First, I share Julie Quist's concerns that education will be subsumed to the workplace, and that liberal arts are in peril.
However, I think many of her specific charges are hyperbolic readings of an intelligent program. Before I get into some specifics, I made a rule long before my kids started in the Minneapolis Public School system: only listen to those with kids IN the school system. The rest of us can more easily have our ideological axes to grind, but parents with kids find that experience often tempers (or reverses) such ideological biases. With that in mind, I'd like to invite list parents with kids IN SLCs to comment on Julie Quist's charges that SLCs are too vocationally oriented and career-tracking. (I'm especially interested to hear from parents with kids not in an IB or Liberal Arts program.) That said, Julie Quist writes: > Re: Career Pathways for 8th Graders in MPS > > Dear Mr. Grathwol, > > In your June 8th letter to Senator Higgins you state that > "no one [Mpls student] chooses a career pathway" and that > Mpls "does not force students to choose careers in 8th grade." > > Your statements are simply not true. The small learning > communities (SLCs) in Minneapolis require students to make > career decisions before they enter high school. Based on what I know of SLCs, Jim Grathwol is right. A kid chooses a medical magnet at Roosevelt - yes, a lot of the learning is applied through a medical metaphor. But the kid is no more locked into a medical career than anyone else. It just means they learn concepts better through science. > You say that Minneapolis students "have the > opportunity to choose their high schools." What you don't > mention is that in 8th grade students actually must choose an > SLC, and that choice determines their career pathway. The first part of Ms. Quist's statement is right - the district does emphasize SLCs, and sometimes that means choosing a high school is an afterthought. However, the second part is highly alarmist. Again, just because a kid is in (for example) the medical magnet doesn't mean they've signed a devil's contract to sell their soul into medicine. I mean, I changed majors a lot IN COLLEGE. Then ended up doing something completely different for a career. > SLCs > are focused around future career plans. Therefore, choosing an > SLC is choosing a career path. Nope. It's learning via a current interest. That may or may not become a career. Again - how many of us IN COLLEGE ended up doing something different than our majors? It's hyperbolic to think that a high school SLC is more powerful career cement than a college major. > You say that every SLC "delivers all of the state > required and elective academic standards." They do indeed > teach the standards, but all of the curriculum is integrated > with the particular career pathway. I would prefer to say "taught through a career metaphor" - since, as the poster admits, the student is still learning the standards. To me, the standards are what's important. If you learn them - by whatever means - you can do anything. As an aside, I went to Maple River Education's website: http://www.edwatch.org/ In the "Our Mission" page, the group states: "MREdCo is committed to educating the public about the unprecedented movement of the U.S. workforce, the U.S. economy and the entire educational system toward a centrally planned and controlled federal system." Paradoxically, the SLCs that MREdCo opposes reflect the essence of local control: a decision made at the city level to organize a large district via smaller groups to improve learning. I worry that MREdCo - whose majority of members, I'm guessing, are NOT from Minneapolis - wants to impose ITS statewide or national ideology on our local system. (By the way, my opposition to Maple River here is not ideologically knee-jerk. I, like them, opposed the Profiles of Learning.) David Brauer King Field Parent of an MPS kid TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
