Article #4
An Analysis of >Star Tribune< Staff Writer Anthony Lonetree’s Expletive Punctuated Reply to My Incisive Email of 24 July 2021 >>>>>
The Ego-Based Nature of His Reply as Evidence That This Education Beat Writer Cares Nothing About Education or Young People
On Sunday, 24 July, I received the following coarse reply to an email that I had sent him earlier that day >>>>>
Received from Star Tribune Staff Writer Anthony Lonetree, 24 July, 2021
Don't give me your bull[expletive]. I held back the first time. I seriously don't need to hear from you.
Tony
Anthony Lonetree
Staff Writer
612-673-4109 (office)
612-875-0041 (cell)
Follow now this analysis of the correspondence that engendered the email from Anthony Lonetree.
I include here the complete text of my email, interspersed with comments indicating the important aspects of a correspondence that constituted a compact presentation of the issues serving as the greatest impediments to the design of an excellent system of preK-12 education >>>>>
The Email from Me That Engendered Anthony’s Reply--- with Comments as to the Vital Impediments to K-12 Excellent That Were of No Apparent Interest to This Star Tribune St.Paul Public Schools Education Beat Writer
Text of Email
July 24, 2021
Anthony---
Your article, “2 St. Paul School Board Candidates Come Up Short of DFL Endorsement,” in yesterday’s 23 July 2021 edition of the Star Tribune is another serviceable mediocrity, informational but requiring no courage to write.
With regard to school boards, remember that occupants are overwhelmingly agents of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party/Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) cohort that will always oppose the necessary overhaul to
design and implement knowledge-intensive curriculum and elevate teacher quality.
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My Comment
Was this observation what Anthony considered “bull[expletive]?
If that be the case he fails to realize, or does not care, that the DFL/Education Minnesota (including the union affiliates Minneapolis Federation of Teachers [MFT] and St. Paul Federation of Teacher [SPFT]) cohort is among the greatest impediments to public school excellence. DFLers can always be counted on to provide more funding than Republicans but DFL party members will never challenge the system that they are funding in ways that will improve K-12 education. Democratic-Farmer-Labor funding initiatives for early childhood education and for free community college tution are worthy, but ignoring the structural impediments to excellence of education at grades kindergarten through 12, which involve knowledge-deficient curriculum and poor teacher quality at the median belies ignorance, denial, or political cowardice.
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Text of Email
Even rare independent candidates fail to comprehend the needed changes.
And that is what an effective member of any school board should do: advocate for the the needed overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality, upon an understanding that in doing so they will have to oust many central office administrators. This means ousting current central office leadership consisting of the superintendent and all academic program decision-makers.
Such assertive action will require an understanding of the needed changes, the depth of incompetence of central administrators, the intellectual insubstantiality of all academic decision-makers, the courage to serve as agents of change, and the political independence of the MFT to challenge the inept education establishment.
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My Comment
Was this also an observation what Anthony considered “bull[expletive]?
Low quality of school board members is another major vexation of K-12 education. Overwhelmingly, candidates backed by the DFL/MFT cohort dominate school boards such as the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education and the St. Paul Public Schools Board of Education. This means, similar to the variously ignorant, in denial, or politically purchased Minnesota state legislators, school board members will never act to make those structural changes necessary to achieve educational excellence.
Very likely, Anthony Lonetree is not willing to pursue this matter, depending as he does for his stories on these and other members of the education establishment.
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Text of Email
Understand, then, that the DFL nominating process, which those of us on the left will have to tolerate for positions such as mayor and legislators, is corrupt with regard to public education issues: Members of the DFL are controlled by Education Minnesota and local union affiliates. Teacher unions will always oppose the installation of knowledge-intensive curriculum that teachers at the median do not have the academic training to impart, and they will oppose the needed teacher training to prepare teachers able to deliver substantive knowledge and skill sets.
In this situation, the DFL-endorsed candidacies of Halla Henderson, Uriah Ward, and Clayton Howatt should be viewed with suspicion; and those of Jim Vue and James Farnsworth considered more favorably, since if they are elected they will not bear the moral weight of DFL/St. Paul Federation of Teacher sycophancy.
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My Comment
Was this yet another observation what Anthony considered “bull[expletive]?
The sort of journalism that Anthony Lonetee (and that of his colleagues, Mara Klecker [Minneapolis Pubic Schools beat] and Erin Golden [State of Minnesota education beat] conduct is merely reportorial. The above information provided by Anthony is useful to the immediate purpose of notifying those few readers who really care about school board elections as to the candidates who are running, endorsed or unendorsed. But these writers also frequently write feel-good articles that highlight teachers and schools in some noble putative endeavor, while the dominant reality is that our wretched public schools send those student who manage to graduate across the stage to claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only--- and create citizens of such low knowledge bases that a Donald Trump becomes president and a Covid-19 pandemic that should have been terminated by now is prolonged because of science-denying, abominable behavior on the part of citizens.
Thus do those who fail to investigate the impediments to excellence in an educational system that produces such phenomena abet the prolongation and sustenance of that system.
But Anthony Lonetree must regard these truths as my “bull[expletive.”
As with so many others who sustain a corrupt system, Lonetree is variously ignorant, in denial, or intellectually corrupt; and, whatever the mix in his personal character that those qualities constitute, Lonetree is likely just trying to cling to his meager little job.
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Text of Email
You should at the very least be aware of the subtext of your articles for anyone who comprehends the most vexatious issues of public education.
And some day you should gather the courage to shed your cover as a journalistic mediocrity and challenge the curriculum, teacher quality, and institutional corruption that shortchanges our precious young people in the public schools every day they go forth to another day of academic abuse to which they are subjected by administrators and teachers.
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My Comment
Was this also among the accumulating observations that constitute what Anthony considered “bull[expletive]?
This in all likelihood was one of those sections of my email that most offended Antony Lonetree’s ego. But in that very sentence I offered in the phrase, “curriculum, teacher quality, and institutional corruption that shortchanges our precious young people in the public schools,” a capsule reminder of the major impediments to public school excellence.
Consistent, though, with the other observations about which Lonetree demonstrates lack of concern, he makes his reply to me with no reference to these truly vital matters, instead reacting strictly from the posture of a wounded ego.
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Text of Email
I signed off at the completion of my email of 24 July 2021 to Anthony Lonetree as follows >>>>>
With the comprehension that comes with 50 years of teaching students at the urban core---
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Education Initiative
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
My Comment
A person truly interested in education and young people might find such experience a matter of considerable note.
But Anthony Lonetree and such journalistic mediocrities who prevail on the education beat are typically not truly interested in education.
They are variously ignorant, in denial, or cowardly cooperative.
Anthony Lonetree, Mara Klecker, and Erin Golden collect a meager paycheck while acting as agents of an education establishment that denies our precious young people the knowledge and skills that they need to go forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.
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