Jul 8, 2021

Article #4 in a Multi-Article Series >>>>> Exposure of the Academic Abuse Heaped on Children at the Minneapolis Pubic Schools >>>>>

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  >>>>>

 

>>>>>  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.

 

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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.

 

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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. 

 

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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.

 

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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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