximation of the education that the wealthy had long acquired through private tutors.  Knowledge was valued as that common stock of information necessary for the exercise of enlightened citizenship.  And in many one room school houses students did acquire substantive knowledge in history, government  and geography.  

In many schools >McGuffey Reader< texts were used for the impartation of such knowledge and for selections from high-quality literature.  The knowledge thus imparted was idealistically patriotic and not culturally diverse, reflecting the temper of the times.  But students in such schools emerged with key shared knowledge sets that in accord with the vision of Jefferson-Mann informed their discretion in the exercise of citizenship.

Many students did not matriculate beyond grade six.  Few attended school beyond grade eight.  But in cities and limited outposts in the nation high schools, more worthy of that "high" moniker than is the case with today's dim counterparts, appeared;  about 1910, a few junior high schools (junior in that they featured similar curriculum preparatory for high school) were established.  

Many normal schools had improved.  High school teachers took subject matter seriously.  At a time when few Anericans attended colleges or universities, most high school teachers held field-specific bachelor's degrees;  some had received master's degrees, 

Curriculum was informed by that conveyed by private tutors, focused on mathematics, history, government, geography, literature, and Latin---  with added emphasis on biology, chemistry, and physics.

But junior high and high schools were limited in number, tended to be urban, and were rarely available, and racially exclusive.

Even at this juncture in late 19th century/early 20th century United States history, realization of the Jefferson-Mann ideal of the common school was woefully incomplete.  

How lamentable, then, that in the succeeding decades, matters got much worse.

Article #2 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

Failure to Develop a Knowledgeable Citizenry Across Race and Class Has Maintained the Contradictions of Our Dual Reality

The dual reality of United States society has persisted since the nation gained international recognition in the aftermath of the 1783 Treaty of Paris;  the behavioral antecedents were present in the British Atlantic colonies.

Thomas Jefferson personified the contradictions inherent in the dual identity.  Jefferson was the foremost synthesizer of the ideas of John Locke, the Marquis de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, as evident in The Declaration of Independence.  His writings powerfully assert the Natural Rights to which all human beings are entitled, and he promulgated a doctrine that considered all citizens equal before the law.   

But in the course of his life, Jefferson owned 600 slaves, 500 more than did his friend and main author if the United States Constitution, fellow Virginian James Madison.  Jefferson conveyed in his writings a sense that slavery was an immoral institution that would be terminated in the decades to come.  But those writings could be tortuously inconsistent on the subject and on the intellectual and social equality of those of European, African, and indigenous ancestry. 

Thus, the contradictions pertinent to the dual reality were personified by Jefferson and manifest in the leadership and society during the late 18th century and early 19th century founding and nascent life of the nation. 

But in the noblest ideals of Jefferson, and in the magnificent document generated by Madison, there was a basis for early resolution of the contradictions in the dual reality so that our national life could proceed on the basis of a fully democratic and equitable polity.  

Contributing heavily to the failure to resolve the contradictions in favor of the better component of the dual reality was inadequate development of a key Jeffersonian prerequisite for participatory government in which the citizenry is the moving force   >>>>>

>>>>>   public education, for the development of knowledgeable and enlightened citizenry.

Never in the history of the United States have we had public education capable of developing knowledgeable citizens across race and class.

And thus, in the context of wretched public education, we dwell in cognitive dissonance as the land of democratic opportunity, land of stark inequity.

Article #1 in a Series >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

Refiections on the Unmasking Wrought by Covid-19 and the George Floyd Murder

The United States is a nation that proceeds on the basis of deep contradictions.  The society and body politic move forward for extended phases during which the unsavory aspects of our national history  and abiding circumstance are not brutally revealed.  Then, with the occurrence of a precipitating event or events, those unsavory features gain glaring revelation. 

The concomitant calamities of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd served as two unrelentung tugs on the collective mask behind which we had been hiding, exposing multiple faults that we had largely been able to cover for many moons.

The United States was born as an experiment in Enlightenment values, asserting humanistic ideals that regard each human being as equal before the law, possessing multiple Natural Rights, and deserving space to develop her or his potential.

But in the beginning, her space was highly constricted, that of Native Americans was perpetually shrinking, and that of most African Americans tended toward nonexistence. 

These are salient aspects of our two realities, which we hold in a state of cognitive dissonance until certain events precipitate a societal rush to a metaphorical psychotherapist who induces exposure of unsavory features in our past.  

We have the world's most brilliant undergirding document in the United States Constitution.  Immigrants or the near descendants thereof founded us, and such stock continued to descend on our shores, prosperimg as they could not in the lands of their nativity. 

But the most brilliant of those humanistic founders were slaveholders who created a system that expanded only slowly the demographics of citizenship---  so slowly that we lived through many decades of slavery, then the police state of the American South, the lower-tier status of women, and stress for those outside the traditional identities of gender. 

Most of the founders were humanists who extolled scientific methods and discoveries.  But they did not oversee the development of a flourishing system of public education that imparted to all constituent members of society that same respect for scientific method and discovery.

We are a nation that regards all people as equal and that has featured abominable  inequality and, especially, inequity.  

We are a nation that has thrived on scientific method and discovery.  But a large segment of society exalts superstition and supposition over science.

These constradictions are embedded in our history and current circumstance.

The concurrent calamities of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd have exposed those contradictions.  The wound is raw and agonizing.  

Abysmal public education has sustained the contradictions.

Only a revolution in public education can resolve the contradictions and promote the healing force of scientific rationality that will heal our raw and tortuous wounds

Five to Four Vote to Enter into Contract Negotiations with Superintendent Ed Graff Signals Fragility of Support for This Failed Superintendent

At the Tuesday, 12 October, meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education, four of nine members voted against entering into contract extension talks with Superintendent Ed Graff, whose current contract runs through 30 June 2022.

Those voting against extension were District 2 Member Sharon El-Amin, District 4 Member Adriana Cerrillo, District 5 Member Siad Ali, and At-Large Member Josh Pauly.

Voting to enter negotiations were District 1 Member Jenny Arneson, District 5 Member Nelson Inz, District 6 Member Ira Jourdain, At-Large Member Kim Caprini, and At-Large Member Kim Ellison.

Inz and Ellison are particularly objectionable political hacks.  

Arneson, Caprini, and Jourdain also have strong ties to the education establishment, at this time complicated by the strain in relationship between Graff and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) President Greta Callahan.  

A very remote possibility exists thst one of these three (Arneson, Caprini, or Jourdain} might be persuaded to join El-Amin, Cerrillo, Ali, and Pauly to discontinue negotiations with Graff.

But not one member in the Arneson-Caprini-Jourdain contingent has any idea of the dramatic changes needed in curriculum and teacher quality. 

Arneson has close ties to Ellison and, though knowledgeable about MPS and the environment in which the district functions, is capable of astonishingly outlandish statements in defense of the system as it is.

Jourdain has little grasp of the needed change and is lamentably an opponent of objective assessment of student knowledge and skill.  

Caprini is intellectually and ethically scattered, not a board member inclined toward the needed overhaul of the teacher force or the implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.

Graff is a failed superintendent, an academically insubstantial figure with no ability to implement the needed change, as witnessed in his keeping the similarly academically marginal Aimee Fearing as Interim Senior Academic Officer for two years before removing the interim categorization.

El-Amin, Ali, Cerrillo, and Pauly deserve commendation for voting against contract extension talks with Graff.  Should another board member be persuaded to join them, the failed Graff tenure would blessedly come to an end.

Then the hard work should begin to search for a superintendent outside the education establishment to counter the anti-knowledge creed with which those campus low-lifes known as education professors have intellectually corrupted the prospective administrators and teachers whom they train.

Introductory Commrnts >>>>> Remuneration for All Staff at the Minnesota Department if Education

Readers please find in the six entries below the level of remuneration for all staff members at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).

Oddly, the figures rendered to me from MDE were given as hourly pay, even though all positions at the department are of the sort that would typically be salaried, figured annually. 

Pending further inquiry, I have given the figures on the hourly basis but in my own space have tentatively used a $2,000 multiplier to derive an approximation of annual salary---  so that levels of remuneration would stretch from approximately $40,000 at the low end up to approximately $180,000 at the top.  

The $2,000 multiplier very well may be on the low side.  As given, median remuneration at MDE appears to be approximately $90,000 to $100,000 annually.  

Perpend >>>>>

Multi-Article Series >>>>> Remuneration of Minnesota Department of Education Staff >>>>> Those Receiving Above $70.00/Hour

Above $70.00/hour

Terresa M. Taylor            

St Progr Mgr Prin                                     

$89.30

 

Stephanie Burrage                      

Dep Com Ed                                                

$76.66

 

Heather Mueller              

Com Ed Dept                                              

$71.84

 

Jennifer P. Dugan             

Dir Statewide Assess                             

$71.59

 

Daron T. Korte                   

Asst Com Ed                                                           

$71.59

 

Multi-Article Series >>>>> Remuneration of Minnesota Department of Education Staff >>>>> Those Receiving Between $60.00 and $70.00/hour

Between $60.00 and $70.00/hour

 

Denise M. Alexander     

Dir Ed Finance                                           

$69.06

 

Roberta J. Burnham        

Asst com Ed/St Progr Adm Prin                      

$67.68/$59.98

 

Stephanie Graf                  

Asst Com Ed                                                           

$67.05

 

Wendy Hatch                     

Asst Com Ed                                                           

$63.71

 

Macarre A. Traynham     

Adm Agency Div Dir Sr                           

$63.46

 

Andre E. Prahl                   

Agency CFO                                                

$62.12

 

Teresa Johnson Yetter   

Ed Dir Fin Reofrm & Adm                      

$62.12

 

Robyn R. Widley               

Ed Dir Fin Reform ^ Acct                        

$62.12

 

Adosh Linni                        

Dir Govt Relas                                           

$61.74