Humankind is very young.
The universe banged into existence almost 14 billion years ago, expanding in those processes that created the earth almost 10 billion years later. Simple cells took life comparatively quickly, just under a billion years after the earth formed, but not until 500 million years ago did fish swim in the sea. Amphibians crawled onto the earth about 360 million years ago, and reptiles roamed some 60 million years after that; then about 200 million years ago mammals moved across the surface of this planet. Birds flew across the skies at about 150 millions years ago, and flowers bloomed some 20 million years thereafter. But not until 60 million years ago did the earth know primates, and the Great Apes did not make their terrestrial entrance until another 40 million years had transpired.
Not until 2.5 million years ago--- tens of millions of years after the appearance of those Great Apes--- did creatures of the genus homo appear, and life ensued another million years before representatives of that genus walked upright. Our more immediate progenitors, of the genus homo and the species sapiens, trod the expanses of East Africa for the first time only about 200 thousand years counting backward from this year of 2023.
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So we are very young.
No wonder that we’ve made so many mistakes in this trial and error of a process called life. We are, as the Lord Hamlet tells us, “a work of art,” “noble in reason,” “infinite in faculty.” But we are still learning how to shape ourselves into the works of art that will make us worthy as the “paragons of the world,” to use our reason for creating conditions of peace, to call upon our faculties to be all that in our enormous potential we can be.
We have been so cruel to each other.
Even as we created marvelous works of early civilization--- the Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, the temple complex at Angkor Wat, the Colossus of Rhodes, the aqueducts of Rome--- we beat up on each other, calling Alexander and others “Great” for doing so.
Even as we asked searching questions and as compassionate thinkers conceived of philosopher kings, enlightened beings, a King of Peace, we--- those same beings--- slaughtered each other by the millions. We fell before the legions of Caesar, the armies of the Great Khan, the banners of white and red roses, the marauders of the Aztec empire, the invaders of European colonizers, the ship captains of the Middle Passage, the despotic purveyors of genocide in Germany and Cambodia, the lynchers posing as citizens in what otherwise we have claimed to be the greatest democracy on earth.
But we have also done much good.
We have created alphabets, aesthetically pleasing written characters, presses that produce books. We have imagined ourselves at our best--- in prayer, meditation, and good works. We have made peace after war and established institutions for promoting human understanding. We have sought the truth of earth’s place among the planets, revealed the laws that govern motion and light and sound, discovered the relativity of time in space. We have probed the depths of our own mental processes and built machines that see into our very brains. We have made such technological advances that at any instant in this year of 2023 we can call forth facts on any given subject of our whim. We communicate with our fellows in a multiplicity of ways.
Now we must learn to communicate with as much quality as we do quantity.
We must go to work on ourselves.
We do that through education.
Any worthy endeavor begins in one place and spreads to others. So let us make Minneapolis the place and the curriculum presented herein the basis for creating a more culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied human being:
When people have a thorough knowledge of mathematics, they think more logically and reason with greater acuity.
When people have read the works of literary masters, their neural pathways are alive with rhythms, symbols, and ideas that elevate the quality of their own thoughts and the beauty of their personal expression.
When people command a thorough understanding of history; and evaluate the actions of the human past in the manner of its wisest philosophers, theologians, and religious teachers; they have a much stronger sense of what is right and what is wrong among behavioral options.
When women and men have a thorough grasp of the natural sciences, they are better able to live with a sense of appreciation and wonder at the sheer majesty of the universe, the celestial bodies, the earth, human beings themselves.
And when people come to understand the beauty, insight, and imagination embodied in the works of great painters, sculptors, architects, and musicians, they glimpse into the art forms that they themselves can be.
Let us make of ourselves works of artistic beauty through the power of education. Let us understand the religion of the other, the psychological motivations of our fellows, the history that may give evidence of misunderstanding, discord, and separation but that we can use to comprehend, to empathize, to unite.
Through the power of education we can know ourselves more thoroughly and walk more confidently into any arena of life:
We are culturally enriched, so we have a depth of appreciation for the artistry of humanity anywhere we go.
We are civically prepared, so we understand the nature of citizenship, and we dedicate ourselves to actions that improve our individual lives and the circumstances of our fellow human beings.
And because our brains are filled with knowledge and skills in magnificent array, we walk confidently and adeptly into the workplace with results that contribute to our personal wealth, the material wellbeing of our natal families, and the economic advancement of our society.
If we create ethically better and economically more prosperous people in Minneapolis
by revolutionizing K-12 education, our approach to curriculum moves centrifugally into other places where K-12 education is imparted. So do movements grow, ideas spread, and a revolution change the very basis of the way we live our lives.
By creating the well-rounded individual, alive in the world of knowledge and anchored in a firm sense of the ethical, we establish that paragon toward which others cast an upward gaze. What once was local becomes national, then international, and as people across the world become well-educated, the terror that haunts too many human beings in their one chance on earth ends and existence worthy to be called “life” begins.
We do this by believing in the potential of every single human being.
We do this by enriching with knowledge the brain of every student in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
When we send young people forth thusly into the world, brains buzzing with information, bodies bursting with intellectual and physical vitality, we maximize the chances that these precious specimens of humanity will live happily, respect their fellows, and make high-quality contributions to the local and national economies.
High school graduates will be prepared to matriculate at and graduate from the best colleges and universities in the land, even as some of them opt for the training available in practical skills pertinent to the vital trades on which so many of our contemporary lives depend. Whatever postsecondary training these young people pursue, they will share a rich knowledge base that will serve as their basis for mutual understanding, engaged citizenship, and confident interaction wherever their paths cross.
These will be young people prepared to live life to the fullest, and to lead humanity in the creation of a much better world.
When we send young people forth thusly into the world, brains buzzing with information, bodies bursting with intellectual and physical vitality, we maximize the chances that these precious specimens of humanity will live happily, respect their fellows, and make high-quality contributions to the local and national economies. They will be prepared to matriculate at and graduate from the best colleges and universities in the land, even as some of them opt for the training available in practical skills pertinent to the vital trades on which so many of our contemporary lives depend. Whatever postsecondary training these young people pursue, they will share a rich knowledge base that will serve as their basis for mutual understanding, engaged citizenship, and confident interaction wherever their paths cross.
These will be young people prepared to live life to the fullest, and to lead humanity in the creation of a much better world. When we send young people forth thusly into the world, brains buzzing with information, bodies bursting with intellectual and physical vitality, we maximize the chances that these precious specimens of humanity will live happily, respect their fellows, and make high-quality contributions to the local and national economies. They will be prepared to matriculate at and graduate from the best colleges and universities in the land, even as some of them opt for the training available in practical skills pertinent to the vital trades on which so many of our contemporary lives depend. Whatever postsecondary training these young people pursue, they will share a rich knowledge base that will serve as their basis for mutual understanding, engaged citizenship, and confident interaction wherever their paths cross.
These will be young people prepared to live life to the fullest, and to lead humanity in the creation of a just, empathic, compassionate, world full of human beings embracing the full potential of Life on this one earthly sojourn.
Thus will our Supreme Gift to the world be these precious specimens of humanity, exemplars of the Good, our treasured young people who themselves have received the gift of an exquisite life experience through the power of education.
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