I just wrote the following account of my personal background and activities in the New Salem Educational Initiative in reply to a person in the public media seeking such a profile. These comments should be helpful as a review for followers of my blog, and as an introduction to those less familiar with my teaching, writing, and public advocacy.
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With regard to your kind comments about my teaching and my advocacy on matters pertinent to K-12 education, and desire to know more about my background and activities, I offer the following summary:
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I hold a Ph. D. in Chinese history from the University of Minnesota, with an original academic specialization in Taiwan.
I vowed from the outset of my years devoted to education to train like a university scholar but remain dedicated primarily to K-12 settings. Over the course of forty-five (45) years, I have taught in a multiplicity of situations: fifteen years in K-12 classrooms; four and a half years, non-sequential, at the university; three years teaching English as a Second Language in Taiwan; a year of lecturing in Mandarin Chinese for the Fulbright Foundation in Taiwan; and a year teaching a GED curriculum in a prison (Missouri Eastern Correctional Center).
I have taught in many settings, with continual prime emphasis on working with the economically poorest of the urban poor, since I first taught near the public housing projects in West Dallas; and for the last twenty-five (25) years in North Minneapolis.
A metaphor for my career as a scholar-teacher is the phase during which I presented my dissertation, Agricultural Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990, to the professors on my committee at the University of Minnesota; while I was a teacher at the old City, Inc., North Side; the latter served students, many of them gang members, from troubled familial circumstances.
I am an author of numerous works:
I have written numerous opinion pieces for the Star Tribune and have posted 262 articles on my blog at http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com.
I have written eight books, most of them listed on Amazon; and including two--- The State of African Americans in Minnesota, 2004 and 2008 editions, for the Minneapolis Urban league, during the tenure of my friend Clarence Hightower as President and Chief Executive Officer.
For a year and a half now I have published an academic periodical, The K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, available to a growing number of individual and group subscribers. I also host a television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, on which I conduct interviews (most recently with Minneapolis Public Schools Director of Black Male Achievement, Michael Walker); make extended commentary; and conduct academic sessions of up to two hours (covering two complete shows) with my students.
I have completed ten of fourteen chapters for a new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, which offers a complete education in economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, the fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics--- so comprehensive that many a university graduate wishes that she or he had either previously received, or remembered, the included information.
With regard to my students, know that these other quite time-consuming activities are in addition to my most important and temporally extensive activity of all--- the conducting of 17 small-group academic sessions over the course of seven days a week; and the administration of the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, at which Jerry McAfee is pastor.
In these academic sessions I move my students, all of whom are either African American or Hispanic and qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, to grade level in mathematics and reading, then put them on a college preparatory course of study. I train them to take the ACT and cover with them the information from my chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
I was on one of the committees that wrote the academic standards for the State of Minnesota Department of Education.
I am at work 19 hours most days and at least 15 hours every day, modeling and advocating for the excellent education for which our young people have been long waiting.
I am determined to revolutionize K-12 education for the delivery of knowledge-intensive curriculum by knowledgeable teachers who possess the pedagogical gifts for imparting their knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 11, 2016
Weekly Midweek Missive (#376, IX-29) sent to my son, Ryan Davison-Reed, on Friday, 11 March 2016: The Starkly Errant Philosophy of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Mar 8, 2016
Excellent Education Is Defined by Student Mastery of Commonly Shared Knowledge--- and, Thus, Beware the Acolytes of Ted Kolderie
In their article, “The Way to Design Schools So That All Can Succeed” (Star Tribune, March 7, 2016), Robert Wehl, Jay Haugen, and Jeff Ronneburg tout bad ideas that are consistent with those espoused by professors in our terrible departments, colleges, and schools of education; and that emanate directly from Ted Kolderie, whose vapid notions often appear on these pages. They should be recognized for their vacuity as a guide to the overhaul of K-12 education.
First consider the meaning of an excellent education and what actually prevents our students from receiving the education that should be theirs as human beings in community with others.
Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting well-defined knowledge and skill sets in the liberal, industrial, and technological arts to students of all demographic descriptors in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.
An excellent teacher is a professional of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When our K-12 students go across the stage at graduation, their brains should be alive with commonly shared knowledge that is their human inheritance. From their K-5 years forward, all students should especially gain a bevy of information in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, English usage, the fine arts, and world languages. From the middle school years (grades 6-8) forward, student knowledge and skill sets should include those pertinent to industrial arts such as plumbing, auto mechanics, carpentry, electrical circuitry, and construction; and those germane to the use and application of computer and electronic technology.
But for at least four decades, professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education have espoused a “constructivist” approach to learning that focuses on immediate student interest in the context of that person’s individual life experiences. Education professors devalue knowledge as defined by well-defined, sequentially learned, commonly shared knowledge and skill sets. One can always look up that sort of knowledge, they say, with the help of classroom presences functioning as information “facilitators,” rather than as true teachers.
These same education professors give us K-5 teachers whose programs are the least rigorous on college and university campuses; such teachers have very little subject area knowledge. Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines; but the standards for licensure are low, and the system is rigged to impel them toward master’s degrees in education, rather than in the subject areas that they teach. Education departments, schools, and colleges are “cash cows” for universities.
Thus it is that education professors promote the shibboleths of “critical thinking” and “life-long learning” that actually act in tandem as a smokescreen for teaching our students very little:
Students have little knowledge, for example, as to how the Federal Reserve System works; why people do what they do according to Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Abraham Maslow; the doctrinal and cultural difference between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam; what Reconstruction was and why it failed; how the dramatic phrasings of August Wilson soar to Shakespearean heights ; and how Einstein’s calculations pertinent to the universe challenge the earthbound laws of Newtonian physics.
This is the context in which readers should reject the ruminations of Wedl, Haugen, and Ronneburg. Their references to “customized student learning,” flexible rather than universal standards, multiple measure assessments rather than objective testing, empowered teachers, and autonomous school sites are verbal constructions that resonate pleasantly in many ears but echo the insipid pronouncements of education professors.
We need not less, but more centralization, of the sort that has made students in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Finland the most knowledgeable in the world. We need commonly shared knowledge bases that will give all students lives of cultural enrichment, professional satisfaction, and civic preparation. We must have objective testing, which is the fairest and most dependable way to measure student learning. We need universally well-trained teachers able to impart vital knowledge and skill sets to all students. And we need locally centralized school systems that must be surrogates for national centralization in a nation fixated on local control.
In this age of cybernetic friends communicating in physical isolation and alienated people perpetrating violence on their fellows, know that we need informed citizens interacting in the context of community.
Know that the fanciful ruminations of Ted Kolderie acolytes cannot give our students what they need in commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community.
Know, most importantly, that only via commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community can students go forth to thrive both as individually fulfilled human beings and as citizens responsible for the good of all humanity.
First consider the meaning of an excellent education and what actually prevents our students from receiving the education that should be theirs as human beings in community with others.
Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting well-defined knowledge and skill sets in the liberal, industrial, and technological arts to students of all demographic descriptors in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.
An excellent teacher is a professional of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When our K-12 students go across the stage at graduation, their brains should be alive with commonly shared knowledge that is their human inheritance. From their K-5 years forward, all students should especially gain a bevy of information in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, English usage, the fine arts, and world languages. From the middle school years (grades 6-8) forward, student knowledge and skill sets should include those pertinent to industrial arts such as plumbing, auto mechanics, carpentry, electrical circuitry, and construction; and those germane to the use and application of computer and electronic technology.
But for at least four decades, professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education have espoused a “constructivist” approach to learning that focuses on immediate student interest in the context of that person’s individual life experiences. Education professors devalue knowledge as defined by well-defined, sequentially learned, commonly shared knowledge and skill sets. One can always look up that sort of knowledge, they say, with the help of classroom presences functioning as information “facilitators,” rather than as true teachers.
These same education professors give us K-5 teachers whose programs are the least rigorous on college and university campuses; such teachers have very little subject area knowledge. Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines; but the standards for licensure are low, and the system is rigged to impel them toward master’s degrees in education, rather than in the subject areas that they teach. Education departments, schools, and colleges are “cash cows” for universities.
Thus it is that education professors promote the shibboleths of “critical thinking” and “life-long learning” that actually act in tandem as a smokescreen for teaching our students very little:
Students have little knowledge, for example, as to how the Federal Reserve System works; why people do what they do according to Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Abraham Maslow; the doctrinal and cultural difference between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam; what Reconstruction was and why it failed; how the dramatic phrasings of August Wilson soar to Shakespearean heights ; and how Einstein’s calculations pertinent to the universe challenge the earthbound laws of Newtonian physics.
This is the context in which readers should reject the ruminations of Wedl, Haugen, and Ronneburg. Their references to “customized student learning,” flexible rather than universal standards, multiple measure assessments rather than objective testing, empowered teachers, and autonomous school sites are verbal constructions that resonate pleasantly in many ears but echo the insipid pronouncements of education professors.
We need not less, but more centralization, of the sort that has made students in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Finland the most knowledgeable in the world. We need commonly shared knowledge bases that will give all students lives of cultural enrichment, professional satisfaction, and civic preparation. We must have objective testing, which is the fairest and most dependable way to measure student learning. We need universally well-trained teachers able to impart vital knowledge and skill sets to all students. And we need locally centralized school systems that must be surrogates for national centralization in a nation fixated on local control.
In this age of cybernetic friends communicating in physical isolation and alienated people perpetrating violence on their fellows, know that we need informed citizens interacting in the context of community.
Know that the fanciful ruminations of Ted Kolderie acolytes cannot give our students what they need in commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community.
Know, most importantly, that only via commonly shared knowledge, skill, and sense of community can students go forth to thrive both as individually fulfilled human beings and as citizens responsible for the good of all humanity.
Mar 7, 2016
Transformations of Lives and Advocacy for Excellent Education in the New Salem Educational Initiative: Quite a Series of Days from 27 February to 6 March
[Note: Names used in these and other such articles on my blog are data privacy pseudonyms.]
The days running from Saturday, 27 February, through Sunday, 6 March, featured amazing opportunities in the interest of transforming lives and advocating for excellent education via the multi-program effort of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
...............................................................
On Saturday, 27 February, Darnelle Franklin and I recorded two hours of my television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM). Darnelle is a Grade 9 student at Henry High School who has studied with me throughout his K-12 years. He is functioning at Grade 11 in both reading and mathematics, and he is now one of several students studying subject area material covered in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
During our recording of two complete shows, Darnelle and I reviewed topics from the third chapter that Darnelle has read; this chapter covers Political Science and succeeds Darnelle’s study of Economics, and Psychology in two previous chapters.
On the show, we discussed the political forms of absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, and liberal democratic republic. We emphasized the historical evolution of these political forms and how constitutional monarchies in practice have tended to feature parliamentary versus presidential systems, and how in Europe they have also tended toward democratic socialism by comparison to the greater emphasis on laissez faire capitalism in the United States.
……………………………………………
On that very Saturday of 27 February I maintained a full schedule of small-group sessions, including work with siblings Joanna Billings and Wilson Billings, at Grade 2 and Grade 4 respectively at Jenny Lind K-5. Joanna is very precocious and has studied with me since she entered Grade K; she is functioning above grade level in reading and is far above grade level in math, accomplishing feats that are more typically associated mathematically with students at Grade 4. Similarly, Wilson is making top grades at school, has a powerhouse image of himself as an academic achiever, and is operating above grade level in both math and reading.
My work on Saturday also included work with siblings Hanna (Grade 4), Rico (Grade 6), and Gilberto Ramirez (Grade 8). Hanna is a fantastic talent and also diligent. Rico is a similarly fantastic talent but scattered and inconsistent in his effort. Gilberto is of more average ability but highly engaged and dedicated as a student. Hence, getting high performance from these students requires varying approaches--- all of which are keeping these three students on promising pathways to postsecondary experiences at colleges or universities.
…………………………………………………………………
On Sunday (28 February) I worked with the mother (Carla) and aunt (Felicia) of these three students; each of these young adults aspires to her GED and enhanced employment opportunities. They are focused and highly motivated; and in all this a great family story. Just prior to working with Carla and Felicia, I worked with three members (Evelyn Patterson, Damon Preston, and Javon Jakes (grade 1), whose remarkable story I recorded in an earlier blog article--- and continue toward the end of this article.
…………………………………………………………………
In the course of the following days of the week I worked with students ranging from Grade 1 to post-collegiate, the latter case a young man who has studied with me since Grade 6 and needs one course in College Algebra to claim his bachelor’s degree.
Seven of the students with whom I worked are advanced enough to be reading my college preparatory Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, reveling in the new knowledge that they are gaining as to the functioning of the Federal Reserve System and the stock market; the operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner versus the psychoanalytical approach of Sigmund Freud; the relevance of the caucus and primary systems, and the Electoral College, to the current presidential campaigns; and the other material that they are learning in chapters focused on Political Science, Economics, and Psychology.
……………………………………………….
On Super Tuesday (1 March), I advocated for a resolution in my Democratic political caucus, asserting the case for the DFL and the national Democratic Party to moving assertively to advance a national K-12 curriculum. I was doing this to be pugnacious, given the realities of the attachment to local control in the United States, but lo and behold my resolution passed, 20-14.
Through the middle of the week I continued to give my efforts to a multiplicity of tasks >>>>>
>>>>> I superintended the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program;
>>>>> conducted a bevy of small-group academic sessions;
>>>>> and collected data on the number of positions with salaries for central office personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
…………………………………………..
Then yesterday, 7 March, I again met with Evelyn Patterson and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul. Their current quarters are too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
Yesterday (7 March), Evelyn continued to zoom through our review of mathematical topics that will allow her to resume the college training that was interrupted a decade ago. We have gone through arithmetic operations and various operations with decimals, percentages, and fractions. We spent the preponderance of our time yesterday on the addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers; and we went on to a review of fundamental algebraic equations.
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student. Yesterday we concentrated on math. I ran Javon through a series of exercises on which he performed magnificently, demonstrating full grasp of multiplication tables for the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9. Javon loves my trick for the nines and is a whiz at its application. Next week Javon will learn multiplication tables for 6, 7, and 8--- thus completing, at just Grade 1, the all-important 0-9 sequence.
Damon performed multi-step algebraic equations adeptly, moving smoothly through ascending levels of challenges. He needed some review as to the rules that apply to additive as opposed to multiplicative operations with negative integers, showing his typical patience in regaining mastery.
……………………………………...........
When Evelyn, Damon, and Javon had entered my car at 2:30 PM on this Sunday, 6 March, Damon and Javon had just had a verbal quarrel. Evelyn was very frustrated.
I asked Damon and Javon what their argument had been about and found out that the dispute involved use of a friend’s electronic device for playing games. I talked to these half-brothers at length about the need to get along so as to help their mother. Evelyn struggles with her mental health, which I did not have to mention specifically for the boys to get my meaning implicitly.
So elated were these three about their academic successes on this day of study with me, that their spirits were elevated considerably as we made our way back to their apartment building. I talked to Damon and Javon again about ratcheting down the frequency of their arguments. They promised me that this would be a good week for their interactions.
Thus, transporting these three to and from their apartment allowed us time to talk in a way that helped them sort through a matter of seemingly trivial argument but one that had weighed heavily on Evelyn’s morale. And their accomplishment in their academic assignments had provided to each of these family members another rung on the ladder to success.
When people focus on matters for study that give them self-confidence and a sense of life progress, emotional states can be altered from moods of negativity to feelings of positive self-worth.
The mastery of broadly grasped and deeply internalized knowledge has been transformative in the cases of Evelyn and her sons Damon and Javon. These are people who yearn to learn all there is to know about all manner of subjects. They love learning for learning’s own sake; and they see their increasing knowledge as giving them the power to forge lives at a level of success that previously has escaped those of older generations in their family.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon demonstrate each week the radiant power of knowledge. All of our nation’s citizens deserve the power of knowledge that surges in the souls of Evelyn, Damon, and Javon with each passing week.
Thus do I feel very blessed as I reflect on this very remarkable series of days extending from Saturday, 27 February, to Sunday, 6 March.
And thus do I vow to intensify the bevy of activities that currently describe the multi-faceted program of the New Salem Education, toward overhauling K-12 education for the life enrichment of all of our precious young people, and for all of those adults who are seeing for the first time the magnificent opportunities of life that beckon for them on a foundation of knowledge intensity and ethical responsibility.
The days running from Saturday, 27 February, through Sunday, 6 March, featured amazing opportunities in the interest of transforming lives and advocating for excellent education via the multi-program effort of the New Salem Educational Initiative.
...............................................................
On Saturday, 27 February, Darnelle Franklin and I recorded two hours of my television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM). Darnelle is a Grade 9 student at Henry High School who has studied with me throughout his K-12 years. He is functioning at Grade 11 in both reading and mathematics, and he is now one of several students studying subject area material covered in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
During our recording of two complete shows, Darnelle and I reviewed topics from the third chapter that Darnelle has read; this chapter covers Political Science and succeeds Darnelle’s study of Economics, and Psychology in two previous chapters.
On the show, we discussed the political forms of absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, and liberal democratic republic. We emphasized the historical evolution of these political forms and how constitutional monarchies in practice have tended to feature parliamentary versus presidential systems, and how in Europe they have also tended toward democratic socialism by comparison to the greater emphasis on laissez faire capitalism in the United States.
……………………………………………
On that very Saturday of 27 February I maintained a full schedule of small-group sessions, including work with siblings Joanna Billings and Wilson Billings, at Grade 2 and Grade 4 respectively at Jenny Lind K-5. Joanna is very precocious and has studied with me since she entered Grade K; she is functioning above grade level in reading and is far above grade level in math, accomplishing feats that are more typically associated mathematically with students at Grade 4. Similarly, Wilson is making top grades at school, has a powerhouse image of himself as an academic achiever, and is operating above grade level in both math and reading.
My work on Saturday also included work with siblings Hanna (Grade 4), Rico (Grade 6), and Gilberto Ramirez (Grade 8). Hanna is a fantastic talent and also diligent. Rico is a similarly fantastic talent but scattered and inconsistent in his effort. Gilberto is of more average ability but highly engaged and dedicated as a student. Hence, getting high performance from these students requires varying approaches--- all of which are keeping these three students on promising pathways to postsecondary experiences at colleges or universities.
…………………………………………………………………
On Sunday (28 February) I worked with the mother (Carla) and aunt (Felicia) of these three students; each of these young adults aspires to her GED and enhanced employment opportunities. They are focused and highly motivated; and in all this a great family story. Just prior to working with Carla and Felicia, I worked with three members (Evelyn Patterson, Damon Preston, and Javon Jakes (grade 1), whose remarkable story I recorded in an earlier blog article--- and continue toward the end of this article.
…………………………………………………………………
In the course of the following days of the week I worked with students ranging from Grade 1 to post-collegiate, the latter case a young man who has studied with me since Grade 6 and needs one course in College Algebra to claim his bachelor’s degree.
Seven of the students with whom I worked are advanced enough to be reading my college preparatory Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, reveling in the new knowledge that they are gaining as to the functioning of the Federal Reserve System and the stock market; the operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner versus the psychoanalytical approach of Sigmund Freud; the relevance of the caucus and primary systems, and the Electoral College, to the current presidential campaigns; and the other material that they are learning in chapters focused on Political Science, Economics, and Psychology.
……………………………………………….
On Super Tuesday (1 March), I advocated for a resolution in my Democratic political caucus, asserting the case for the DFL and the national Democratic Party to moving assertively to advance a national K-12 curriculum. I was doing this to be pugnacious, given the realities of the attachment to local control in the United States, but lo and behold my resolution passed, 20-14.
Through the middle of the week I continued to give my efforts to a multiplicity of tasks >>>>>
>>>>> I superintended the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program;
>>>>> conducted a bevy of small-group academic sessions;
>>>>> and collected data on the number of positions with salaries for central office personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
…………………………………………..
Then yesterday, 7 March, I again met with Evelyn Patterson and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul. Their current quarters are too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
Yesterday (7 March), Evelyn continued to zoom through our review of mathematical topics that will allow her to resume the college training that was interrupted a decade ago. We have gone through arithmetic operations and various operations with decimals, percentages, and fractions. We spent the preponderance of our time yesterday on the addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers; and we went on to a review of fundamental algebraic equations.
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student. Yesterday we concentrated on math. I ran Javon through a series of exercises on which he performed magnificently, demonstrating full grasp of multiplication tables for the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9. Javon loves my trick for the nines and is a whiz at its application. Next week Javon will learn multiplication tables for 6, 7, and 8--- thus completing, at just Grade 1, the all-important 0-9 sequence.
Damon performed multi-step algebraic equations adeptly, moving smoothly through ascending levels of challenges. He needed some review as to the rules that apply to additive as opposed to multiplicative operations with negative integers, showing his typical patience in regaining mastery.
……………………………………...........
When Evelyn, Damon, and Javon had entered my car at 2:30 PM on this Sunday, 6 March, Damon and Javon had just had a verbal quarrel. Evelyn was very frustrated.
I asked Damon and Javon what their argument had been about and found out that the dispute involved use of a friend’s electronic device for playing games. I talked to these half-brothers at length about the need to get along so as to help their mother. Evelyn struggles with her mental health, which I did not have to mention specifically for the boys to get my meaning implicitly.
So elated were these three about their academic successes on this day of study with me, that their spirits were elevated considerably as we made our way back to their apartment building. I talked to Damon and Javon again about ratcheting down the frequency of their arguments. They promised me that this would be a good week for their interactions.
Thus, transporting these three to and from their apartment allowed us time to talk in a way that helped them sort through a matter of seemingly trivial argument but one that had weighed heavily on Evelyn’s morale. And their accomplishment in their academic assignments had provided to each of these family members another rung on the ladder to success.
When people focus on matters for study that give them self-confidence and a sense of life progress, emotional states can be altered from moods of negativity to feelings of positive self-worth.
The mastery of broadly grasped and deeply internalized knowledge has been transformative in the cases of Evelyn and her sons Damon and Javon. These are people who yearn to learn all there is to know about all manner of subjects. They love learning for learning’s own sake; and they see their increasing knowledge as giving them the power to forge lives at a level of success that previously has escaped those of older generations in their family.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon demonstrate each week the radiant power of knowledge. All of our nation’s citizens deserve the power of knowledge that surges in the souls of Evelyn, Damon, and Javon with each passing week.
Thus do I feel very blessed as I reflect on this very remarkable series of days extending from Saturday, 27 February, to Sunday, 6 March.
And thus do I vow to intensify the bevy of activities that currently describe the multi-faceted program of the New Salem Education, toward overhauling K-12 education for the life enrichment of all of our precious young people, and for all of those adults who are seeing for the first time the magnificent opportunities of life that beckon for them on a foundation of knowledge intensity and ethical responsibility.
Transforming K-12 Education Via Multi-Programming Efforts in the New Salem Educational Initiative
In the course of the past 18 months, I have moved to expand the New Salem Educational Initiative from a program already directly transforming the lives of 125 participants into a full-throttle effort to overhaul K-12 Education.
With the latter goal in view, I have created numerous venues for the advocacy of knowledge-intensive K-12 education, delivered by retrained teachers of genuine knowledge and the ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
The New Salem Educational Initiative includes most especially the longstanding programs reaching 125 people who are served in the seven-day-a-week small group academic program, the Tuesday Tutoring Program, and the multi-service program that offers continuing academic assistance and mentoring to university students and adults, those requiring immediate response to critical situations, and people seeking social service resource referral.
In addition, I now advance the ideas that I put into everyday operation in those just-noted efforts via several venues created over the course of the last 18 months: the academic periodical Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; my television show (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM), The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison; my new book (Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education), featuring ten already completed chapters in a projected fourteen to include economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, fine arts, English usage, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics; and articles posted with great frequency on this blog, now totaling well over 250.
I do all of this through the New Salem Educational Initiative with the goal of making of this nation the democracy that it imagines itself to be.
The purposes of an excellent K-12 education are to culturally enrich, civically engage, and professionally satisfy all of our people through the power of knowledge.
To accomplish this, we must counter an education establishment that has been intellectually corrupted by education professors: In the course of at least four decades, these university professorial lightweights have attempted to veil their own thin knowledge base by defining the purposes of education as the development of critical thinking and the habits of lifelong learning; they decry systematically and sequentially accumulated knowledge as unimportant.
In fact, the power of an abundant and deep knowledge base must undergird all critical analysis and the ability to embark on lifelong learning; shallow in their knowledge base, always avoiding any critical analysis of their own slim ideas, education professors use critical thinking and lifelong learning as semantic screens behind which they cowardly crouch, launching verbal missiles at those who revel in the world of knowledge that defines excellent education.
Through my various venues for advocacy of truly excellent, knowledge-intensive education, I seek to transform K-12 education at the level of the central school district. I would prefer to agitate for curricular overhaul and standards for teacher quality set at the national level, in the manner of the best education systems of the world (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Finland); but the mantra of local control in the United States moves the locus of change to the locally centralized school district, which in this nation must serve as the surrogate and model for change at the national level.
Shakespeare strums the vocal cords of Brutus in Julius Caesar for the delivery of an eloquent message urging response to opportunities and exigencies of the moment:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Now is the time to overhaul K-12 education.
Accomplishment of this objective is the paramount domestic issue of our time. Attaining this goal will end decades and in some cases centuries of familial poverty and dysfunction. Through the power of an excellent, knowledge-intensive education, we can become the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
Now is the time.
I must not fail.
You must not fail.
We must not fail.
We must not lose our ventures.
We are afloat on a sea of opportunity and must take the current where it serves, riding those waves of hope for full claim on our intellectual inheritance and the creation of better people, greater justice, more satisfying lives.
With the latter goal in view, I have created numerous venues for the advocacy of knowledge-intensive K-12 education, delivered by retrained teachers of genuine knowledge and the ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
The New Salem Educational Initiative includes most especially the longstanding programs reaching 125 people who are served in the seven-day-a-week small group academic program, the Tuesday Tutoring Program, and the multi-service program that offers continuing academic assistance and mentoring to university students and adults, those requiring immediate response to critical situations, and people seeking social service resource referral.
In addition, I now advance the ideas that I put into everyday operation in those just-noted efforts via several venues created over the course of the last 18 months: the academic periodical Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota; my television show (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM), The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison; my new book (Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education), featuring ten already completed chapters in a projected fourteen to include economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, fine arts, English usage, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics; and articles posted with great frequency on this blog, now totaling well over 250.
I do all of this through the New Salem Educational Initiative with the goal of making of this nation the democracy that it imagines itself to be.
The purposes of an excellent K-12 education are to culturally enrich, civically engage, and professionally satisfy all of our people through the power of knowledge.
To accomplish this, we must counter an education establishment that has been intellectually corrupted by education professors: In the course of at least four decades, these university professorial lightweights have attempted to veil their own thin knowledge base by defining the purposes of education as the development of critical thinking and the habits of lifelong learning; they decry systematically and sequentially accumulated knowledge as unimportant.
In fact, the power of an abundant and deep knowledge base must undergird all critical analysis and the ability to embark on lifelong learning; shallow in their knowledge base, always avoiding any critical analysis of their own slim ideas, education professors use critical thinking and lifelong learning as semantic screens behind which they cowardly crouch, launching verbal missiles at those who revel in the world of knowledge that defines excellent education.
Through my various venues for advocacy of truly excellent, knowledge-intensive education, I seek to transform K-12 education at the level of the central school district. I would prefer to agitate for curricular overhaul and standards for teacher quality set at the national level, in the manner of the best education systems of the world (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Finland); but the mantra of local control in the United States moves the locus of change to the locally centralized school district, which in this nation must serve as the surrogate and model for change at the national level.
Shakespeare strums the vocal cords of Brutus in Julius Caesar for the delivery of an eloquent message urging response to opportunities and exigencies of the moment:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Now is the time to overhaul K-12 education.
Accomplishment of this objective is the paramount domestic issue of our time. Attaining this goal will end decades and in some cases centuries of familial poverty and dysfunction. Through the power of an excellent, knowledge-intensive education, we can become the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
Now is the time.
I must not fail.
You must not fail.
We must not fail.
We must not lose our ventures.
We are afloat on a sea of opportunity and must take the current where it serves, riding those waves of hope for full claim on our intellectual inheritance and the creation of better people, greater justice, more satisfying lives.
Feb 29, 2016
The Life Transformations of Evelyn Patterson and her Sons Damon Preston and Javon Jakes: My Apology on Behalf of the United States Citizenry to the African American People
[Note: Names used in these and other such articles on my blog are data privacy pseudonyms.]
On the afternoon of Sunday, 28 February 2016 (yesterday as I write this), the remarkable life transformation of a family about whom I’ve written in prior articles posted on this blog continued to gather gale-wind force.
What transpired in the academic session that I conducted with three members of this family carried multiple messages pertinent to the revolution of K-12 education in the United States as the debt that we owe to the African American people >>>>>
.........................................................................
In the manner recorded in my accounts of other Sundays, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM to conduct my academic sessions for the day. I drove over to the apartment building occupied by Evelyn Patterson, her significant other Marcel Gifford, and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 housing unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul.
Evelyn texted me earlier in the day that she was going to have trouble honoring our agreed-upon academic session time of 2:00 PM, because Marcel was working at his Excel Energy Center concessions stand job for the day, and she did not want to leave the boys alone. I often work with Damon and Javon on Saturday but on the previous day (27 February 2016) was so busy recording two hours of my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, shown Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17) and conducting two other academic sessions that I could not squeeze in a meeting with Damon and Javon.
So the plan on this particular Sunday, having deferred my meetings with Damon and Javon from Saturday, was to work with Evelyn at New Salem first, then go back for Damon at 4:30 PM for transport to his own academic session with me at New Salem, then work in the hallway back at the apartment with Javon.
Remember that the apartment itself is too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
…………………………………………………………
And remember Evelyn’s life story to date:
She is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits. But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. To her dismay, other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
And remember my longtime relationship with Damon and Javon: Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now.
Damon is a Grade 7 student who is now so advanced that he has already read two chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (my book written at a college preparatory level and featuring fourteen chapters written as mini-courses in economics, political science, psychology, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics).
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student.
……………………………………………………........
When I got the text from Evelyn, I suggested that we combine the academic sessions for her, Javon, and Damon; so that I would pick them up all up at 2:00 PM for transport to New Salem.
I did so, and thus began a remarkable day with the numerous implications noted in the opening of this article >>>>>
I positioned Evelyn, Damon, and Javon in individual rooms and gave them assignments of wide variance one to the other.
With Evelyn, I continued our intense review and recovery of mathematical skills. Remember that thus far we had done two hours of intensive math review, covering the basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; and we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. So again we went to work:
I gave her a very quick review of the skills mentioned above, then we worked on algebraic equations. We began with very basic equations, which she quickly grasped, then I began to increase the complexity of the equations, giving Evelyn challenges involving multiple steps; thorough knowledge of adding, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers; and application of work that we had done for all basic operations with fractions. Evelyn once again grasped everything that I explained very quickly. We will soon be moving through all material typically covered in Algebra I and into fundamental and intermediate geometry.
Classrooms at New Salem have excellent-quality old-fashioned chalk boards and tables with folding and sturdy, ergonomically comfortable plastic chairs. My modus operandi for the day was to sketch out exercises for Evelyn, dash over to Javon’s room to ask him questions about books that I had him reading, and then move on to Damon’s room, where the latter was looking up unfamiliar words in Chapter Three, Psychology, from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Javon and Damon excelled as much as did their mother:
Javon read 25 short to medium-length books ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 3 level. I asked him close questions about the characters and story lines in each of these books, to which he responded with animated, insightful, accurate responses. Subject matter covered reparation of friendships after altercations; the consequences of lying and the enduring rewards of telling the truth; role reversal that comes when a monkey starts to imitate a little boy; the sublimity of clouds of many shapes; and the classic story of Dumbo the elephant.
Damon did a highly adroit job of putting definitions pertinent to my coverage of neuropsychology into his own words, rendering the meaning of the cerebellum, pons, medulla, midbrain, and brain stem in clear, descriptive language. He also requested that I review with him multi-step algebraic equations involving multiple operations with integers and fractions that he knew I was covering with his mom.
When I announced that we had to wrap things up after our two hours together, so that I could get them home and move on to my next group, they all lamented that we had to go:
Evelyn was all aglow for the success that she was having recovering concepts that she had long forgotten and some for which she was only now getting explanation that allowed for breakthroughs in understanding.
Javon loved all of the stories in the books that he read, was energetic throughout the entire two hours of reading all of those 25 books that I provided for him, and excelled at all of the multi-digit addition and subtraction problems and the fundamental multiplication exercises that I provided when he had gobbled up the books--- in all of this demonstrating just how advanced Javon is for a Grade 1 student, and how quickly he can move through material that challenges him properly.
And Damon beamed as if he were going to get the most highly prized new electronic gadget when I told him that for our next academic session I would bring him a book on the brain with multiple neuro-anatomical illustrations as a follow-up to my section in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on neuropsychology.
. ………………………………………………………………….
When I delivered Evelyn, Damon, and Javon to their apartment building, I showed them the cold-weather gear stored in my trunk as a follow-up to a conversation that we had had on the way back from New Salem on the importance of dressing properly in subzero weather. I told them that I go for my daily run right on through the winter, and that I love how I can actually get hot during a run with prevailing temperatures ranging down to, say, twenty below zero Fahrenheit. I both made believers out of them and brought smiles to their faces when I showed them my three ski masks, topped by a full-coverage, moisture-resistant mask, that I layer over my head and face when the truly cold temperatures abide.
Javon told me that I looked spooky. I chased him to the door of his apartment building.
A he was running, Javon shouted, “Thanks for all the books!”
I couldn’t have scripted the end to this day’s encounter with Evelyn and the boys any better.
………………………………………………………………
For all three of these highly intelligent people, these were two hours spent away from their squalid apartment, escaping from pealed paint and biting bugs to mental tracks leading to high academic accomplishment.
They are all in route to collegiate or university experiences and lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are now in the midst of life transforms through the power of knowledge-intensive education. This is the education that they deserve.
As I have detailed in many articles on this blog, the many African Americans who embarked on the Great Northern Migration were shuttled into areas left to them in the context of restricted housing covenants that denied them residential access to most parts of the city and certainly the suburbs. Whether in the rural South or the urban North, our collection of inadequately United States has abused most African American people with lousy schools.
This has been true for people whose families were intact and extolled the value of education.
And as to those families facing circumstances accrued in the context of a brutal history and particularly wretched conditions of survival, the education establishment of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized systems of public education have never articulated a program for imparting an education of high quality to those whose families that feature stark levels of poverty and significant dysfunction.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States.
The provision of knowledge-intensive education is the tangible manifestation of the apology that our society owes to the African American people.
This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
All of our people deserve the quality of education that Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are receiving in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
The provision of such an education is my apology to the African American people on behalf of the citizenry of the United States.
We as a society must extend this apology in tangible manifestation to all people in the overhaul of K-12 education.
Only through the power of a knowledge-intensive K-12 experience to all of our people can we become the democratic society that we imagine ourselves to be.
On the afternoon of Sunday, 28 February 2016 (yesterday as I write this), the remarkable life transformation of a family about whom I’ve written in prior articles posted on this blog continued to gather gale-wind force.
What transpired in the academic session that I conducted with three members of this family carried multiple messages pertinent to the revolution of K-12 education in the United States as the debt that we owe to the African American people >>>>>
.........................................................................
In the manner recorded in my accounts of other Sundays, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM to conduct my academic sessions for the day. I drove over to the apartment building occupied by Evelyn Patterson, her significant other Marcel Gifford, and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 housing unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul.
Evelyn texted me earlier in the day that she was going to have trouble honoring our agreed-upon academic session time of 2:00 PM, because Marcel was working at his Excel Energy Center concessions stand job for the day, and she did not want to leave the boys alone. I often work with Damon and Javon on Saturday but on the previous day (27 February 2016) was so busy recording two hours of my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, shown Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17) and conducting two other academic sessions that I could not squeeze in a meeting with Damon and Javon.
So the plan on this particular Sunday, having deferred my meetings with Damon and Javon from Saturday, was to work with Evelyn at New Salem first, then go back for Damon at 4:30 PM for transport to his own academic session with me at New Salem, then work in the hallway back at the apartment with Javon.
Remember that the apartment itself is too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
…………………………………………………………
And remember Evelyn’s life story to date:
She is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits. But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. To her dismay, other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
And remember my longtime relationship with Damon and Javon: Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now.
Damon is a Grade 7 student who is now so advanced that he has already read two chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (my book written at a college preparatory level and featuring fourteen chapters written as mini-courses in economics, political science, psychology, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics).
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student.
……………………………………………………........
When I got the text from Evelyn, I suggested that we combine the academic sessions for her, Javon, and Damon; so that I would pick them up all up at 2:00 PM for transport to New Salem.
I did so, and thus began a remarkable day with the numerous implications noted in the opening of this article >>>>>
I positioned Evelyn, Damon, and Javon in individual rooms and gave them assignments of wide variance one to the other.
With Evelyn, I continued our intense review and recovery of mathematical skills. Remember that thus far we had done two hours of intensive math review, covering the basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; and we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. So again we went to work:
I gave her a very quick review of the skills mentioned above, then we worked on algebraic equations. We began with very basic equations, which she quickly grasped, then I began to increase the complexity of the equations, giving Evelyn challenges involving multiple steps; thorough knowledge of adding, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers; and application of work that we had done for all basic operations with fractions. Evelyn once again grasped everything that I explained very quickly. We will soon be moving through all material typically covered in Algebra I and into fundamental and intermediate geometry.
Classrooms at New Salem have excellent-quality old-fashioned chalk boards and tables with folding and sturdy, ergonomically comfortable plastic chairs. My modus operandi for the day was to sketch out exercises for Evelyn, dash over to Javon’s room to ask him questions about books that I had him reading, and then move on to Damon’s room, where the latter was looking up unfamiliar words in Chapter Three, Psychology, from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Javon and Damon excelled as much as did their mother:
Javon read 25 short to medium-length books ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 3 level. I asked him close questions about the characters and story lines in each of these books, to which he responded with animated, insightful, accurate responses. Subject matter covered reparation of friendships after altercations; the consequences of lying and the enduring rewards of telling the truth; role reversal that comes when a monkey starts to imitate a little boy; the sublimity of clouds of many shapes; and the classic story of Dumbo the elephant.
Damon did a highly adroit job of putting definitions pertinent to my coverage of neuropsychology into his own words, rendering the meaning of the cerebellum, pons, medulla, midbrain, and brain stem in clear, descriptive language. He also requested that I review with him multi-step algebraic equations involving multiple operations with integers and fractions that he knew I was covering with his mom.
When I announced that we had to wrap things up after our two hours together, so that I could get them home and move on to my next group, they all lamented that we had to go:
Evelyn was all aglow for the success that she was having recovering concepts that she had long forgotten and some for which she was only now getting explanation that allowed for breakthroughs in understanding.
Javon loved all of the stories in the books that he read, was energetic throughout the entire two hours of reading all of those 25 books that I provided for him, and excelled at all of the multi-digit addition and subtraction problems and the fundamental multiplication exercises that I provided when he had gobbled up the books--- in all of this demonstrating just how advanced Javon is for a Grade 1 student, and how quickly he can move through material that challenges him properly.
And Damon beamed as if he were going to get the most highly prized new electronic gadget when I told him that for our next academic session I would bring him a book on the brain with multiple neuro-anatomical illustrations as a follow-up to my section in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on neuropsychology.
. ………………………………………………………………….
When I delivered Evelyn, Damon, and Javon to their apartment building, I showed them the cold-weather gear stored in my trunk as a follow-up to a conversation that we had had on the way back from New Salem on the importance of dressing properly in subzero weather. I told them that I go for my daily run right on through the winter, and that I love how I can actually get hot during a run with prevailing temperatures ranging down to, say, twenty below zero Fahrenheit. I both made believers out of them and brought smiles to their faces when I showed them my three ski masks, topped by a full-coverage, moisture-resistant mask, that I layer over my head and face when the truly cold temperatures abide.
Javon told me that I looked spooky. I chased him to the door of his apartment building.
A he was running, Javon shouted, “Thanks for all the books!”
I couldn’t have scripted the end to this day’s encounter with Evelyn and the boys any better.
………………………………………………………………
For all three of these highly intelligent people, these were two hours spent away from their squalid apartment, escaping from pealed paint and biting bugs to mental tracks leading to high academic accomplishment.
They are all in route to collegiate or university experiences and lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are now in the midst of life transforms through the power of knowledge-intensive education. This is the education that they deserve.
As I have detailed in many articles on this blog, the many African Americans who embarked on the Great Northern Migration were shuttled into areas left to them in the context of restricted housing covenants that denied them residential access to most parts of the city and certainly the suburbs. Whether in the rural South or the urban North, our collection of inadequately United States has abused most African American people with lousy schools.
This has been true for people whose families were intact and extolled the value of education.
And as to those families facing circumstances accrued in the context of a brutal history and particularly wretched conditions of survival, the education establishment of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized systems of public education have never articulated a program for imparting an education of high quality to those whose families that feature stark levels of poverty and significant dysfunction.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States.
The provision of knowledge-intensive education is the tangible manifestation of the apology that our society owes to the African American people.
This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
All of our people deserve the quality of education that Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are receiving in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
The provision of such an education is my apology to the African American people on behalf of the citizenry of the United States.
We as a society must extend this apology in tangible manifestation to all people in the overhaul of K-12 education.
Only through the power of a knowledge-intensive K-12 experience to all of our people can we become the democratic society that we imagine ourselves to be.
Feb 24, 2016
Note to My Readers on the Importance of the Following Three Articles Concerning Teacher Quality and Curriculum
Note to My Readers on the Importance of the Following Three Articles Concerning Teacher Quality and Curriculum
As members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education put excess time and energy into the continued search for a new superintendent, they allow themselves--- whether purposely or unconsciously--- to avoid the real issues that vex all locally centralized school districts in the United States, including the Minneapolis Public Schools.
I have detailed in previous articles the real and abiding problems in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools, those related to classroom management and the unrewarding learning experiences that our students have in the context of inadequate curriculum and mediocre teachers.
The following three articles are therefore the most important that you will ever read with regard to the core problems that yield such a poor quality of education for our precious young people.
The first two articles as you scroll down will appear in the order of most recent posting and concern the systems that gives us undertrained and mediocre teachers; the third article as you scroll down, posted before the other two, explains the origins of our errant approach to curriculum.
Please read these articles especially carefully and reread them from time to time to avoid the constant distractions that keep us from focusing on the issues of true importance in the overhaul of K-12 education.
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