Article #5
Those Who
Take Umbrage at My Candid Assessments of the Education Establishment 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 on
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 did my student teaching
in another inner city classroom and then in autumn 1973 began my professional
career at the same L. G. Pinkston of prior reference. I taught American and world history and
always had classes above 30 students;
one had 42.
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 (ESL) 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 Minnesota for the Minneapolis Urban League.
Anyone ready to challenge me to that
debate?
I ask again:
Is there one among you who’d 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.
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