Here are some life experiences that have shaped certain of my attitudes, beliefs, and quite possibly prejudices about education in Minneapolis:
As I have previously noted on this list, I grew up on a sharecropper tenant farm in Arkansas. I attended school in one of the poorest school systems in the United States (I believe only Mississippi was worse off at the time), and was in attendance for only about 1/2 the mandatory number of days during my primary and junior high school years. I had to work in cotton fields in the fall until there was no cotton left (usually around December), and then again in the spring when the cotton started (usually in April). Because I left home at fifteen, I did not go to high school for more than a few days. On the basis of this history, one might well expect that I'd be, at best, semi-literate. (No doubt Brother Paul thinks so, anyway.) For the next couple of years, I worked as a field hand, chopping and picking cotton at a lumber camp, taking care of livestock, and driving a car with contents of dubious legality from an enterprise in Tomato Bottom to consumers sixty miles away. (That was my best paying job, and it was certainly the most fun). None of this gave me much in the way of formal education, but it did intimately familiarize me with certain of life's priorities. The closest I ever got to formal education was delivering that 'moon to the students at Arkansas State University. I entered the military at seventeen in the hope that with a stable life and income of $76.00 a month, I could help my family on the farm back in Arkansas. I had also been told that the military would teach me a trade and "make a Man out of me". (I wasn't really sure what that meant, since I couldn't think of anything men did -- except abuse women and children -- that I hadn't done from the age of eleven or twelve on. And having been thus abused myself at an early age, I was sure I had NO interest in being that kind of "Man".) But the really important experience at this time in my life was attending the very quick military courses in basic math, science, and reading taught by a group of NCOs whose formal education was not much different from my own. The only music class in school that I remember was choir one year. It had been a rainy fall, but when the sun came out, I returned to the cotton fields singing. Dance was what you did for fun and to let the girls know that you were cool as well as sensitive. I must admit that I gained a rather rich musical education from attending church every week, from informal singin's with neighbors, and from field hollers and group sings as we worked in the fields. So I was actually better off than one might suppose. Leaving the military after four years, I decided to come to Minnesota to go to college. At the time, I was very uneasy about competing with Minnesota students, because the state was then a national leader in education. Nevertheless, I bluffed my way into college without taking entrance exams. And what did I find out? Not only that I could compete, but also that I could get straight A's without much effort. After graduating, I went on to graduate school with much the same results. I found that the reading skills I had been taught in those "poorest schools in the nation" allowed me to read anything that I needed to learn for any class; and I discovered that my math skills were more than equal to those of students who had taken much more advanced math classes than I had. I once laughed when a friend stated in disbelief that it was impossible for him to believe I had passed college physics without having first taken calculus. It's quite possible that my rich background in down home music -- my aunts teaching me slow dance at the start, followed by advanced training from the ladies in the bars and beer joints, and a whole lot of church music in formal White churches and wonderful Black churches -- had educated me to a level where I could outperform students from a better formal educational system in Minnesota. It's also quite possible that I simply had a much better, much richer education in music and dance. In fact, after reading some of the recent list postings, I've come to view this as a positive truth. I now believe that the concentration on readin' and writen' and doin' 'rithmatic when I was six, seven, and eight years old, followed by instruction from those high school drop-out NCO teachers, accounts for it. I am not unique in this. Every boy I grew up with on those Arkansas farms either died at the Tucker Farm (Arkansas' state prison), or in Viet Nam, or went on to graduate from college after leaving the military. Having completed the ninth grade, I was the most educated of all of them prior to entering the military. As I said, it could be that the richness of our musical heritage better prepared us to learn in school, but I still believe it was the basic education we received that gave us the tools to succeed when we were given the chance. My friends and I may have been smarter than those we competed against, but without those fundamental opportunities to gain knowledge, intelligence simply would not have mattered. The truth of the matter is this: Give people great basic tools and they will figure out how to build a mansion; give them broken or flawed tools and they will be condemned to inhabit broken down huts for the rest of their lives. I have tutored several musically gifted young people in basic math and reading so they could understand the material they were being taught in college classes they were enrolled in. After receiving a Minneapolis high school diploma, these young people could not do basic work at MCTC. Please folks, lets not consign poor kids from less than nurturing families to a future in which they are condemned to build their lives with the few flawed tools they have received from our public schools. Jim Graham, Ventura Village, Phillips Community Planning District, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis >"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." - John W. Gardner REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. 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