Introductory Comments
Actual Dilemmas
of the Public Schools Lurk
Below the
Surface of Articles in the Star Tribune
Numerous articles, editorials, and opinion
pieces focused on public education appeared in the Star Tribune during the month of February. None of them identifies the actual dilemmas
or indicates the nature of the overhaul needed to address the most vexing
issues of the public schools:
Readers must always look below the surface
of articles written by staff writers for the Star Tribune; and this same
approach must be taken, too, when listening to reports of hosts and
commentators on National Public Radio (NPR), Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), on
television stations, and the whole gamut of media sources of the traditional
and the cybernetic sort. All such
reporting is wagtail reportage and commentary, deeply indebted to education establishment
sources, even when the writer or commentator seems to pose as an advocate for
reform.
The Sunday February 7, 2021, edition of the
Star Tribune is illustrative. Patrick Condon’s article, “Flanagan, Walz push to improve Native
history for school kids,” indicates, consistent with the gubernatorial
administration’s education policy as recorded in other articles, that emphasis
on ethnic-specific curriculum is seen as a way to address low academic
proficiency rates for students in certain demographic categories.
This is an extremely questionable strategy
that fails to address certain issues relevant to curriculum and teaching in the
public schools. The actual problems with
curriculum and instruction are traceable to the way that teachers are trained
and the knowledge-aversive ideology of education professors.
If teachers were trained properly and if
subject area knowledge were valued, none of the ethnic-specific push of the
Walz administration would be necessary.
Students would receive broad coverage of multicultural history,
literature, and fine arts from prekindergarten through grade twelve. The curriculum would be presented in grade by
grade sequence, building a strong knowledge base in those and all subject areas,
so that by high school students would be prepared to take elective courses
according to driving interest.
But the reality is that elementary school
teachers have little subject area knowledge, social studies (a problematically
defined and conceived category in any case) teachers are woefully
knowledge-deficient, and students at present learn very little of the history,
literature, or fine arts of any culture.
To the point of the Condon article, Flanagan’s vow that great academic
progress will come for Native American students with more culture-specific
curriculum is gravely called into question by the performance of students at a
school such as Anishinabe Elementary in the Minneapolis Public Schools: For the academic year ending in 2019 (the
most recent for which the
Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments [MCAs]
were administered), only 11% of students in
this culturally focused school were
proficient in mathematics, 12% in reading, and 8% in science; performance is frequently even worse at
alternative schools focused on Native American and other culture-specific
groups.
Problems abide, too, in Katherine Kersten’s
(“Woke revolution looms for the schools”) lament that leftist ideology rather
than solid subject matter is guiding the development of new social studies
standards. She need not worry. Those standards most likely will not be
implemented any better than the more traditional standards developed in
2004; students in the Minneapolis Public
Schools and other districts should be considering the issues raised by those
currently developing standards, just as they should be learning the sequence of
events that have determined the course of American and world history. But teachers know little of ethnic-specific
or general history, literature, and fine arts;
their main recourse is to distribute boring worksheets, assign
individual and group projects with little background information, and to show
videos that go explained and undiscussed as to reason presented and pertinence
to subject matter.
James Brewer Stewart’s “Slavery was only
the beginning” admirably focuses on the much-neglected matter of the collapse
of Reconstruction and the disappointment of life in the urban North, replete
with multifaceted discrimination. But
Stewart typically fails to stress any details in the failures of public
education and most likely does not grasp the ideology and pedagogical
approaches from the late 1970s forward that that were particularly innimical to
the life prospects of those struggling with the dilemmas of life at the urban
core.
Public education in Minnesota will not be
improved by constitutional amendments, ethnic-specific curriculum, or
individualized instruction. The overhaul
actually necessary would result in knowledge-intensive, subject-focused,
logically sequenced curriculum that necessarily includes multi-ethnic history,
literature, and fine arts, imparted by retrained, knowledgeable teachers. The overhaul would necessitate the
jettisoning of most of the people currently making academic decisions for the
Minneapolis Public Schools and other public school districts, the dismantling
of many superfluous offices and departments at these locally centralized
schools districts, and the hiring and training of staff comfortable on the
streets and in the homes of students from families struggling with the dilemmas
of finances and functionality.
But such an overhaul will only come with a
commitment to understand the reality of knowledge-deficient curriculum and low
teacher quality that abides in the public schools. Specious fixes and interminable bromides come
easier, but they merely deny excellent education to any of our students and
hurt those mired in generational poverty the worst.
Specious fixes and interminable bromides
are what we get, though, whether from the education establishment or from those
seemingly seeking change. And media
reporters and commentators merely parrot a discussion that proceeds on
inadequate knowledge bases.
Thus, readers must look below the surface
of media coverage of K-12 issues
They must ponder intensely the articles
below.
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