Counterpoint: Some public school educators promote a badly flawed ideology

Quick, all you critical thinkers and lifelong learners who read the opinion pages of the Star Tribune, answer this:

What ideology does Ed Graff have in common with Jay Haugen, Jeff Ronneberg, Lisa Snyder, Les Fujitake, and Lars Esdal ("Education in Minnesota Badly Needs Innovation," Jan. 23)?

Ed Graff is the new superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, six months into his tenure. His job is to make the institution of a traditional, centralized school district work. The writers of the recent opinion piece are proponents of education change who are endeavoring to restructure the traditional school district. They are calling upon the Minnesota Legislature to establish Innovation Zones (IZ) for personalizing student education, freeing teachers to make key decisions, replacing "test days" with "learning days," establising "new methods of accountability" and allowing site-based decisions to maximize student learning.

Haugen, Ronneberg, Snyder and Fujitaki are themselves public school superintendents; Esdal is the executive director of Education Evolving, an organization cofounded by Ted Kolderie, whom the writers reference as advocating a "split-screen strategy." This means some educators endeavor to improve the traditional school district while others are free to innovate in ways they deem more appropriate in a "world playing by a new set of rules."

Among the resources upon which these innovation advocates seek to draw is the "digital platform available at the press of a button in each student's shirt pocket or purse."

Have you answered the question yet? What common ideology do Graff and these education change advocates share?

Take one more moment to use those critical thinking and lifelong learning skills. Here's the answer:

Over the past four decades, many pedagogical emphases of the moment have emanated from departments, colleges, and schools of education. These approaches include group learning, inquiry learning, service learning, and experiential learning. None of these pedagogies includes the idea that a well-established body of knowledge is necessary to guide group work on a topic, to inform one's inquiry, to give and get benefit from service rendered, or to maximize value for the student's experience. None of these pedagogies seeks to add to an incrementally accumulated body of knowledge. None of these pedagogies seeks directly to impart the full array of skills that will allow students to demonstrate grade-level performance in reading and math.

Graff offers "social and emotional learning" as his main new contribution to academic programing and teacher professional development at the Minneapolis Public Schools. At the core of this approach is the notion that a student who possesses firm self-esteem and respect for other human beings will be prepared to succeed in academics.

Education professors maintain that students should be guided by classroom professionals motivated to nurture students who become critical thinkers and lifelong learners. Academic instruction should be "constructivist," building on the individual experiences of each student. According to this dogma, an established body of knowledge is not necessary.

The social and emotional learning creed is undergirded by very similar assumptions of the constructivist sort that all of you critical thinkers and lifelong learners can now discern in the innovation ideology of the others.

The "progressive" and "constructivist" disregard for commonly shared knowledge has had very unprogressive and unconstructive consequences for our students. They have had deleterious effects on you.

Don't be fooled by facile reasoning rooted in the theories of education professors.

Understand that Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann still call from their graves that a successful democracy must be founded on citizens who share common knowledge.

If you do not know how to think critically about that statement, for lack of lifelong learning, I guess you can go "look it up."