Facile Thinking Impedes Identifying the Actual Dilemmas in Public Education

L. K. Hanson’s cartoons of political and social commentary are frequently sources of irony-tinged observation on human foibles.  Consider this offering from Hanson’s “You Don’t Say” series on the Commentary page of the Star Tribune on January 18, 2021:

 

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking.   There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.   Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

 

The quotation is from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose actual birthday is on January 15 but is celebrated as a national holiday on subsequent Mondays such as the January 18 date of Hanson’s cartoon.

 

Two recent articles in the Star Tribune give evidence of the sort of facile thinking to which King refers.

 

Consider comments in an opinion piece by Kevin Qualls, “To fulfill King’s dream, focus on fundamentals” (Star Tribune, January 18, 2021) on the very page as that of Hanson’s quotation of Dr. King.  Qualls laments the high percentage of African American students growing up in single-parent households and then writes, 

 

“Community leaders, academic professionals, and faith leaders should collaborate on a unified program to promote marriage throughout their communities.”

 

Qualls also cites low rates of academic proficiency for African American students in the public schools:

 

“Over 50 percent of Black students in the Minneapolis Public Schools perform below state and national averages, while Black students from the same neighborhoods that attend Ascension, Cristo Rey, and Hope Academy perform above state and national averages.  These schools have waiting lists from desperate parents wanting a better life for their children.

 

Qualls offers as remedy more school choice for young people attending schools producing poor academic results for African American students.

 

From columnist Lee Schafer we have an article, “Distrust all around, especially in America” (Star Tribune, January 17, 2021)  in which he laments the information base of the American public and the propensity to follow and pass on only material that confirms one’s prevailing biases.  By way of solution, Schafer writes:

 

“There is no great answer to the question of how to find information that can be trusted other than to read widely, from as many different sources as you can find.  As for those who think they have too much to do to have any time for reading, well, that has never been a good excuse.  The costs of being ill-informed seem to only be going up.”

 

In the above comments, Qualls fails to realize that familial dysfunction and the single-parent phenomenon are historically produced conditions that must be addressed via the overhaul of public education.  Qualls overhypes the quality of education at the private schools cited and in counseling expanded school choice offers a copout rather than a solution.

 

The actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools may be observed only by those willing to gather facts and to think hard, as advocated by Dr. King.  Those dilemmas are knowledge-deficient curriculum, low teacher quality, absence of academic remediation, and the lack of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families facing the challenges of life at the urban core.  Were the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school systems overhauled for the provision of knowledge-intensive, carefully sequenced curriculum, retrained teachers, remedial instruction, and adept on-the ground counselors, students would then go forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.  Provision of such an education to students of all demographic descriptors would terminate cyclical poverty and maximize the likelihood of building strong nuclear families.

 

Schafer’s recommendation for wide reading by the public is correct but facile as rendered.  In the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school systems, students read too little and what they do read is typically unchallenging.  Poorly developed vocabularies and the lack of vigorous class discussions produce low rates of comprehension.  Since most adults, as Schafer conveys, do not read widely, students lack models productive of ambitious reading and ability to analyze information.  Again, the provision of excellent, knowledge-intensive education is the only route for the dilemma under discussion.

 

We will get nothing right until we produce a more informed citizenry.  This will take the design and implementation of a program for the overhaul of public education.  Design and implementation of such a revolutionized system will require hard thinking of the sort advocated by Dr. King, not the sort of facile recommendations and simplistic analysis witnessed in the Qualls and Schafer articles.