Inept New Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams Makes Stunningly Abysmal Appointments to High-Salaried Positions

New Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams continues to demonstrate that she is the typical education establishment functionary, without the imagination to oversee the major changes needed to achieve the necessary overhaul of preK-12 education.  She herself has unimpressive academic credentials, having received no graduate degree in a key academic discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, history, government, economics, English or world literature) most important for mastery by preK-12 students.  

Sayles-Adams has most recently appointed Ty Thompsen as new MPS Deputy Superintendent.  Thompson is the second mediocrity that she has appointed who has similar training to herself;  the other is Tia Clasen, tapped to fill the position of Senior Academic Officer.  The appointment of Thompsen brings to the district an academic mediocrity but who adds to the bureaucratic burden with another salary ranging over $170,000.  And these two lamentable appointments come in the aftermath of Sayles’ Adams’s hiring of Tom Parent, who has red flogs still waving from his tenure in the St. Paul Public Schools, as MPS Senior Operations Officer.

 

Peruse the slim academic qualifications of Thompson, then be reminded of the qualifications pertaining to Clasen.

 

Ty Thompson (Deputy Superintendent) 

Academic Degree/Credential

M. E.D., Leadership in Education             

(University of Minnesota/Twin Cities University, 2013)       

 

Elementary Education Licensure                    

(California State University/Dominguez Hills, 2003-2004)

             

B. A.              

(Occidental College, 1999-2003)

 

           

Tia Clasen (Senior Academic Officer) 

Academic Degree/Credential

 

Ed.D., Educational Leadership              

(Hamline University, 2017-2021)       

 

M. Ed., Curriculum and Instruction                    

(The College of St. Scholastica)

             

B. S., Elementary Education and Teaching              

(Augsburg University, 1995))

 

           

Other Credentials

 

>>>>>   Superintendent License (Hamline University, 2014-2016)

 

>>>>>   Certificate in Gifted, Talented, and Creative Education (Hamline University)

 

>>>>>   Middle Level Licensure (Hamline University)

 

>>>>>   Certificate in Language Arts and Social Studies (all)  (Hamline University)

 

>>>>>   Literacy Coursework (Hamline University)

 

Including, but not limited, to the following:
Classes in K-12 Reading Certificate

 

>>>>>  Critical Coursework (University of St. Thomas)

 

Including, but not limited, to the following:

 

Content Area Reading Strategies
Brain Research
Dealing with Difficult Parents
Motivating the Unmotivated
Effective Teaching
Working with At-Risk Students

 

Front Matter and Contents >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

Volume XI, No. 2                                                

August 2024

 

Journal of the K-12 Revolution:

Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota        

 

GMD Theology:

With Applications and Explanation of the

Role of Education Toward Creating a Perfect World

 

A Five-Article Series      

 

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor       

 

GMD Theology:

With Applications and Explanation of the

Role of Education Toward  Creating a Perfect World

 

A Five-Article Series        

          

Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

Copyright © 2024

                           

Contents

 

Introductory Comments                                                                                            

 

GMD Theology:  With Applications and Explanation of the

Role of Education Toward Creating a Perfect World

 

Article #1

 

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison

 

Article #2

 

Extended Thoughts from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison

 

Article #3

 

Application #1 from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and

Extended Thoughts Thereon

  

Article #4

 

Application #2 from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and

Extended Thoughts Thereon

 

Article #5

 

Application #3 from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and

Extended Thoughts Thereon

Introductory Comments >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

GMD Theology:  With Applications and Explanation of the

Role of Education Toward Creating a Perfect World

 

Humanity is a babe in time, arriving in only approximately 200,000 BCE (Before the Common Era), almost 14 billion years after the universe banged into existence and over 4.5 billion years after the creation of planet Earth.

 

Over the course of humankind’s 200,000 years or so of existence, people sought explanations for natural phenomena and for the meaning of this one earthly sojourn.  The search resulted in a rich literature of myth and in time induced the development of the world’s major religious, belief, and ethical traditions:  Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam.  These traditions advanced interesting explanations of Creation and compelling ideas as to life’s meaning and proper ethical conduct.

 

Not until a period extending from the very late 15^th century through the 18^th century CE (Common Era)  of the Enlightenment did systematic scientific experimentation and reasoning offer alternative explanations of natural phenomena and a different timeline for Creation.  The advent of the development of scientific processes challenged the world’s traditional belief systems and engendered

counterforces in opposition to scientific fact and reasoning.

 

Rational thought led to great advances in the interest of human equity and those political and economic systems that most further the cause of human equality.  In time, the Western world moved substantially beyond the hypocritical imperialistic tendencies that impeded the advancement of equity, and in the United States specifically a much fairer and just society developed from the mid-1950s through this very year of 2024.  This has been a time in which women and nonwhite citizens, and people of various sexual and gender identities, advanced their case for full participation and leadership in American society.  As with scientific and rational thought, these advances toward expanded citizenship rights and shared power among people of various gender and racial identities elicited a powerful counter-current among those, especially white males, who saw advancement of the previously abused as a threat to their own prerogatives.

 

In this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I discuss these matters of prehistoric and historic development;  and the forces and counterforces that have created the world that we now witness.  With great respect for the world’s great belief systems, I articulate the fundamentals of a new theology that incorporates the insights and ethical codes of those systems into my own vision for a theology and system of ethical conduct compatible with science and full of promise for moving society toward that optimal social environment conducive to the best life possible for all humanity on this one earthly sojourn.

 

And, consistent with the ideational principles that undergird this journal and my other platforms of expression, the role of education in creating an optimal existence for humanity, as explained especially in Article #5, is integral. 

Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison

 

The Universe banged into existence 13.8 billion years ago, an expression of Divine Longing to emerge from the Known Unknown into Life of Eventual Human Perception.

 

Divine Exuberance formed Earth 4.5 billion years ago.  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.  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 2024.

 

Thus is humanity very young, an infant in the time, a creature evolving spiritually in Time.

 

Searching for meaning and impelled to communicate with that Force, those Forces that seemed to determine Fate, humans first expressing religio-spirituality honored and supplicated Nature in all forms taken by Nature.  Religio-spiritual animism, pantheism, and polytheism dominated the Quest for Divinity for the first 200 millennia of Humankind’s Earthly Sojourn until at a juncture very close to our own, in approximately the 18^th century Before the Common Era (BCE), the Hebrews of West Asia asserted the supremacy of their God of both Love and Stern Justice over others in the area, and then just three millennia later the Aryans arrived on the Indian subcontinent and along with spiritual seers whom they found in Pakistan and India developed some of the most powerful concepts of spiritual insight:  illusion,  detachment, emptiness, concentrated awareness (mindfulness), high-focus meditation.

 

Then at the midpoint in the sixth century Before the Common Era (BCE) the sage Confucius and the elusive Laozi imparted Great Wisdom in China and Siddhartha Gautama revealed the results of his Quest.   

 

Five centuries later came Jesus of Nazareth with a message asserting the spiritual supremacy of Divine Love and offering salvation to Hebrews in fulfillment of the spiritual essence of the Law;  Jesus became Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah who would resolve the dilemma of human imperfection.

 

Then in another half-millennia came Muhammad in Arabia, disturbed by immorality and dispersed divinity, impelled by dramatic epiphany, articulated a rigorous monotheism that directed the attention of flawed humanity toward a one, unerring, supreme God of nonpareil Truth.

 

Thus did the major great figures of spirituality and moral philosophy impart to humanity the wisdom that would guide many other innovators such as Guru Nanak and Joseph Smith and the theologians who would develop the ideas of the spiritual founders as humanity moved toward the second millennium and into the third millennium of the Common Era (CE).

 

In the meantime, the rationalists of the 17^th and 18^th centuries CE Enlightenment asserted human capacity to utilize what can be proven scientifically and discoveries made through the powers of human reason in the service of humanity, toward the development of humane and justly governed society.  In this way, humanity came to envision justice variously via liberalism, socialism, and communism;  to understand the functioning of Newtonian terrestrial and Einsteinian cosmic physics;  and to grasp principles of human behavior most insightfully asserted and empirically demonstrated by Freud and Skinner.

 

Thus from the many centuries of spiritual revelation and two centuries of rationalist thought do we have powerful concepts upon which to work our own innovation.        

 

My own theo-spiritual innovation is expressed as follows >>>>>

 

Of the spiritual seers of history, Siddhartha, the shadowy Laozi, and Jesus have given me the most powerful ideas, variously, of Ethics, Divinity, and Meaning.

 

Siddhartha, the first embodiment of Buddha, gave us the most insightful formulation of the reality of Existence, in which the reality of human suffering is embraced and acknowledged with intense acceptance, disciplined detachment, universal compassion, highly focused meditation, and ultimate spiritual release.

 

Jesus took on the suffering of which Siddhartha spoke as His own responsibility, called all seekers to Him, and provided the supreme example of Life as an expression of Unremitting Love for All Human Beings and, by extension, for all Creation.

 

Laozi asserted that none of the insights of seers such as Siddhartha and Jesus, or the prescriptions of ethicists such as Confucius, are to be claimed as Ultimate Truth, for the Way of existence and nonexistence is ineffable and human beings are humble seekers, not knowers of the Way;  Existence, by inference and metaphorical allusion, unfolds in a mystical process of identity and interaction of forces that only seem to be opposites.

 

Upon this Daoist insight into human humility in witness to the great forces of Creation do we stand in awe of the Cosmos.  We focus on what we can know scientifically and rationally while allowing ourselves to feel the power of spiritual expression from the many traditions.  We live with the calm, focused, disciplined Awareness of Siddhartha;  we move forward with the Love of Jesus active in the world.  We allow the only-seeming opposites of Divinity and Rationality to Coexist, guiding us through this one earthly sojourn.

 

We each use our Divine gifts to make this one Earthly Sojourn as materially beneficial and spiritually satisfying as we can for our fellow human beings.  We Love abundantly, with and without differentiation, specific to those most precious to us and general for all humankind.  We live each moment in gratitude for each blessing and all Blessings;  we feel deep appreciation for each Joy;  and we embrace the reality of suffering, sickness, and physical death.  We live with compassion for all, including ourselves, as we experience the perceived opposites of Joy and Suffering.

 

Then, near the end of our Earthly Sojourn, we appreciate all that we have experienced as Truth and  Divinity, all that we have learned from objective investigation and reflection, all opportunities to use our talents to the benefit of as many people whose lives we can make better by the power of Love in action.

 

We lie on beds giving rest to our physically dying selves, a smile of love and gratitude on our faces, knowing that we lived every moment in the spirit of Love, Happy that we did the best within our capability.

 

Then we calmly appreciate our individual opportunity in Eternity.

Article #2 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

Extended Thoughts from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison

 

Thus, humanity is an infant in time.  Very few human beings understand either their own place in Eternity or the psychological factors that determine the course of their lives.  Given the enormous stretch of time that transpired after the birth of the universe and the formation of Earth prior to the evolution of humanity, humankind’s search for meaning is still in a nascent stage. 

 

Until the very recent development of Enlightenment thought, humankind mostly sought answers to Existence in religious myths induced by perception of natural events and supposition as to how those events came to be in Creation.  The insights of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and then Einstein challenged the literal truth of Creation myths and introduced scientific discovery as a better source of explanation for natural phenomena and reasons for human behavior.

 

In the course of the 20^th century two great psychologists worked their way through the confused morass of nascent social science to establish the foundations of human behavior:

 

Sigmund Freud found that much of human behavior may be explained in mostly unremembered but formative events, including especially those events that shaped the person in infancy, but also later events recorded in the unconscious or in the even more recondite subconscious.  As the individual moves through life, she or he acts first to satisfy basic human needs and impulses of the Id, then to situate the Ego safely in the world, with the presence of a Superego of varying morality largely derived from the values learned from one’s parents.

 

B. F. Skinner, while utilizing very different terminology and gathering information with much more rigorous scientific techniques than were employed by Freud, would actually find much of value in Freud’s notions of determinative experiences in infancy and youth.  Further, Skinner’s concept of primary reinforcers resonates with Freud’s conception of the id.  But Skinner also placed extreme importance on secondary reinforcers (money, love, aversive and pleasant experience) that determine behavior throughout life beyond infancy and youth, combining with those early life experiences to produce the behavior and observed personality of the person at any given time in life.

 

Taking early and ongoing experience to together, the human being behaves as she or he does as a result of positive reinforcers (rewards), punishments (aversive experiences), and negative reinforcers (the withdrawal of punishment as a reward for altered behavior) that operate on the human organism immediately, in the context of past experience.

 

Humanity is still working through the insights of the Enlightenment.  The impact of scientific discoveries and the explanatory power of those discoveries turned many people away from religion.  Some religious people developed theologies compatible with science, transforming religious myth into metaphor and acting upon the best in the ethnical systems of the major traditions.  Others clung to the religions of the past.

 

Whichever response to the Enlightenment taken, most people have not been able to handle the truth that behavior is not the result of free will but rather determined by operant conditioning as described by Skinner.

 

My own Buddho-Daoist Christian theology incorporates the insights into Existence and exalted moral codes from the pertinent three belief systems into a philosophy guided by Rationality.  Religious Truth is metaphorical and sensed, having much in common with art and nature.  I am consciously influenced by religion as thus conceptualized and stand in awe of Existence and the Great Gift bestowed upon me by Life;  any behavior of mine, though, including those behaviors influenced by religion, I evaluate via rational cognitive processes, with a clear understanding that those cognitive processes operate in a context governed by the principles of operant conditioning. 

 

Thus, I do not have free will, but by building a strong information base, I can use abundant knowledge to make better decisions, with decision-making ability distinguished from free will:  Decisions occur not as the result of volition, but rather as the result of human intelligence utilized to understand the environmental context that determines behavior, so as to realize the political, social, and cultural environment most likely to produce the best possible Life for humanity.

 

Joy is felt in the moment as elation under given circumstances and in the context of accumulated personal experience.

 

Happiness is enduring satisfaction with the course of one’s life.

 

Joy is to be evaluated for consistency with exalted ethical conduct and regarded with great gratitude as Divine Gift.   

 

Happiness when achieved will accompany the person all through life.

 

The Happy person will embrace the wonder of religion, nature, and art while acting according to the principles of scientific and rational thought, knowing that the activation of intelligence upon a strong information base so as to make the best decisions possible under the principles of operant conditioning provides a basis for optimism that by establishing the proper environment the best Life for all people awaits the future of humanity.  

Article #3 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

Application #1 from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and

Extended Thoughts Thereon

 

     

Humanity is still working through the insights of the Enlightenment, seeking to reconcile the theology and practice of the families, communities, and societies that are part of the environment in which they have dwelt through life.

 

The impact of scientific discoveries and the explanatory power of those discoveries turned many people away from religion. 

 

Some religious people developed theologies compatible with science, transforming religious myth into metaphor and acting upon the best in the ethnical systems of the major traditions. 

 

Others clung to the religions of the past.

 

Ot those responses, the first tends to lead to a firm grasp of observed terrestrial reality but is often accompanied by resistance to, or habitual blockage of, spiritual impulses that emanate from places of worship, music, art, and natural beauty.

 

The third response tends to proceed from those mired in ignorance, fear, resistance to ineluctable change, or inability to think independently;  since conservative and reactionary religion is hard to reconcile with the insights of Enlightenment and the revelations of science, such religious practice  often proceeds upon an nagging undercurrent of doubt that results in intolerance, cynicism, and hypocrisy.

 

The optimal response is the second, allowing religious and spiritual impulses to enter one’s consciousness, finding metaphorical power in religious expression, but basing action on rational evaluation of religious and spiritual emotional responses.

 

In society as of the year 2024, many people are ethically adrift, muddling through life in the absence of a firm moral code:

 

Some people are troubled by an absence of a sense of meaning and become seekers, very often moving from one spiritual practice to another or embracing one of the established religions of the past that she or he had turned against or disregarded.

 

Others forever cling to traditional, typically inherited religious expression in the absence of individual critical evaluation.

 

Others just continue to muddle through, going to their graves as confused as when life began;  and in the deeper recesses of candid consciousness, this oft becomes the fate of the seekers and the clingers, as well.

 

Those live best who go forth with rationality as their guide but who are able to incorporate the metaphorical power of religion, music, art, and nature into a life in which the governance of the rational is balanced with a sense of the Divine.

 

Such a person then lives abundantly, gratefully, in awe of the Cosmos, and with a commitment to making the best possible life for as many people as possible. 

 

Such a person is ever open to spiritual insight but, genuinely confident cognitively and spiritually, is able to focus intently on the life of terrestrial reality, applying firmly developed ethics to the betterment of humankind. 

 

Such a person is cautiously optimistic, acknowledging challenges but eschewing defeatism and pessimism, committing to sequential action guided by an overall plan that is adjusted along the way as informed by experience and reflection. 

 

Such a person stands firm, does not retreat to an exclusively personal safe harbor, but rather utilizes safe harbors to venture forth circumspectively onto the oft-gentle but inevitably turbulent seas of Existence.

 

In her or his vocation and much of that person’s avocation, such a person commits to a life of service to humankind.

Article #4 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XI, Number Two, August 2024

Application #2 from

A Succinct Summary of the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and

Extended Thoughts Thereon

 

Because humanity is such an infant in time, and the dialectic leading to the major scientific advances of the very late 15^th century to the 18^th century took so long to transpire, humankind in the year 2024 is now grappling with two major oppositional forces, that seeking to move toward a religio-spirituality compatible with scientific truth and that which seeks in vain but with great ferocity to cling to the mythical explanations of the prescientific age. 

 

Humanity is also working through a related struggle, between a force represented by people who understand that if humanity is to create Life that supports the best possible Existence of all people during this one earthly sojourn, then we must turn to cooperative endeavors and wise policy that constructs the best possible environment for sustaining maximally good health, the accumulation of strong knowledge bases, and common ethical values across nation and globe;  and that competing force, similar to that which clings to religious explanations of the past, seeking to retreat in defense of old orders of cultural exclusivity and the protection of the interests of the few rather than the many, an approach that certainly for the many but often also for the few in power, leads to lives of ill health, abject ignorance, and inadequately developed ethical values.

 

There is, then, an enormous problem for humanity in not understanding humankind in the context of prehistory and history.

 

And there is also a daunting problem for humanity in not understanding the foundations of human behavior.

 

Ironically, she and he who grasps that free will is an illusion and therefore seeks to understand as fully as possible the circumstances of environment that drive human behavior, will come much closer to that which we call agency, free will, volition than will those people who cling to those notions as conventionally understood.

 

The most common path of existence proceeds in ignorance of those environmental forces that determine human behavior.  In any life, the environmental forces of family, religious institution, community, peer group, gender, economic condition, political system, and culturally promoted goals are determinative.  The question becomes, then, how well one understands the way in which the environmental circumstances of one’s life have, do, and will continue to shape the course of her or his one earthly sojourn.

 

Those who have no understanding of determinative environmental forces live as passengers on a rudderless ship on an ocean the current of which determines fate.

 

Those who have masterful understanding of determinative environmental forces live as captains of ships with rudders, unable to change the circumstances of temperature, wind, and current but able to make the best possible response in the moment that will have the best consequences over time;  and among such captains, those who embrace values seeking the best interests of all humanity will chart a course leading to the best possible future of all those aboard.

 

In charting our own best future, humankind must be as the knowledgeable ship captain, aware of all environmental factors determining Existence and interacting with those forces in charting a course ahead leading to the best possible lives for all humanity on this one earthly sojourn, clinging not to the illusion of independently exercised free will, but rather according to a close approximation of agency exercised in astute decision-making upon the best information available, upon ethical values promotive of the best outcomes for all of those in the human family.