I get e-mail: PFAW on Texas social studies follies (“please help!”)

April 23, 2010

Jeff Danziger cartoon, for the New York Times Syndicate, on Texas State Board of Education

Jeff Danziger cartoon, for the New York Times Syndicate, on Texas State Board of Education “changes” to Texas social studies texts.

People for the American Way have joined the fight for good education in Texas, pushing better social studies education standards.  The Texas State Board of Education will conduct final votes on social studies standards in May.

Grotesque slashes damaged social studies standards in the last round of amendments.  Conservatives will probably try to keep secret their proposed changes, offering a flurry of last-minute amendments carefully designed to gut serious education and make the standards work as indoctrination for young conservatives instead.

PFAW has good reason to fear.  Here’s their letter. from PFAW President Michael Keegan:

Dear People For Supporter,

Thomas Jefferson banned in Texas schools? Maybe… if the Right has its way. The fight is still on to keep absurd changes out of the Texas social studies textbook standards, with the final standards set to be adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) on May 21.

Right-wing members of the SBOE are using the textbook standards in Texas to rewrite history in a way that could impact students across the U.S., tossing out facts in favor of propaganda like:

  • America is a Christian country, founded on “Biblical principles.”
  • Conservative icons from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority and even Sen. Joseph McCarthy are history’s “good guys,” but progressives and progressive values are at odds with what it means to be “American.”
  • Words like “democracy” (sounds like “Democrat!”) have nothing to do with America — we’re a Republic — In fact, “capitalism” has sort of a negative connotation to some, so they want that word to be universally replaced with “free market.”
  • Some of the major contributions of Thomas Jefferson — arguably America’s greatest thinker — are on the chopping block, as are the contributions of other important figures not favored by the zealots on the Texas State Board of Education, like Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall. (Who’s next? Martin Luther King? FDR?)

Texas is just ground zero for what is clearly a national effort. We need to make sure that whatever standards are adopted in Texas, they do not affect the social studies textbooks used by students in other states.

Please sign our petition to the major textbook publishers urging them to keep Texas standards in Texas and not to publish national textbooks based on Texas’ standards.

The Texas State Board of Education traditionally has tremendous power in determining the content of textbooks not only for Texas students but for students across the U.S. Texas reviews and adapts textbook standards for the major subjects every six years, and because of the size of the state’s market, textbook publishers often print books consistent with the Texas standards. Last year, they attracted national ridicule for trying to inject creationism into science textbooks. This year, they’re voting on social studies standards.

The right-wing majority on the State Board wants indoctrinate Texas students into this new perverse revisionist history. PFAW is supporting our allies on the ground in Texas who are working to make sure students have the chance to learn history as it occurred, not how the Far Right wish it had happened. But we need to do all we can to make sure this is not exported to other states and school districts as well. Help us take extremism out of textbook decision making and let our children learn the truth in the classroom.

Sign our petition to major textbook publishers urging them to keep Texas standards from spreading and not to offer Texas-style textbooks nationally by default.

Thank you for your activism and for your continued support of PFAW.

— Michael B. Keegan, President

Pass the word, will you?

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1 Comment | Astrobiology, Economics, Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History: May 15, 1953 and the mysteries of life’s beginnings

May 15, 2009

May 15, 1953, saw the publication in Science of Stanley Miller’s dramatic experiment showing that essential chemicals of life rise spontaneously.

The late Prof. Stanley Miller. ISSOL photo

The late Prof. Stanley Miller. ISSOL photo

As usual, the real history is better and much more serendipitous than anyone could imagine in a fictional account; here’s an account from the International Astrobiology Society (ISSOL), from their 2003 celebration of the 50th anniversary of Miller’s paper’s publication:

The University of Chicago Chemistry Department seminars were held on Mondays in Kent Hall, an old building where the floors creaked and there was a smell of dust and mildew. Only the most distinguished scientists were invited to speak at this seminar, many had Nobel prizes or were to receive one, and the list included Franck, Urey, Calvin, Seaborg, Eigen, Libby and Taube.

But this day was different because a second year graduate student, Stanley Lloyd Miller, was speaking, and the room was full because the word had spread that something important was to be presented. In addition to the famous scientists and less famous but equally high-powered scientists was an undergraduate, Carl Sagan attending his first chemistry seminar. The topic was the synthesis of important biological compounds, using conditions thought to have existed on the primitive Earth.

Miller reported that by sending repeated electric sparks through a sealed flask containing a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor, he had made some of the amino acids found in proteins. Perhaps, he suggested, this was how organic compounds were made on the ancient Earth before life existed.

While Miller was confident of his results, the rows of famous faces in his audience were, to say the least, intimidating. He was bombarded with questions. Were the analyses done correctly? Could there have been contamination? After the event, Miller thought that the questions had been constructive, but since the results were hard to believe, they had simply wanted to ensure that he had not made some mistake. However, Carl Sagan thought that Miller’s inquisitors seemed to be picky and did not appreciate the significance of the experiment. Even the relevance of Miller’s results to the origin of life were questioned. When someone asked Miller how he could really be sure this kind of process actually took place on the primitive Earth, Nobel Laureate Harold Urey, Miller’s research advisor, immediately interrupted, replying, “If God did not do it this way, then he missed a good bet.” The seminar ended amid the laughter, and the attendees filed out with some making complimentary remarks to Miller. Miller changed clothes, went back to the lab and started a paper chromatography run.

The events leading up to this dramatic seminar began two years earlier in October, 1951 when Urey presented the Chemistry Department seminar on the origin of the Solar system. In addition to the usual high powered scientists, the audience had contained the then first year graduate student, Stanley Miller.

Read “Prebiotic Soup—Revisiting the Miller Experiment” by Jeffrey Bada and Antonio Lazcano published in Science300 (2003) 745-726 in full text or as a PDF.

This is an abridged version of the Stanley Miller’s 70th Birthday published in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 30: 107-112, 2000 by Jeffrey Bada and Antonio Lazcano and The Spark of Life – Darwin and the Primeval Soup by Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, Perseus Books, 2000.

More than 50 years ago scientists demonstrated that basic chemicals of life, thought previously by some to be too complex to arise naturally, could occur in nature spontaneously. Much of the misunderstanding and crank science behind creationism is devoted to hiding these facts.

Lift a glass to Stanley Miller and his experiment today, a toast to learning, a toast to the truth.

More Resources:

1 Comment | A Good Story, Astrobiology, Biography, Biology, Evolution, History, History images, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell