Results tagged “minnesota” from Eccentric Eclectica

Harry Boyte, a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, spoke to the Minnesota Independent Scholars Forum on the topic Beyond the Knowledge Wars. The event was held at the Hosmer Public Library in Minneapolis.

Boyte began by discussing the cult of the expert, the ultimate outgrowth of the philosophical positivism and objectivism that dominated intellectual culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Objectivity became the byword for intellectual investigation, demanding the removal of all self-interest or awareness from the research process. He summed this up by the advice he once heard given to a sociology Ph.D. - “never research a topic that you are interested in.” The fear of contamination by personal biases and interests pushed academia to extol research over outreach.

There have been many critics of this ethos of detachment, but so far their impact has been minimal. The administration of the University of Minnesota bought into the “ponzi scheme of becoming the third best public research university in the world.” The result was the closing of general college. Further back in time Boyte described some of the changes to the coop-extension program which was transformed away from community building into an expert service provider. Another current of resistance was the tradition of the land grant colleges.

The cult of the expert is expressed in politics as mobilizing - get out the vote, door knocking and canvassing, robo-calls. It is the dominant political formula of our time. Mobilization was originally the strategy of the left, but now all politicians use it. It begins by defining an enemy, frames the issue as good versus evil using a simplified script, and then distributes it to the masses with the subtext that the masses are being victimized. It is the Nader and the PIRG formula, and recently it has been the Rove, Gingrich, and Beck formula. The problem with this view is that it treats people as stereotypes, labels, or abstractions. How will the Southern white male respond to message X? What will the soccer mom think of this commercial?

The apotheosis of this form of politics was seen in 2008 when Mark Penn told Hillary Clinton that the only way she could win was by accusing Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer. Clinton stepped back from that edge. John McCain had a similar moment when he took the microphone from the woman in Minneapolis who accused Obama of being an Arab.

The antidote to this problem, according to Boyte, is an organizing paradigm, a viewpoint that acknowledges the “irreversible, plurality of the human condition.” It is a return to the original meaning of politics - how to deal with people different than the self.

Boyte offered some positive examples of resistance, such as the recent work by the Centers for Disease Control to promote community resilience, or the shift among development economists from only talking about government and market solutions to talking about community power. In St. Paul there is the Jane Addams School for Democracy connecting college students and immigrants and at the University of Minnesota William Doherty is working on a program for citizen professionals.

I basically agree with Mr. Boyte’s critique of the current situation, but the examples of hope seem very small bore compared to the scale of the challenge. I asked him about the reaction to his work among the business community and he basically said that he hadn’t presented the ideas to them. There were some local business alliances working on citizen business issues, such as the Citizens League and Target Corporation, but the overall scope was small.

The question I should have asked is how this message is going to be carried into the suburbs. I support his goals and the programs he works on, like the Jane Addams school and democracy promotion in Africa, but I see the center of the action as the suburbs for two reasons. Practically, the suburbs are where elections are currently won and lost in America. If we can’t convince suburbanites of this critique and the need for a more democratic form of education then change may never come. Ideologically, the problem is there are so few people in the suburbs who know what democracy. We, in the suburbs, are the ultimate ignorant consumers of government service. The attitude is “give me my driver’s license as rapidly as possible and then get out of my way, I need to go to work and pick up the kids for soccer practice.” There is very little citizenship in the suburbs, nor is there very much community.

The vision of a cocreative, relational, community-based future of education is enticing. I look forward to helping to build that future with Mr. Boyte.

Dane Smith, the president of Growth and Justice a local Minnesota think-tank, spoke to the Twin Cities Chapter of the IEEE Education Society on Friday. The event was held at the Bakken Museum on Lake Calhoun.

Mr. Smith began by laying out the assumptions made by Growth and Justice when considering education policy in Minnesota. Like many think-tank presidents he describe the mission of Growth and Justice as being bipartisan, neither conservative nor liberal. He believes, and so does his organization, that government can be a force for good in the community. Government investment in human capital can have a beneficial effect on the future. Smith contrasted this with the conservative view of Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and his oft-quoted message that government needs to be shrunk and then drowned in a bath tub.

To burnish his conservative credentials Smith said that Growth and Justice doesn’t oppose business reflexively, as some liberal groups do. Growth and Justice has worked with business groups to call for a reduction in corporate taxes in Minnesota and to support transportation investment.

Given this background Smith described the report Smart Investments in Minnesota Students which was completed at the end of 2008. The goal of the report was to “Develop a progressive policy agenda that defines successful education outcomes, identifies who should be accountable for those outcomes, and shows how to improve educational results for Minnesotans, from early childhood through post-secondary study.” To accomplish this the organization partnered with nationally recognized education scholars to find positive education interventions that are supported by sound research, with the ultimate hope of increasing higher education attainment fifty percent by 2020.

Currently education is the largest state budget expenditure, accounting for almost half of the state outlays. The bulk of that money goes to salaries and compensation. Growth and Justice estimates that $1 billion has been cut from the education budgets across the state over the last 10 years since Jesse Ventura became governor. A study by the Minnesota Department of Revenue supports Smith’s claim that the Minnesota tax system has become more regressive over the last decade. The lowest income decile pays an effective tax rate of 14.9% where the top decile only pays 10.3%. If the tax reforms of the past 10 years were rolled back then an additional $2 billion dollars in revenue would be gained. Half of that would lead to the $1 billion proposal for education.

The education spending proposed by Growth and Justice divides into three parts: the early years of infancy through kindergarden and elementary education, higher education preparation in middle and high school, and the launch into life assistance for students moving into post-secondary education. Approximately $400 million would be spent on early intervention, $255 million on school-age intervention, and the final $340 million on the transition to post-secondary education.

For early intervention they propose nurse home visit programs, expanding child care access, social skills training, quality half-day preschool, class size reduction, and intensive focus on early skills acquistion. School age reforms would be more rigorous coursework, intensive tutoring, in- and out-of-school social support like mentoring, college prep curriculums, more parental involvement, and increased student counseling. The transition to post-secondary education would mean an increase in counseling services, teen pregnancy and dropout prevention, and need-based aid for higher education.

I was particularly surprised to hear that Minnesota now has the third lowest number of counselors per high-school student in the nation. I guess things change a lot over time. Overall I thought Mr. Smith gave a reasonable and cogent presentation about the difficulties facing Minnesota education and some of the reasonable reforms that might improve things.

The biggest barrier to change remains Tim Pawlenty and his no-new-taxes pledge. The effective tax rate in Minnesota has declined over the past decade but the economic boom promised by the conservatives has failed to materialize. We know what doesn’t work, now we just need to have the courage to try something different.