Readers Must Face the Brutal Reality of My Unrivaled Combination of Classroom Experience, Scholarly Credentials, and Dedication to Truth--- and to The Most Precious Specimens of Humanity on the Globe

Longtime followers and readers of this blog know what newcomers must come to accept: 

I know preK-12 education like no one else on the planet. 

No one.

Nobody.

Anyone reading this blog who wants to arrange a public debate with me, just give me the word and we’ll find a time. 

Just know that if go-to public radio interviewee Diane Ravitch (author of books including Left Back:  A Century of Battle Over School Reform [2000];  Reign of Error [2016]) were to participate in such a debate with me, she would walk off the stage with her knees knocking and her legs shaking.

I have taught in most situations of which the preponderance of the public is likely to think.  I started before I even graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, coordinating programs that sent tutors into the Dallas Independent School District from the spring of my sophomore year forward and working myself with a teacher at L. G. Pinkston High School in the economically challenged area of West Dallas, giving occasional lectures and otherwise helping the teacher with her own classroom presentations.  I practice taught in another inner city classroom and then in autumn 1973 began my professional career at the same L. G. Pinkston of prior note.  I taught American and world history and always had classes above 30 students;  one had 36.

I studied for my masters in Chinese history at the University of Iowa from 1976 through 1979, during which time I conducted discussion sections as a teaching assistant to the professors in Civilizations of Asia.  I did advanced Mandarin Chinese language study and taught English as a Second language in Taiwan during 1980-1981;  then during 1981-1982 taught a GED curriculum to prisoners in a class of 45 students at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center before moving to Minnesota, where I taught mostly world history and one class of civics for three years (1982-1985) at Cannon Falls High School, where my classes averaged 32 students.

During autumn 1985 and winter 1986, I co-led a 22-student St. Olaf College study tour of  East and Southeast Asia then lectured at the University of Minnesota through 1988 while pursuing my doctorate in Chinese and Taiwanese history;  my teaching experience was so extensive and intensive by that time that I was give full professorial responsibility for teaching courses in Chinese and East Asian history while mentoring my teaching assistants;  the classes that I taught had up to 148 students:  I would frequently depart my podium to go into the throng to ask and answer questions and to conduct discussions.

During 1988-1990 I conducted field research in rural Taiwan while teaching classes on American university life via the medium of Mandarin Chinese for the Fulbright Foundation.  As an apt metaphor for my career, I taught for two years at an alternative high school for kids in and coming out of gangs in North Minneapolis while defending my dissertation on Taiwanese farmers and receiving my Ph. D. in 1993.  During the five years 1993-1998 I taught at a high school in Dakota County while starting the New Salem Educational Initiative in North Minneapolis;  this latter endeavor became fulltime from 2003 and is among the chief reasons, along with these vast experiences, I am the guy that the Minneapolis Public Schools and the education establishment will never fool:

I teach students who come to me academically abused from throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools and quite a few from near suburbs (Robbinsdale, Columbia Heights, Coon Rapids).  I teach these students more in my two hours a week with them than they learn for multiple years in the wretched schools of these districts.

Because I grew so irritated at what these students do not know, I have almost completed an entire 15-subject area presentation in a 450-page book entitled, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education;  and in the meantime have completed a book now circulating among select recipients as I negotiate formal publication;  this latter book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, runs to 361 pages and is the result of a six-year investigation into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  These books are in addition to a world history textbook, three books on Taiwan, and two editions (2004 and 2008) of The State of African Americans in Minnnesota for the Minneapolis Urban League.

Anyone ready to challenge me to that debate? 

………………………………………………………………………………

A new reader asked how I get students interested in Shakespeare.

I have answered that one before but will do so again in a new article soon.

………………………………………………………………………………

I ask again: 

Is there one among you who would like to take me on in a public forum?

Or have you faced the brutal reality of my unrivaled combination of classroom experience, scholarly credentials, and dedication to truth---  and to those most precious specimens on the globe  >>>>>

our children;

our future;

our fate.