kjellchad

George Floyd

June 1, 2020 by kjellchad

Most Minnesotans, including many in law enforcement, were outraged by what happened to George Floyd. How anyone can look at that video (and far too many incidents before it) and not agree that some serious changes need to be made, is beyond me. We need to end institutional racism and police brutality. Yes, we also needed to stop the burning and looting and arrest the perpetrators and provide security to our communities. How anyone can look at the burning cars and buildings, the residents now without grocery stores and pharmacies, the groups of people looting stores, the business owners with their lives’ work destroyed, and think that is somehow justified or that is will somehow help, is similarly beyond me. More than anything we need to learn to do the hard work of listening to each other and working within our systems to make them better, as they offer the best opportunity in human history for peace, prosperity, and the freedom to pursue our individually chosen dreams.

I have friends that are in law enforcement, and I know we expect a great deal from them, and that they have an extremely difficult job. But one of the things we expect from them is to have thick skin, a keen sense of judgement, and to treat people fairly. To protect and to serve. No humans should be at risk of being killed any time they are pulled over by the police, as long as they don’t present a threat to the lives of the police officer. George Floyd deserved better, and we deserve better.

And I agree that those of us who are Caucasian need to understand the reality that our neighbors who happen to be of African descent have to deal with, and to listen to them and understand their reality. The term “privilege” has become polarizing, but the reality is we do have privileges that they don’t. To me, Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter, or that “blue” lives don’t matter. It means (and I can’t believe we need to even say this, but we do) that people of color deserve to have their lives valued in the same manner as all other humans. And in our society, they too often are not. We can’t ignore that.

No citizen should feel they are justified in taking the law into their own hands, as judge, jury and executioner, whether they are in a neighborhood watch group, are a pissed-off young anti-fascist who wants to tear down the system, or is a genuinely harmed citizen who is understandably angry when looking at current events. It is dangerously wrong to think that violent protests (as opposed to peaceful protests) are justified. What the riots have created is yet another tragedy, and we’re all lucky that more people weren’t hurt.

For all of us, regardless of how angry or scared or helpless we feel, we have to learn to truly work together. To live with, respect, and work within the system we have, peacefully, even when faced with ugliness and injustice. A key aspect of the brilliance of Martin Luther King Jr. was that he stayed true to American ideals and claimed the moral high ground. Former President Obama had a good post today on how to work within the system, and what we can do to make things better: https://medium.com/@BarackObama/how-to-make-this-moment-the-turning-point-for-real-change-9fa209806067. I don’t agree with everything in his “advocacy toolkit,” because I don’t think we should make it impossible for good cops to do their jobs. But I agree with the spirit, and the call to be constrictive not destructive. We have laws, court systems, elections, constitutional protections, and public servants that are far from perfect. But they are also the best chance we have of living together in peace. They give us voices, and the means to make changes. We have to do the hard work of making those changes.

A Minnesota Voice for School Reform

April 15, 2020 by kjellchad

The teacher, who taught Social Studies to tenth graders in Minneapolis’ Roosevelt High School, looked me in the eye and said with a straight face, “Chad, what’s the point? These kids don’t want to be here. They’re only here because the state says they have to be until they’re sixteen.”

He was wrong.

They wanted more. More of a challenge, and more concern for their future. For someone to care. For someone to reach them. For someone to teach them.

I proved it.

And so they sat on my first day, watching a Wallace and Grommet video as I walked in. A few of them anyway. Several had their heads down on their desk, sleeping. Some were absentmindedly looking at their nails. None of them were learning Social Studies, or anything else for that matter. Except perhaps that school was a joke, and that their teacher thought they weren’t capable of anything better.

I was volunteering for Junior Achievement. My role was to provide them, over the course of ten weeks, with some exposure to and understanding of the basics of economics.
I approached it with zeal. As a young capitalist, and one who’s less-than-modest formative years included living in a trailer court, I wanted to show them how to access the American Dream.

The curriculum included some useful exercises, such as creating small groups with different assets and needs that fostered win-win trading, and simplified examples of how to start a business.

The most successful project by far was introduced in week one, and consumed the first ten minutes of my weekly visits thereafter. It was called “the stock market game.” Each student was given a fictional $10,000 the first week, and allowed to buy and sell stocks (fictionally) during that first ten minutes each week. Within a few weeks, upon my arrival most of the students would jump out of their chairs and run up to the bulletin board where I was posting the latest standings.

“What? Coke went down? No Way!”

“Woo-hoo!! Disney is up one thousand dollars!”

Interestingly for me, most of them did what well educated professionals tended to do – at first they typically would buy what they knew, and later they would tend to buy what did well the previous week. They would sell what had done poorly. But a few learned the value of thinking independently, and that your brain can make you money. And everyone learned that investing involves risk and uncertainty.

I also introduced current events, from an economic perspective. Would you believe they were interested in corn prices, and whether Cargill was helping or hurting farmers? I will never forget the joy of explaining what exactly it is that Cargill does, and how amazing it was at the time to have the world’s largest private company right here in Minnesota.

Or that one day, these same young minds the teacher had told me weren’t worth the time, would spend forty-five minutes discussing the Indonesian currency crisis? Why it mattered, what might have caused it, and what it might mean?

I saw the light in their eyes as they fired questions at me, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. We didn’t always agree, and that was okay. Not everyone participated. But most of them were engaged, and they were genuinely interested in how this big wide world works. Where all these people were going every day on planes and in cars, and what they were doing in their offices.

They were thinking. And they were learning.

To be clear, I’m not a qualified teacher. I don’t pretend I did as much as a good teacher does, and I certainly didn’t have to deal with six hours a day, five days a week. My point is not that I was doing anything exceptional, but to question why the school was employing a teacher who believed these kids weren’t worth the time. I saw firsthand that they were.

I’ve volunteered in other schools in Minneapolis, and I’ve met some truly excellent teachers. I understand it is an extremely complex problem and I know very well that teachers have a difficult job.

I personally believe we should pay teachers more. A lot more.

But in exchange, we need some common sense reforms. And what this experience taught me, is that we need the ability to get rid of the few bad apples.

In 2008, after dramatically cutting the staff within the Chancellor’s office and increasing the number of art teachers and music teachers in her district, Michelle Rhee introduced a plan within the Washington D.C. school district (one of the nation’s worst performing, at the time) to dramatically raise salaries to above $122,000 per year, up from a district average of $56,000. In exchange, she sought to implement three primary reforms that have been shown to produce significant improvements in many other districts: an extended school day, the elimination of automatic tenure, and bonuses for increased student improvement.

The Washington D.C. teacher’s union didn’t even allow their members to vote on it.

Why?

Ask yourself why would an organization dedicated to the professionalism of its craft, the financial security of its members, and the success of our children pass up dramatically increased pay and resources?

I believe they missed a great opportunity. I will argue that a “grand bargain” can be had in education, which could raise both the pay and the attractiveness of teaching, if reforms were introduced to align their compensation with what we all want for all of our kids – a good education.

That teacher at Roosevelt, who I believe didn’t deserve the title of Educator, didn’t deserve to have a job, let alone automatic tenure. Yes, we as taxpayers deserve more. But more importantly, those kids surely and sorely deserved more. If there was ever an argument against automatic tenure in the K-12 world, he was it. (Even colleges don’t have automatic tenure, by the way – there it has to be earned.)

This teacher added something else particularly discouraging, after telling me that trying to reach these kids was a waste of time. “I’ll be honest, I’m just holding on until I reach the rule of 85.” For those of you who don’t know, that is the point at which his age and his years of service entitle him to a pension.

It occurred to me as I was writing this, that maybe there was a reason the Principal assigned me to this classroom. Maybe she or he knew that these kids deserved something better than what they were getting, since she couldn’t fire him. If only for one day a week, one hour a day.