School support for culture; nudes in museums

August 31, 2006

One lament I have heard my entire life is that schools “no longer support our culture.”  It’s an interesting complaint, upon analysis.

Most often, in my experience, the complaint comes from rather conservative quarters, often right-wing, and the lament is specific to some part of history that the complainer wants taught differently, or specific to some toleration of music, art, or fashion that the complainer wishes would end.  Around Dallas we have two controversies at the moment.  In one, the Dallas City Council is considering a law banning sagging pants.  In another, a parent has complained that the parent’s child saw a nude at the Dallas Museum of Art.

The two issues may appear unconnected, but they are not, really.  They both revolve around the issue of what culture is, and what culture is valuable enough to pursue, study, and teach in elementary and secondary schools.

The Dallas Morning News sized up the art museum flap, correctly in my view, with an editorial this morning, saying that one should expect to see art when one attends an art museum, and that’s okay. 

It should not surprise anyone that the DMA displays paintings and sculptures that depict the naked human figure. This has been done in Western art since antiquity. This is our cultural heritage. What we have here in this parental complaint is a failure to discriminate between art and pornography.

The distinction is, of course, famously difficult to pin down, but part of a young person’s cultural education is learning to distinguish precisely that difference. For example, the only thing that Michelangelo’s David has in common with a sleazy shot from a porn magazine is that they both depict a naked man. One exalts; the other degrades. Context matters. Artistic intent and execution matter. Using one’s brain and not jerking one’s knee matter.

It is to be expected that some people will not appreciate the distinction. It is also to be expected that educators will firmly and unambiguously defend field trips to art museums, of all places.

It’s not clear where Frisco school officials stand. They should speak up. Over 20,000 Frisco ISD students and their teachers shouldn’t have their artistic and cultural education chilled or constrained by parents who don’t understand the difference between Rodin and raunch – and by a principal too mousy to resist them.

It’s still legal to display the flag of Colorado in a Texas classroom. 

Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Education, Pedagogy, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rote memorization, or killing a child’s potential?

August 18, 2006

Althouse tees off on the content and tone of an article in the New York Times that describes a school in the United States where young boys spend nine hours a day in rote memorization of the Qur’an.

During my law school time our informal study group had one guy who could study the tarnation out of any topic we had.  Tom got his high school education in a Catholic system, and he had four years of Latin.  It wasn’t exactly rote memorization, but it was a lot of work dealing with a system of writing that is difficult to master, at best, and language-logic defying at worst.  In the group, we determined (over a few fermented grain beverages) that this experience had well prepared Tom to deal with the oddities of legal thought.  Of course, it may have been just that Tom had learned to study with all those stern taskmasters who taught the Latin courses.

Readers here know I think school should grab a student’s interest whenever possible to improve the educational value of any topic offered.  Rote memorization has a place — I required history kids to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble to the Constitution last year — but it is a place in a larger menu of educational offerings. 

Howard Gardner claims there are different domains of genius available to everybody.  Of the eight (maybe nine) domains he has identified, how many of them are neglected by pure, rote memorization of an untranslated text? 

Ann Althouse is right.  One question we need to consider is, how many others were outraged by that article in the Times, and for the right reasons?

Update:  P. Z. Myers also found the article’s description of the school troubling.  He gets a lot more traffic than I do — a lot more comments are available there, at Pharyngula, “This is not a school.”

Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Education, First Amendment, Pedagogy, Religious Freedom, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

. . . in which I defend the judiciary against barbaric assault

August 14, 2006

I’ll make this quick (back to the grindstone, you know).

In my immediately previous post I make a minor case that advocacy of intelligent design is the less preferable alternative to understanding evolution, for moral reasons. Advocacy of intelligent design has so farproven incapable of making a case in a straightforward and honest fashion. All cases for intelligent design rest in large part, or completely, in distortions of science and history.  What originall caught my eye and my ire was the mischaracterization of the recent decision in the Pennsylvania intelligent design case. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Current History, Curricula, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Intelligent Design, Law, Public education, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The moral imperative against intelligent design

August 14, 2006

I’m straying only a bit off topic, and only by certain legalistic interpretations. History folks, bear with me.

My complaint about what is called “intelligent design” in biology is the same complaint I have against people who wish to crown Millard Fillmore as a great light for bringing plumbing to the White House over the complaints of health officials — that is, my complaint against those who push H. L. Mencken’s hoax over the facts.

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost listed at great lengths his list of reasons that arguing for science actually promotes intelligent design instead (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). This blog’s response was in two parts, one and two. Other people offered other rebuttals, including notably, P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula, a very good blog that features the hard science of biology and especially evolution.

Joe provided a first affirmative rebuttal here. This post is my reply, on the single point of whether it’s fair to say creationists, IDists, or others who twist the facts and research, are “dishonest.”

The text is below the fold; I left it in remarks at Evangelical Outpost. I have one other observation I’ll make quickly in the next post.

Enjoy, and chime in with your own remarks (I’m headed back to the grindstone). Read the rest of this entry »

23 Comments | Creationism, Current History, Curricula, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Intelligent Design, Public education, Religious Freedom, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sutherland’s “Americana” cartoons

August 13, 2006

I stumbled across Bibi’s Box, a blog that appears to be devoted to finding videos available on the internet. Bibi wrote about John Sutherland, a producer for Walt Disney who struck out on his own in 1944. He became famous, or infamous, for doing cartoons for hire that capitalist enterprises wanted to make available for schools.

Some of us Baby Boomers will recognize almost every one of these films. Film distribution was always problematic back then, before Federal Express or UPS and overnight air delivery to almost anywhere in the world, and back when 16-mm film projectors were often old, cranky monsters that defied the most tech-savvy teachers to make a film dance on a screen. Consequently, to increase the circulation, many of these films also ended up in the afternoon cartoon fests that local television stations ran for “kiddies.”

The images are rich. There are time-bound charicatures of middle-class Americans, and full use of other American iconography. In a 1948 film, “Make Mine Freedom,” Sutherland’s film shows a Member of Congress dressed as a southern politician (though without an accent), the labor representative in denim overalls, the capitalist factory boss with a cigar and morning coat with striped pants, and the farmer in stereotypical straw hat. In a later scene, some of the characters parade in a “Spirit of ’76” fashion, with drum, fife and flag, across the Lincoln Memorial.

Some of the images are corny, but they are rich mines for classroom use, where the images form powerful mnemonic devices for kids who don’t know the history of that era. I have used chunks of “Schoolhouse Rock” for individual study on specific areas — last year I required high school history students to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, and the “Schoolhouse Rock” version helped enormously. Sutherland’s films could be as useful, in certain topics.

In any case, Bibi has links to more than a dozen of Sutherland’s cartoon films.

If you find a good use for one, please let me know.

2 Comments | Cold War, Curricula, Economics, Education, History, History video sources, Lesson plans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Better history books — tell the story!

August 10, 2006

One of my chief complaints about the history textbooks available in Texas is that they are, ultimately, dull. They don’t sing. The narrative quality suffers. To meet Texas standards publishers make sure to pack the chapters with facts and factoids. But students have a difficult time figuring out what the story is, why the story is important, and why they should care. One way I know things are working in my class is when kids tell me “that’s not in the book, and that’s cool” (even though, yes, it is in the book). If the kids think it’s a good story, they let me know — and it sticks with them.

History is where we tell our cultural myths, and I use the word “myth” in the sense that a rhetorician or rhetorical critic would: Those stories around which we build our lives.

I hope to be able to present the Texas State Board of Education with serious criticism of the textbooks in the next round of approvals, to urge them to let the publishers loose to really tell the stories that make up the story of America — knowing about the de Llome letter might be part of an interesting narrative of the Spanish-American War, but the narrative should be the focus, not the letter itself (if you don’t know what that letter is, you’re in good company; it’s an interesting factoid, but not really critical to understanding the war, or the times).

I look around the web to see what other teachers see and think, too. At a blog called In the Trenches of Public Ed., a veteran and probably very good teacher addresses the same issue. Go see.

History is not a collection of dates memorized. History’s value is in the stories, told parable-like, that warn us from future error, or call us to keep on a steady path. George Washington’s story is impressive, for example; it’s more impressive when we recognize and understand that he fashioned his life around that of his hero, Cincinnatus, the Roman general who, given the powers of dictator in 458 B.C., vanquished the threatening armies of the barbarians, and then resigned the dictatorship to return to his plow. That story is not in the textbooks. More the pity.

1 Comment | America's founding, Curricula, Education blogs, History, Public education, State school boards, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Atomic anniversaries

August 7, 2006

This week marks the 61st anniversaries of the U.S. dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).

This is the only event that occasionally causes me to wish for school in early August. Marking the anniversaries in a U.S. history class could be a useful exercise. Texas’ TEKS require students to know a bit about President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb, and especially his reasoning behind the decision. To get there in an orderly fashion, and to keep kids captivated by this most interesting part of recent history, I think a class needs to lay the background with the end of the war in Europe (especially D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge) with troops hoping to go home to the U.S. and being diverted to the Pacific, the background of the U.S.’s “island-hopping” strategy, especially the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the carnage that was required to take the islands, and the background of the Manhattan Project, from Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt through the secret cities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Trinity Project at White Sands, the training of the bombers at Wells Wendover, Nevada, and the World War I service of Harry Truman himself. It’s a fascinating history that, the Texas tests show and my classroom experience confirms, students know very little about.

As with the misinformation on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which I reported earlier today, this history of atom bombs informs us of policy choices available and necessary in our current dealings with North Korea, Iran, Ukraine and Russia, among other nations.

Japanese foundations sponsor trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for U.S. reporters, and there used to be one for high school teachers, too. It’s a history I lived with for a decade trying to get a compensation bill for downwind victims of fallout from our atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada. I wish more people knew the stories.

5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Curricula, Harry Truman, History, Nuclear weapons, Science, TAKS, Technology, TEKS, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah toughens graduation requirements

August 7, 2006

Utah’s State Board of Education voted late last week to toughern the graduation requirements, with 18 state-mandated topics — requiring another year of science, another year of math, and another year of “language arts.” Here’s the story from the August 5 Deseret News.

Michigan recently strengthened graduation requirements, too, as noted in this story from the Macomb Daily.

Missouri joined a number of states (Texas and Utah) that require financial literacy, reported in this story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
[Please send me a note if your state is considering or has recently adopted new graduation standards, to edarrell AT sbcglobal DOT net.]

Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Education, Public education, Science, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Vouchering to Gomorrah

August 5, 2006

Libertarian-bent lawyer Tim Sandefur posts this note at Panda’s Thumb:

Neal McCulskey of the Cato Institute and Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect have a debate going over whether school choice programs would help resolve the evolution/creationism controversy. Here’s McCulskey’s first post, Yglesias’ reply, and McCulskey’s rebuttal.

Vouchers. Parental choice is an issue across the curriculum, but it is especially poignant in sex education, biology, and history. In those three areas there are national movements to direct curricula, some of the movements in each area based on a great deal of misinformation and disinformation.

Read the rest of this entry »

14 Comments | Creationism, Curricula, Education, Geography - Political, Intelligent Design, Public education, Religious Freedom, School vouchers, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

U.S. history required – in college?

August 5, 2006

Third or fourth time is the charm, right?

In Arizona, where the legislature recently decreed a U.S. flag and a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be displayed in all college classrooms, the debate now turns to whether the legislature should require the study of U.S. history by undergraduates. I appears the legislators do not find college kids have enough appreciation for our nation’s history.

I’ll reproduce the entire story out of the Arizona Republic below the fold (Dan Quayle’s family’s newspaper!).

Is it just me, or is it that these pseudo-patriots who don’t think our kids are well-enough indoctrinated always stamp the life out of history when they start these tirades? I have yet to find a law that mandates that history be interesting. Instead we get standards that provide great, boring, history-crushing, mind-and-butt-numbing lists. In short, these requirements tend to make history not worth the study.

And, as with those who celebrate Fillmore’s bringing the bathtub to the White House, the advocates almost always get history wrong. [Millard Fillmore himself, never attended college; he apprenticed first in the cloth business, and then in law.]

Barry Goldwater will be coming out of his grave to stop this silliness. Maybe literally. If such standards don’t make high school students history literate, what makes anyone think the failed methods would work on college students? If the standards do work to make high school kids knowledgeable in history, why would the college standards be necessary?

This controversy smells. It has the earmarks of being one more way to issue diatribes against “librul college professors.” It’s one more way of flogging public education, while refusing to give educators the tools to solve the problems.

Article below the fold; please comment. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | America's founding, Bill of Rights, Curricula, Education, Flag etiquette, History, History Revisionism, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

9/11, opinions, and academic freedom

July 24, 2006

An opinion piece in Sunday’s papers goes to the root of a problem that plagues the teaching of history.

Stanley Fish professes law at Florida International University. In Sunday’s New York Times he offers his views on college professors who indoctrinate their students, as opposed to doctrinaire college professors who teach. Fish draws a careful and reasoned distinction between academic freedom, which he notes is the freedom to study virtually anything and try to bring value to academics with one’s analysis of the subject, and freedom of speech, which in this case includes a freedom for advocacy to indoctrinate students, and a freedom which Mr. Fish claims to be out of line in the classroom.

The article will be available free for a few days at the New York Times’ website.

The case in question involves a teacher with a one-semester contract at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Kevin Barrett teaches “Islam: Religion and Culture.” What makes this course controversial is Mr. Barrett’s saying, on a radio talk show, that he shared with his students his view that the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was perpetrated by the American government, rather than terrorists.

Fish wrote:

Mr. Barrett’s critics argue that academic freedom has limits and should not be invoked to justify the dissemination of lies and fantasies. Mr. Barrett’s supporters (most of whom are not partisans of his conspiracy theory) insist that it is the very point of an academic institution to entertain all points of view, however unpopular. (This was the position taken by the university’s provost, Patrick Farrell, when he ruled on July 10 that Mr. Barrett would be retained: “We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas.”)

Both sides get it wrong. The problem is that each assumes that academic freedom is about protecting the content of a professor’s speech; one side thinks that no content should be ruled out in advance; while the other would draw the line at propositions (like the denial of the Holocaust or the flatness of the world) considered by almost everyone to be crazy or dangerous.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Curricula, Ethics, Pedagogy | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quick! Before this history fades away . . .

July 20, 2006

From the Westfield, Massachusetts Republican, we find a story of history teachers getting first-hand history from a World War II veteran. His story is perhaps a bit unusual because he is African American, and he told the story of the irony of defending freedom in Europe, then returning home to have to fight for his own freedom all over again.

These veterans are dying off — this fellow, Raymond Elliott, is 82. Such a presentation to classes brings back to life the events of World War II, and in this case also sets the stage for the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Brown v. Board, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Little Rock, the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma, the March on Washington, “I Have a Dream,” the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc., etc.).

The full story is below the fold — fair use copy. Do you have such veterans in your town? Do your classes get to meet with them? Are you such a veteran, and do the teachers in your area know you are available? Do you think many of these teachers got his name and address to invite him to their schools?

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Curricula, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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