The Travesty That Is the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Jenny
Arneson’s Astoundingly Stupid Statements and Multi-Year Ineffectiveness
Obligates Her to Resign from the Board of Education
District 1 (Northeast and Southeast
Minneapolis Jenny Arneson is an enigma:
Arneson is the hardest working of the
members on the current Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education.
Arneson is a masterful accumulator of
factual detail on many aspects of the inner working of the district, notably
information pertinent to her Northeast Minneapolis stomping grounds and items
relevant to current district finances. She also was an adept chair during her term
of service in that position, a knowledgeable manager of meetings per Robert’s
Rules of Order, a skill that stood her in good stead during fall 2020, when she
was chair of the finance committee.
But Arneson has no philosophy of education,
she is beholden to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and she is capable
of astoundingly stupid statements:
>>>>> At an MPS Board of Education meeting in
late spring 2019, Jenny Arneson noted, as part of her final report at a meeting
of the MPS Board of Education (of the sort with which board members conclude
each of their meetings) that her son had been accepted by his first choice for
college attendance, Grinnell College in Iowa.
She then opined that “This proves that every student at MPS is College
and Career Ready.”
That statement was astonishingly stupid,
given that fewer than thirty percent (30%) of students on Free and Reduced
Price Lunch and those of several ethnicities who tend to fall in the
Free/Reduced category are not proficient in mathematics, reading, or
science; and that one-third (33%) of MPS
students who matriculate on college and university campuses need remedial
courses.
>>>>> At the Committee of the Whole meeting of
Tuesday, 22 October, Arneson conveyed the essence of a conversation that she
had had with a student who liked the idea of ethnic studies courses offered as
alternatives to a United States history course, because the high school course
is just a repetition of what students learned in a course focused on the same
subject in grade seven. Arneson accepted
the student’s view uncritically, thereby revealing appalling ignorance for a
graduate of St. Olaf College, albeit in the academically undemanding field of
social work.
The pertinent truth is two-fold >>>>>
1)
The grade 7 course is typically taught via videos and through packets
that students fill out in the absence of teacher-imparted information or comment
and without class discussion. And unless
students take Advanced Placement (AP) United States History in high school, the
mode of teacher disinterested, unengaging instruction evident at grade 7 abides
also in the high school course--- and
lamentably even in some AP courses, taught as they often are by
knowledge-deficient teachers.
2)
Limiting the number of United States history or any other courses in
core subject areas should be determined only as a practical matter, since the
number of such courses would be multiple if the amount of information to be
conveyed were the determinant. The
problem is not repetition but rather that students learn nothing of great
substance in either course because of the approach to curriculum and
pedagogy; and on the basis of amount of
information important for conveyance, even multiple courses could not impart
all that there is to learn concerning American and United States
history--- so that the decision as to
how many courses to offer is a matter of temporal practicality: Repetition except as a matter of review as
foundation for new learning is a matter of teacher inadequacy, not intrinsic to
the abundant knowledge sets for mastery of American and United States history.
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