Introduction
Why I am the
Guy Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never
Fool
Students of
the Minneapolis Pubic Schools are academically abused by their teachers and
administrators every day their feet hit the ground. In this respect, they are typical victims of
our wretched public schools in the United States, which leave a few people able
to survive, whether because of extraordinary personal dedication and study, by
gaining access to the few teachers capable of teaching Advanced Placement
courses, or by having the financial wherewithal to hire personal tutors or
attend private schools with the curricular focus and the connections to send
students forth to well-regarded college and university experiences.
But few
people in the United States are broadly or deeply educated across the natural
sciences and the liberal arts. Even
those students who go forth to the colleges and universities of best reputation
maintain major gaps in their knowledge that are not rectified in post-secondary
level. Students may dabble in other
fields during their first and second years of a four-year college experience,
but then the focus is trained on a major and a minor field or two of
study. They then may go on to even
narrower training in graduate or professional schools.
Thus do we
have a nation of citizens who know little of the United States Constitution,
how the electoral system works, any sense of the history of the nation or of
the world. Their reading in nonfiction
and nonfictional works tends to be slim or trivial. Citizen grasp of the details of climate
science, the functioning of liberal capitalist and democratic socialist and state
capitalist economies, or international trade dynamics tends toward zero. Most people live out their earthly sojourns
devoid of knowledge of and appreciation for multiple musical genres or the
visual art of the West or Asia or Africa.
They have little idea of how the food that they eat is produced, the
nutritional content of their diet, or the most healthful maintenance of the
bodies that must carry them forth throughout their earthly sojourn. Very few citizens have broad knowledge of
world systems of religions and, most important ethics, from which to forge
their own meaing and sense of purpose.
Many people,
so devoid of knowledge and ethics and purpose, give themselves to various forms
and levels of violence, to destructive pharmaceuticals, and to behaviors that
may end their lives before any adult consciousness has been attained and in any
case well short of their possible life span.
Most abused
are young people living at the urban core who must attend schools at which the
knowledge and skills imparted are minimal, the atmosphere is intimidating and
abusive, and the prospects for a fulfilling life are dim. Thus do cycles of familial poverty
continue. Thus are the urban poor
entrapped. Entrapment is also witnessed
in the rural poor and those for whom a vision of a soul-enriching contemporary
life is not found on the reservations and territories of indigenous peoples.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
I am blessed
in the New Salem Educational Initiative to be able to provide to my students
the education that they do not get in the Minneapolis Public Schools, nor in
institutions to which some of them flee in their unfulfilled search for a
decent school-based education. But I
cannot teach everybody, and thus do I press on with the K-12 Revolution.
Through my
experiences with my students, the frustrations conveyed to me by them and their
families, and the factual data of my exhaustive research, I know the
deficiencies of education in the United Staes as does no one else on the
planet.
As the
following articles make clear,
I am the guy
that officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools will never fool.
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