Mar 5, 2021

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative Grasp the Intellectual Corruption of Governor Tim Walz, MDE Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker, MPS Superintendent Ed Graff, MPS Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, Staff at the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning, Other Davis Center (MPS Central Offices) Staff, MPS Building Principals, and MPS Teachers

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative Grasp the Intellectual Corruption of Governor Tim Walz, MDE Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker, MPS Superintendent Ed Graff, MPS Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, Staff at the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning, Other Davis Center (MPS Central Office), MPS Building Principals, and MPS Teachers 

In the aftermath of the Star Tribune’s 18 February publication of my opinion piece, “Students Aren’t Just learning the Wrong Thing,” three of my students read and commented on the article with me.  I paused at significant junctures and asked them to tell me if I was wrong about any of my assertions. 

If they expressed agreement, I asked if they were sure, and encouraged them to take issue with my charges against the education establishment in Minnesota.  Rather than oppose my assertions, though, they asked keen questions and in time a light seemed to shine brightly in their consciousness.  They asked excellent, incisive questions and conveyed appreciation for clarity on matters pertinent to their education about which they had long wondered.

 

Readers may go to article as published in the Star Tribune at  https://www.startribune.com/counterpoint-public-school-students-aren-t-learning-the-wrong-thing/600024257

 

With my students, the discussion proceeded as follows (the original text is given in italics)  >>>>>

 

The Original Text of the Article

 

There Is a Poignant and Farcical Commonality to Opposing Views on Social Studies Standards

 

                                                                                                Gary Marvin Davison

 

There is a poignant and farcical commonality to opposing views on the Minnesota social studies standards, expressed by Katherine Kersten (“Woke revolution looms for schools,” Opinion Exchange, Feb. 7),and by Aaliyah Hodge, (“Why we need new social studies standards,” Opinion Exchange, Feb. 11).  The poignancy occurs when one considers that neither standards that give more attention to the abuse of Native Americans and other American minority groups in United States history, as advocated by Hodge;  nor currently prevailing, more traditional standards dating to 2004 and touted by Kersten;  will be taught in the classrooms of most Minnesota school districts, including the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

My Comments to Students

 

I explained the viewpoints of Kersten, a conservative worried that a shift in the social studies standards toward considerations of racism in United State history will undermine the factual rendering of events and people in chronological presentation;  and the viewpoint of Hodge, a

member of the current committee generating new social studies standards, that the conveyance of the multiethnic history and the grievances of people of various ethnicities is a vital part of American history.

 

The Original Text of the Article

 

The standards created in 2004 were consistent with the movement at the time for measurable, objective, demographically disaggregated indicators of student performance;  they were consonant with the goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a federal bipartisan legislative initiative that included then Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Democrat stalwart Ted Kennedy.  The idea was to induce attention to fundamental mathematics and reading skills while establishing more rigorous curriculum across the liberal arts, imparted to students of all demographic descriptors.     

 

But the forces of both the left (including teachers unions and other members of the education establishment) and right (including former NCLB backers among Republicans who succumbed to pressure from constituencies who objected to federal intervention in local school district and state curriculum standards) eventually worked toward the demise of NCLB and associated standards.  As Minnesota education establishment embarrassment mounted over massive student failure on the objective Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), opposition to the MCAs and the standards increased.  Nonwhite demographic groups and those on free/reduced price lunch performed particularly badly, but even students from school districts typically overhyped for educational quality, such as Edina and Minnetonka, performed poorly on a mathematics MCA that students in Taiwan and Singapore would find laughable for lack of rigor.

 

Editors at the Star Tribune joined the chorus for jettisoning NCLB, which under attack by more powerful political forces died a slow death and gave way to a kind of federal NCLB Light dubbed the Every Students Succeed Act (ESSA) and on the state level to ineffective programs, such as World’s Best Work Force (WBWF) and Regional Centers of Excellence (RCEs), emanating from intellectually corrupt staff at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).

 

My Comments to Students

 

I discussed the history of governmental initiatives to reform public school education, the differing perspectives of leftward leaning and rightward leaning political actors who nevertheless coalesced in their eventual opposition to No Child Left Behind.  I explained the contents of World Best Workforce and Regional Centers of Excellence programs of the Minnesota Department of Education, giving my view that these programs are shams, mere pretenses to do something to meet legal requirements.  I encouraged students to talk to officials at MDE and at MPS to get other viewpoints.

 

The Original Text of the Article

 

More importantly, resistance at the classroom level to the Minnesota state standards was immediate and ongoing.  The standards were never taught in the Minneapolis Public Schools and most other school districts, nor were students ever prepared by aggressive provision of grade-level skills necessary to perform well on the MCAs.  Education Minnesota and local affiliates such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) opposed the standards and the MCAs from the moment of their introduction;  furthermore, even if there had been the inclination on the part of the education establishment to impart the knowledge and skills associated with the standards, most teachers are incapable of doing so because of low knowledge bases and pedagogical incompetence traceable to teacher training programs.

 

As to the impartation of themes pertinent to the experiences of Native Americans and other nonwhite demographic groups as advocated in new standards touted by Hodge, those will not be implemented either.  The opportunity exists now for teachers to present such material to students, but they do not do so.  Prospective elementary school teachers have the most academically insubstantial training of any students matriculating on a college or university campus;  and few secondary teachers have mastery over the subject matter for which they are formally certified.  Teachers are deficient in knowledge pertinent to history, literature, fine arts, mathematics, and the natural sciences.  They have no mastery of the history, literature, and fine arts of Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/Latinas, Hmong, or Somali students.  Their main pedagogical recourse is to distribute boring worksheets, assign individual and group projects with little background information, and to show videos that go unexplained and undiscussed as to reason presented and pertinence to topic studied. 

 

Student Replies to My Questions

 

This was the most telling juncture at which I reviewed my article with my students.  I asked them to tell me honestly if I had shortchanged their teachers.  I asked them about the teaching practices of handing out boring worksheets, assigning projects without proper preparation, and showing videos just as a way to pass time. 

 

I stress here that all three of the students said, in slightly different words, depending on the student

>>>>> 

 

“You’re right.  That’s what they do.”

 

I explained the history behind teacher training in the United States, the state of teacher training now, and the overwhelming majority of cases in which when teachers get master’s degrees in education, rather than in departments in major disciplines.  I asked them if they have confidence in the knowledge bases of their teachers;  we reviewed again the many times in which all manner of

subjects would come up in history, government, economics, natural science, literature, and the fine arts in which I would have to provide the missing information:  They smiled and revealed an understanding of the insubstantial training and knowledge bases applicable to their teachers.              

 

The Original Text of the Article

 

Thus will the aims of both Kersten and Hodge be unattained.  Kersten’s appeal for the presentation of factual knowledge and chronological events and people;  and Hodge’s call for the attention to themes pertinent to nonwhite cultures;  are poignant for the passion exhibited by both writers;  and for the farcical nature of the system that assures that neither knowledge-intensive curriculum nor ethnic-specific themes will be presented in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools and most other locally centralized school districts.      

The establishment of academic and multiethnic curriculum will never be accomplished through national or state processes in the United States, given the nation’s mania for local control.  The necessary overhaul of curriculum and teacher quality must become the goal of a locally centralized school district that can then become the model for such change.

My own efforts are to induce such an overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Gary Marvin Davison is director of the New Salem Educational Initiative in North Minneapolis.  He blogs at http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com.

 

My Comments and Those of My Students

I stressed that I am a keen pursuer of objective information and that I would rather my observation

of the degradation of the system of public education not be true.  I told them that the fact is, though, that my investigations have led me to observe incompetence and intellectual corruption at every level:  federal, state and local.  I told them to do their own investigations, ask close questions of their teachers, principals, and staff at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

The essential reply of my students is that they would take advantage of opportunities as they arose,

but what I had written struck such a chord of recognition with them that years of wondering why

they were so dissatisfied had become clear.

 

My students know that the people named in the title of this article are intellectually corrupt for

maintaining the public education system as it is.  They will be asking those close questions, and I

will be listening for their answers. 

 

But my students and I know that in the meantime, while they spend 35 hours in school

per week, all of their real education is delivered in their two hours a week with me.

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