Article #1
Examining the Errant Views of Ted
Kolderie Offers
Opportunity for Defining Excellence in
Public Education
In his opinion piece,“Schools need more ideas,
not more goals” (Star Tribune, 1
February 2021), Ted Kolderie is errant in his definition of quality education
but offers much opportunity for identifying the actual dilemmas of public
education in Minnesota.
Kolderie is concerned with the proposal of
Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota President Neel Kashkari and former Minnesota
Supreme Court Justice Alan Page to amend the state constitution so as to make
quality education a paramount duty of the state. Kolderie focuses on the “how” of achieving
quality education, which he notes Kashkari and Page leave for the “people” to
decide.
Kolderie then makes references in each
paragraph to important aspects of the public education dilemma that give
evidence of his own failure to grasp the actual vexations pertinent to the
achievement of excellent education:
He writes that journalists asking how quality
education is to be achieved rarely get a response. In fact journalists typically merely report
the latest pronouncements of education policy or school district activity
without asking that fundamental question;
education reporting is inept in the extreme.
Kolderie then notes that school districts,
school board and administrator associations, and Governor Walz have all been
silent on the proposed amendment, and that Education Minnesota president Denise
Specht has not modified the union’s objection to the amendment. The important point here for readers to grasp
is that the people and entities mentioned by Kolderie are among the many
culpable parties for the state of public education in Minnesota, and that they
have no more idea than Kolderie as to the constituent elements of educational
excellence, so that their silence is for the better and their objections no surprise.
Next the author moves toward consideration of
student motivation, including reference to Gallup polling indicating a decline
in student engagement during the middle and high school years. By way of explanation, Kolderie writes that
“Students find conventional schools too large and impersonal, lacking in close
relationship with teachers, insensitive to their races and cultures, knowing
and caring little about what interests and what is relevant to them. Kolderie then asserts Minnesotans know how
student motivation can be achieved:
liberating teachers for engaging students in alternative and charter
schools.
The analysis given immediately above is
entirely faulty as to the reasons for declining student interest as they move
through the public school system. The
reality is that students weary of teachers who have low knowledge bases in the
subject areas to which they are assigned and have little ability to conduct
engaging discussions for stimulating student interest. Teachers hand out too many boring worksheets,
assign to many group and individual projects for which the students have little
informational background, show too many videos for unexplained purposes, and
give too many “free days,” even in schools at which most students academically
lag many years below level of school enrollment. Alternative and charter schools offer no
solutions: They are typically even worse
than the mainline public schools.
Kolderie then gives his own definition of
educational excellence, to be achieved through personalized learning that
requires no subject matter beyond reading and basic math. This is a faulty and irresponsible definition
of educational excellence,
,
Excellent education is a matter of excellent
teachers imparting specified knowledge and skill sets in the liberal, technological,
and vocational arts in grade by grade sequence across the preK-12 years. An excellent teacher is a professional of
deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge
to students of all demographic descriptors.
The purpose of public education is to send forth citizens to lives of
cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.
We are now paying dearly for the lack of such
a system of public education and such a citizenry. The paramount responsibility of any school
district is to impart to students the information that they need in history,
government, economics, biology, chemistry, and physics to make informed
judgments as citizens; to enrich their
lives with quality experiences in literature and the fine arts; and to provide them with the skills necessary
to be successful in their postsecondary education.
The United States now lacks a generally
informed citizenry. Too many people make
judgments on the basis of emotion and belief, rather than fact. Quality education should produce citizens
with an abundant, shared body of knowledge of the kind that will both ensure
more satisfying individual lives and better decisions for the common good.
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