A Remarkable Tuesday, 1 June 2021, in the New Salem Educational Initiative Demonstrates the Intellectual Corruption of the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Mediocrity of Charter and Near Suburban Alternatives
Note to my
readers >>>>>
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Student names given in this and the other articles in this series are data
privacy pseudonyms.
My interactions with students on
Tuesday, 1 June 2021, represent in microcosm the power of the New Salem
Educational Initiative and the wretched quality of education
delivered both by the Minneapolis Public Schools and alternative
options--- those options exercised by
parents seeking to facilitate the escape of their children to better academic
programs.
……………………………………………………..
At 2:30 I met with Janelle Robinson, a
student with roots to North Minneapolis who attends high school in a near
suburb; under my tutelage, Janelle has
moved from being a B student in middle school to a contender for valedictorian
in high school.
Janelle works hard to get good grades
and takes selective genuine interest in her classes but does not read enough or
accumulate sophisticated vocabulary enough on her own, nor does she acquire
such vocabulary in her high school classes;
I am working hard to convince her that if she wants first to have a
chance to hit 21 (national average) on the ACT (which according to my pacing
for her she will take next October) and then move as far upward from there as
possible, she cannot depend on any magic academic wand I can wave but must put
in more time herself.
On that Tuesday I was set to continue
reading with Janelle my United States history chapter from my nearly complete
book, Fundamentals of an Excellent
Liberal Arts Education, then move on to some articles in the Star Tribune. As is the case with all students who come to
me from the Minneapolis Public Schools or near suburbs, subject area knowledge
and grasp of current events are proscribed by insubstantial knowledge sets
provided at school. Newspapers and
quality news websites are strange new entities for my students until I
introduce them to these sources of information.
But, as is often the case, I found myself
needing to respond flexibly to an immediate need unmet at school. Janelle had a driving desire to better grasp
the essentials of the Korean War than she had gotten in her world history
class; she had a final exam looming that
emphasizes that conflict.
Thus did I proceed to go through a
bevy of information, that in addition to the wretched beginning for the United
States-led United Nations troops; the
figures Kim Il-song, Syngman Rhee, and Douglas MacArthur; the innovative mid-peninsula landing and comeback
for the U.N. forces; the impressive
Chinese troops seeming to turn the tide for the North; and then the U.S./U.N. counterattack and the
controversies that stalled the war at the 38th parallel--- I in the meantime had to go back over all
manner of information pertinent to World War II, Cold War, communism
(theoretical and in practice), fascism, and capitalism (as functioning in both
democratic and authoritarian political systems). Students never have any firm understanding of
world political systems or the historical background to the topics they are
studying in the high school classroom.
I covered this information within two
hours; the whirlwind tour of important
topics gave Janelle the preparation that this conscientious student needed to
gain the academic ballast necessary to go forward confidently to her exam.
………………………………………………………………………………
At 5:00 I met with a grade 4 student,
Chanette Martin, another young person with North Minneapolis roots who
nevertheless attends a charter school in St. Paul. She is a fascinating case. Complications at birth left her with
neuro-challenges yielding good verbal but terrible math reasoning. I am working hard to train those areas of the
brain involved in mathematical calculation and reasoning.
Chanette is making significant
progress. In terms of the four basic
operations, she is now adding multiple digit problems with high accuracy. But subtraction continues challenging for
her. I am working with Chanette on
counting backwards, a skill that involves significant rewiring for her: She will start to count down from twenty but
at about 15 start to go back up again.
I have found that repetition is
especially important in Chanette’s case.
Rather than just relying on her counting orally, I wrote down the
numbers descending from 20 and had her read those as necessary, then with each
attempt encouraged her to rely less and less on the written numbers, until
finally Chanette did not rely at all on the numerical script.
No such innovative techniques are utilized
by the special education or mainstream teachers at Chanette’s school.
We had a breakthrough day on this key
preparatory skill for subtraction.
Chanette, her mother, and I were
elated.
……………………………………………………………………………..
At 6:30 I moved on to Bellina
Frampton, a grade 7 student this year who began to study with me last academic
year, at grade 6; she also has eschewed
the Minneapolis Public Schools: She
attends a North Minneapolis charter school.
Bellina is manifesting exalted skills
in all areas of academics and the intellectual curiosity and self-motivated
quality so often lacking even in students who get good grades at school. I had given Bellina a goal of reading on her
own three pages from my single-spaced, informationally dense 11-page version of
the United States history chapter--- and
she had buzzed through, looking up vocabulary as necessary, to master material
featuring the achievements and limitations of Jacksonian Democracy; the Westward expansion (with an effort to
convey objectively the motivations of the white settlers, as well as the
deleterious impact on Native Americans);
the formation of the Republican Party and the North-South tensions that
led to the Civil War; the promise and
demise of Reconstruction with the Compromise of 1877; and nearly 100 years of misery that should
not have been in the aftermath of Plessy
v. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws, with reference, too, to the implications of
the episode of 1890 at Wounded Knee, the closing of the American frontier, and
the brutal treatment of Native Americans in the worst days of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) and assimilationist policy, 1890-1936.
Along the way, Bellina and I had
excellent discussions of the brutality perpetrated against African and Native
Americans from the late 19th century forward, beyond the oft if not very
incisively covered period of slavery and the treaty system. We also discussed at length how the Andrew
Jackson presidency did expand the electorate to poor white men, even if
expansion to African American men had to wait until the 15th
Amendment (1868) and then, with poll taxes and literacy tests and such, to the
1965 Voting Rights Act; and for women until at least the 19th
Amendment (1920).
Bellina has an ability to handle
nuance and to grasp the subtleties of subject matter that exceeds the
intellectual reasoning of most high schoolers.
We have an enormously firm relationship, laughing easily and moving
fluidly from mathematics to history to literature and across the liberal
arts.
Bellina is one to watch for the
future.
She is hands-down the New Salem
Educational Initiative Student of the Yrear for this academic year 2020-2021.
…………………………………………………………………………………
Whether remaining as students enrolled
in the Minneapolis Public Schools or engaging in an unfulfilled attempt to get
a better education in near suburban systems or charter schools, young people
are academically shortchanged every day by teachers and administrators.
In their two hours meeting with me per
week, my students gain the preponderance of their knowledge-intensive
skill-replete education.
As I often remind members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education during my monthly Public
Comments, I know fully how wretched are the schools of the district and the
alternatives. My frequent remark is,
“Now when I finish these comments, I
want you to say to yourselves, ‘There’s the guy that we will never fool: He daily provides the instruction that we do
not, to the students whom we academically abuse every day our feet hit the
ground.’ “
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