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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