Feynman, on the inconceivable nature of nature

August 27, 2007

NOVA had a couple of good programs on Richard Feynman that I wish I had — it had never occurred to me to look at YouTube to see what people might have uploaded.

I ran into this one:

Richard Feynman struck my consciousness with the publication of his quite humorous autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. I thought it was a wonderful book, full of good character portraits of scientists as I saw them in my undergraduate days, only more famous ones. He followed that with What Do You Care What Other People Think?

By then, of course, Feynman was one of my heroes. His stories are useful in dozens of situations — his story of joining the samba bands in Rio testify to the joy of living, and the need for doing new things. Brazil was also the place he confronted the dangers of rote learning, when students could work equations perfectly for examples in the book — which they had memorized — but they couldn’t understand real world applications, such as describing how the sunlight coming off the ocean at Ipanema was so beautiful.

Feynman wrote about creationism, and about the dangers of voodoo science, in his now-famous essay on “Cargo cult science” — it’s so famous one has difficulty tracking down the facts to confirm the story.

Feynman’s stories of his wife, and her illness, and his love for her, were also great inspirations. Romance always gets me.

I failed to track him closely enough. During the run of the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, we had the misfortune of having scheduled a hearing in Orlando on January 30 (or maybe 29), 1986. We had hoped that the coincidental launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28 might boost our press response. Of course, the Challenger exploded. Our hearing went on as planned (we had a tough schedule to meet). The disaster affected our staff a lot, those who were in Florida, and the rest of us in Washington where many of us had been on the phone to Florida when the disaster occurred.

Feynman’s appointment to the commission studying the disaster was a brilliant move, I thought. Our schedule, unfortunately, kept me tied up on almost every day the Challenger commission met. So I never did walk the three blocks down the street to meet Feynman, thinking there would be other opportunities. He was already fatally ill. He died on February 15, 1988. I missed a chance of a lifetime.

We still have Feynman’s writings. We read the book aloud to our kids when they were younger. James, our youngest and a senior this year, read Surely You’re Joking again this summer, sort of a warmup to AP physics and his search for a college.

And we still have audio and video. Remembering Feynman makes even the most avidly atheist hope for an afterlife, just to get a chance to hear Feynman explain what life was really all about, and how the universe really works.

Other notes:

Tip of the old scrub brush to Charismatic Megafauna.

7 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Biography, Books, Education, Heroes, History, History video sources, Manhattan Project, Reason, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Spanking fetish

August 27, 2007

Start of the new school year, hits on the major post I did on spanking in schools pick up a little. Interest runs in waves, roughly with the dates of new semesters, or with a proposal to ban it altogether.

One question I get asked occasionally in e-mail is, who supports spanking? Apart from the one school district named in the article I cited in the earlier post, there is a core of supporters who now claim Biblical authority for spanking. It’s a move among religionists, as odd as any other religion-based behavior I can think of.

No kidding. Notice there are multiple parts to that topic on that blog.

It’s the comments that creep me out. These people treat spanking as a fetish. (See Frank’s comments here, or this one, showing it’s a movement (or cult).

What would Jesus use to strike a child? The question itself is repugnant.

2 Comments | Corporal punishment, Education, School discipline | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas education board opposes intelligent design

August 24, 2007

Front page headline in the Dallas Morning News this morning: “Intelligent design? Ed board opposed.“

And the subhead: “Even creationists say theory doesn’t belong in class with evolution.”

Remember, this is the state school board that is dominated by creationists, and whose chair, appointed just about a month ago, is the famous creationist dentist Dr. Don McLeroy. Just what is going on? According to the article by Terrence Stutz:

Interviews with 11 of the 15 members of the board – including seven Republicans and four Democrats – found little support for requiring that intelligent design be taught in biology and other science classes. Only one board member said she was open to the idea of placing the theory into the curriculum standards.

“Creationism and intelligent design don’t belong in our science classes,” said Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, who described himself as a creationist. “Anything taught in science has to have consensus in the science community – and intelligent design does not.”

Mr. McLeroy, R-College Station, noted that the current curriculum requires that evolution be taught in high school biology classes, and he has no desire to change that standard.

“When it comes to evolution, I am totally content with the current standard,” he said, adding that his dissatisfaction with current biology textbooks is that they don’t cover the weaknesses of the theory of evolution.

Really noteworthy:

First, McLeroy chooses to act as a more of a statesman than he has in the past — this is good. Chairing a board like this is an important job. Such leadership positions require people to rise above their own partisan views on some issues. McLeroy has demonstrated such a willingness.

But, second, and important: McLeroy uses the campaign line of the Discovery Institute and all political activists against evolution and science: “Cover the weaknesses of the theory of evolution.” That’s a line invented by Jonathan Wells, the great prevaricator ID advocate, and what it means to him is fuzz up the facts, fog the books and the debate to the point that learning actual science and what the actual theories of evolution are will be impossible.

“Teach the weaknesses of evolution” should be heard as “keep the kids ignorant of the real science.”

Today’s article holds a spark for the fire of hope, and a gallon of cold water on the idea that the board will strongly support science.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Education, Religion, Science, Science and faith, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dreaming: Ideal set of classroom technology

August 19, 2007

What would your ideal classroom have in it, especially with regard to technology? Brian Smith wants you to tell him what you need, and what you want, and what you dream about — here, and here.

Pushing the corporation’s training into the 21st century, almost two decades ago for AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines and SABRE (which has been split off subsequently), a group of us in the future-looking department benchmarked corporate and academic training and education. One of our trips took us to IBM’s training center in White Plains, New York — IBM then being considered rather the leader in corporate training and education (running neck and neck with Arthur Andersen; tempus fugit, o tempora, o mores).

IBM put us through a wringer designed to make us think hard. For one example, they asked us why we weren’t benchmarking our own pilot training, which they had benchmarked a few years earlier. Pilot training at airlines in the U.S. was the best in the world, one fellow noted: You hire people who already know how to do the job well, and you have the pick of the best; you train them in simulators and in an intense classroom situations; then when they go to the job, they have trained people behind them to make sure they do it all right; then you call them back every year to refresh with the latest technologies. (Most other training at airlines still is not up to the pilot training standards, which is good for safety as far as pilots are concerned; aircraft mainenance is close behind. One gets an appreciation for true concern about safety when studying that process. But I digress.)

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Listen to a voice of experience

August 14, 2007

Quoting from Second Drafts, verbatim:

My mother, Charlotte, just retired in May after 30+ years teaching high school English. As this will be her first August without having to prep for school, I thought I’d better ask for her top ten teaching suggestions before she forgot them all. Here’s what she emailed me:

  1. Establish a seating chart at the beginning, but allow time for schedule changes. Some of my colleagues would allow students to sit where they wanted, and they all would end up at the back of the room. I always wanted them under my nose!
  2. Greet students cheerfully. You may be the only one to do this in their day.
  3. Have high expectations, but be realistic.
  4. Dress professionally, even though others don’t.
  5. Be alert to students whose eyes are focused on their laps – they’re probably texting!
  6. You gotta have a gimmick – a daily trivia question written on the board works well here. I always used the question cards from the Trivial Pursuit game. The first person to answer as the students come into the room gets a piece of peppermint candy, which enhances higher level thinking skills.
  7. Surprise the kids once in a while by diverting from the syllabus (Thoreau would love you for this).
  8. Be consistent in routine and discipline.
  9. Take care of discipline problems yourself, as much as you can.
  10. Be real and enjoy your students.

School starts tomorrow. Anybody else got any counsel you’d like to share?

3 Comments | Classroom management, Education, Harry Wong, School discipline, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher pay, Teacher unions — What teacher would switch places with Richard Cohen?

August 14, 2007

Richard Cohen, whom I regarded a good columnist when we lived in Washington, D.C., had made an odd turn in the past decade or so. Where normally he’d stand up for public institutions and the people who run them, he just sounds cranky lately. In short, he’s turned into a person who likes Bush Republicans. Oh, my, it erupted in his recent column which is just grousing about how much education costs in the District of Columbia, with an ambiguous, implicit claim that maybe there’s too much money going into education there.

(Well, maybe too much for the results gotten compared with a few suburban districts; not enough to boost performance on the tests.)

Jason Rosenhouse at Evolutionblog Fisks the column, Fisks Cohen, and generally supports teachers — it’s worth a read.

It’s worth a read especially if you’re one of those who, like Richard Cohen, think we should suppress the pay for teachers until they improve, ignoring all the lessons you might ever have learned about getting what you pay for, and about the economics of hiring the best, the brightest, or just the heroes necessary to make a change. Here’s part of Rosenhouse’s commentary:

But that is not the main subject of this post. Instead it’s that gratuitous slap at the unions that struck me. Cohen, like a trained seal, has learned that mindlessly bashing teacher’s unions will never get you into trouble. That is why he feels no need to provide any specifics about what, exactly, the unions are doing wrong. Instead, when it comes time to reveal those subtleties of the education problem about which Democrats need to be instructed, Cohen only produces this:

Only one candidate, Barack Obama, suggested that maybe money was not all that was lacking when it comes to educating America’s poor and minority children. Parents had a role to play, too. “It is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African American and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems we face,” he said. What? It’s not just a question of funding?

Parents! Of course! How could those money grubbing teacher’s unions and their slavish Democratic puppets have overlooked such a thing? All this focus on making sure schools have the funds to heat their buildings in the winter and patch the roof when it leaks, this crazy idea that a school using twenty year old textbooks needs money if they are to procure new ones or that science labs are not exactly inexpensive, and they simply overlooked that parents have a role to play in their children’s education. One can only hope the Democrat’s pay attention to someone as perceptive as Cohen.

::heavy sigh::

The U.S. is not alone.  Australia has some teacher pay and facility issues, too, according to Matt’s Notepad.  Another interesting read.

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Education spending, Parents, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A religious bias against good higher education — in theology!

August 10, 2007

Some religious primary and secondary schools stand on the same, treacherous ground when it comes to curricula which deserve challenging. Castle Hills First Baptist School is not the only educational institution damning children with fool ideas.

Douglas Groothuis teaches at Denver Seminary. In his blog, Constructive Curmudgeon, he lists a set of “imperatives” that he presents annually to his class in “Christian Ethics and Modern Culture.”

Despite his imperative #9:

9. The biblical concept of truth is that a true statement corresponds with or matches objective reality. While human knowing is corrupted by sin, knowledge of the things that matters most—divine and human—is possible, desirable, and pertinent.

Groothuis continues to support and defend intelligent design, a position I find both contrary to his imperative #9, and unethical for anyone, especially Christians, in imperative #17:

17. The Intelligent Design movement is thrusting a wedge between empirical science and philosophical materialism such that the evidence for design in nature may emerge apart from dogmatic and a priori restrictions. Learn about, teach about, and support this movement. See William Dembski, The Design Revolution (IVP, 2004).

Groothuis is a genuine fan of Dembski and Jonathan Wells and all the folderol they can produce. Urging students who claim to be Christian to promote the falsehoods of intelligent design is not a major sin; it’s not so severe as coaching them on racism, genocide, murder, sexism, or disowning the poor. I fear, however, it is the seed of those greater sins. (Here’s a clue: Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) is not known for high standards on science, nor on theology, to some of us; but they are probably more reputable than Regnery publishing.) Intelligent design ideas trend to the fantastic, undesirable, and not relevant.

Shakespeare put the words in Hamlet’s mouth; if only philosophers today would pay them more attention:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

More things like: science, biology, real facts, and honesty and good faith.

What is it about philosophers (Dembski, Groothuis, others at DI)? Are they competing to become to literature and social sciences what engineers are to the sciences, with regard to creationism?

Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Education, Ethics, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: The Living Classroom

August 10, 2007

Typewriter donated by Anya to the Living Classroom, at the Community School of West Seattle, WashingtonSlight deviation from my usual practice of featuring the technological marvel of the writing machine of a well-known writer — these writers are not yet well known.

Someone brought in a vintage Smith-Corona typewriter to one of my favorite classrooms, at the Community School in West Seattle. Photographic evidence shows the machine is still in good working order (better than my Royal), and the students have already figured out how to make it work (see photo below).

My typing career began with my mother’s and father’s Royal, similar to the one I now own. It got me to ninth grade with no problems. I took typing classes on the classic, newsroom Underwoods, about the time that the IBM Selectric was making in-roads. In my senior year of high school I got an Underwood portable — brother Dwight was selling for Underwood-Olivetti. Later I got an old, junked Olivetti electric that was gray, would do line-and-a-half as well as double spacing, and which had a pitch somewhere between 10 and 12 pica. It was heavy and industrial, but the typeface was so readable that it was popular with my debater colleagues — we used to carry the machine with us to tournaments after I joined the college debate squad.

In my junior year at the University of Utah, on a Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Memorial scholarship from IBM, I purchased a Correcting Selectric II (no, IBM offered no discount). About 20 years later, tired of the massive repair bills and hoping word processors would forever banish it from our house, my wife donated that typewriter to the Salvation Army. I found another at a garage sale, and got it for $10.00. The mechanism on that one sprang out of the case about a year later, and we eventually donated it, too.

Perry W. Buffington found the Royal that graces my home office now, largely unused but full of sentiment. (I think Buff wanted me to write more.)

These kids in Washington — they don’t know the value of the tool they have. They can’t know.  Lucky kids.

Paper typed in the Living Classroom

Photo from the Living Classroom; work product from a student.

4 Comments | Brain learning, Classroom technology, Education, Pedagogy, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A religious bias against good education?

August 8, 2007

One might be too stunned to shake one’s head; this is a description for a high school calculus course:

CALCULUS
Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.

No, I’m not kidding. It’s from Castle Hills First Baptist School in San Antonio, Texas.

The scientist who sent me the link called it “God’s math.” Architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” But he didn’t mean that math should be taught as anything other than mathematics. He didn’t mean that any religion should be inserted into math classes — and frankly, that’s a little worrying to me. I speak regularly with theologians who read the same text and come up with radically different descriptions of what it means, sometimes diametrically opposite descriptions.

The social studies curricula are more troubling. What is described is at best second-rate course work. One hopes that the teachers teach the material instead of these descriptions:

SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY

WORLD HISTORY I
NINTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations, Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into studies of ancient civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.

WORLD HISTORY II
TENTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations since the Reformation. Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into the studies of modern civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.


AMERICAN HISTORY
ELEVENTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the history of our country beginning with the Civil War with a biblically integrated filter as they examine the political, social, and economic perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on the major wars, the industrial revolution, and the settlement of the frontier, requiring students to critically analyze the cause and effect relationships of events in history.

GOVERNMENT/CIVICS
TWELFTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the foundational documents of our founding Fathers built upon as they formulated the ideals upon which our country was established. Such documents include: The Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Mayflower Compact. Students are equipped with an understanding of the basic principles contained in these documents, and are able to identify their dependence upon biblical and Reformation principles, leading them to an understanding why the American system is meant for a religious people.

ECONOMICS/FREE ENTERPRISE
TWELFTH GRADE

Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will gain an understanding of the workings of economic systems, being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent in capitalism (Deuteronomy 8, 15, 28, Leviticus 25), and the reasons for its superiority to the models of communism and socialism (Ezekiel 46:18).

The last description there, for economics, might lead one to understand this school ignores most of the lessons of Jesus, and especially the stories of the disciples in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion as described in Acts 2. Not only are the courses described inadequate (we hope the teachers teach the state standards instead, at least), where scripture is specifically mentioned, they appear to be tortured to fit the agenda.

Then comes the choker:

SCIENCE

BIOLOGY

Students will study the physical life of God’s creation. They will continue to develop skills in the use of the scientific method. The students will learn methods and techniques of scientific study, general attributes of the cell and its processes, characteristics of the wide spectrum of living organisms, the classification, similarities and differences of the five kingdoms, evolutionary models and the creation model, the mechanics of inheritance, disease and disorders, and the workings of the human body. Students will gain experience in manipulating the conditions of a laboratory investigation and in evaluating the applications of biological principles in everyday life.

There is no “creation model” that is scientific, nor is there one that conflicts with evolution and is also Biblical. What, in God’s name, are they teaching?

CHFB School was established over 25 years ago, and claims to have more than 300 students enrolled, K-12. Surely there is a track record to look at.

Anybody know what the actual curricula look like at this school? Are there any measures to suggest the school teaches real subjects instead of what is described?

What was the Texas legislature thinking when they authorized Bible classes? Isn’t this bad enough as it is?

____________________

Update: See parent and student comments and ratings of the school, here.

____________________

Update, August 11:  Blogs4Brownback endorses the curriculum — if you do not fully realize the significance of that particular endorsement, study this post, and this one.  Parody?  I asked Brownback’s campaign about the site — they have not disowned it.  As Dave Barry often wrote, I could not make this stuff up.

72 Comments | Curricula, Economics, Education, History, History Revisionism, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Freakonomics moved

August 8, 2007

Stephen J. Dubner talks about the move of the blog to the New York Times site.  The old Freakonomics site still works, is revised, and links to the new blog home.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Lesson plans, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oliver W. Hill, history maker, 100

August 6, 2007

Oliver W. Hill in 1999, when he was 92; lawyer in Brown v. Board case

Literally while writing the previous post about the importance of recording history before the witnesses leave us, I heard on KERA-FM, NPR reporter Juan Williams’ intimate, detailed and stirring story about Oliver W. Hill, one of the lawyers who brought one of the five cases that resulted in the historic 1954 reversal of U.S. law, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (347 U.S. 483).

Oliver W. Hill died Sunday, in Richmond, Virginia. He was 100.

In 1940, Mr. Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction.

A lawsuit argued by Mr. Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.

That case from Farmville offers students a more personal view of their own power in life. The case resulted from a student-led demonstration at Moton High School in Farmville. Moton was an all-black school, with facilities amazingly inferior to the new white high school in Farmville — no indoor plumbing, for example. While the Virginia NAACP failed at several similar cases earlier, and while the organization had a policy of taking no more school desegregation cases, the students’ earnestness and sincerity swayed Oliver Hill to try one more time:

On May 23, 1951, a NAACP lawyer filed suit in the federal district court in Richmond, VA, on behalf of 117 Moton High School, Prince Edward County, VA, students and their parents. The first plaintiff listed was Dorothy Davis, a 14-year old ninth grader; the case was titled Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et. al. It asked that the state law requiring segregated schools in Virginia be struck down.

Davis was consolidated with four other cases, from the District of Columbia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Brown from Kansas; it was argued in 1953, but the Court deadlocked on a decision. When Chief Justice Arthur Vinson died and was replaced by the (hoped-to-be) conservative Chief Justice Earl Warren, Warren got the Court to re-hear the case. Because he thought it was such an important case in education, Warren worked to get a solid majority. The Court which was deadlocked late in 1953, in May 1954 issued the Brown decision unanimously, overturning the separate-but-equal rule from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (167 U.S. 537).

Brown was the big boulder whose rolling off the hill of segregation gave power to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That decision and the horrible murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 inspired civil rights worker Rosa Parks to take a stand, and take a seat for human rights on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December of 1955, which led to the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by the new preacher in town, a young man named Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Supreme Court again chose civil rights over segregation in the bus case, the wake of the great ship of history clearly showed a change in course.

Oliver Hill was there, one of the navigators of that ship of history.

1 Comment | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

U.S. education: Old dogs, new tricks, no problem

July 31, 2007

David Parker notes this wonderful event.  It makes me hopeful for the nation, really.

David:  Did you ask the guy if your students can interview him?

1 Comment | Capturing history, Current History, Education, Education success, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Heroes, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Leo Rosten on Adam Smith

July 29, 2007

Leo Rosten writes clearly, concisely, and often with great humor. Consequently, his essays make good fodder for classroom use.

British bank note featuring Adam Smith

Rosten is probably most famous for the introduction he once gave to the comedian W. C. Fields, a spur-of-the-moment bon mots that so exactly described Fields comedian persona that it is often listed as a line Fields himself wrote: “Any man who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad.”

That story also tells us that Rosten looks at Adam Smith coolly, through no rose-colored glass.

The Adam Smith Institute carries Rosten’s essay on Smith in its entirety. Go read it:

It is a clumsy, sprawling, elephantine book. The facts are suffocating, the digressions interminable, the pace as maddening as the title is uninviting: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. But it is one of the towering achievements of the human mind: a masterwork of observation and analysis, of ingenious correlations, inspired theorizings, and the most persistent and powerful cerebration. Delightful ironies break through its stodgy surface:

“The late resolution of the Quakers [to free] their Negro slaves may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great …”

“The chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.”

“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising customers [is] unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.”

So comprehensive is its range, so perceptive its probings, that it can dance, within one conceptual scheme, from the diamond mines of Golconda to the price of Chinese silver in Peru; from the fisheries of Holland to the plight of Irish prostitutes in London. It links a thousand apparently unrelated oddities into unexpected chains of consequence. And the brilliance of its intelligence “lights up the mosaic of detail,” says Schumpeter, “heating the facts until they glow.” Sometimes.

Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776 – not as a textbook, but as a polemical cannon aimed at governments that were subsidizing and protecting their merchants, their farmers, their manufacturers, against “unfair” competition, at home or from imports. Smith set out to demolish the mercantilist theory from which those politics flowed. He challenged the powerful interests who were profiting from unfree markets, collusive prices, tariffs and subsidies, and obsolete ways of producing things.

[More at the site of the Adam Smith Institute, including the continuation of this essay.]

Leo Rosten, publicity shot

Leo Rosten

1 Comment | 1776, Adam Smith, DBQ sources, Economics, Education, Free market economics, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Historic documents, History, Quotes, Reason | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Textbook critic Norma Gabler, 84

July 26, 2007

Appropriate to a discussion of textbook approvals and the Texas State Board of Education comes this news: Norma Gabler died in Phoenix, Sunday. She was 84.

Norma and her husband Mel started the practice of nit-picking textbooks during the approval process, always pushing to get a Christian view inserted into books, especially science and history books. Eventually they founded a non-profit group to criticize texts, Education Research Associates, based in Longview, Texas. Despite the deaths of both Gablers, the non-profit will continue.

Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science alerted me in an e-mail. The Longview News-Journal carried the news of Mrs. Gabler’s death:

The 84-year-old Longview resident died Sunday in Phoenix, Ariz., after serving for decades as the public face of an effort to bolster both accuracy and conservative beliefs in public school textbooks. She and her husband, Mel, who died in 2004, began their work in 1961 in Hawkins after finding errors in a textbook of one of their sons.

They became nationally famous, and a Rice University professor who was head of the Texas Council for Science Education in 1982 said the Gablers were “the most effective textbook censors in the country.”

They founded the Longview-based nonprofit organization Educational Research Analysts, which describes itself as a conservative Christian organization.

Educational Research Analysts is dedicated to finding factual errors in textbooks, as well as to pointing out “censorship of conservative political or social views,” said Neal Frey, president of the organization who worked with the Gablers since 1982. The group’s work will continue, he said.

The Gablers’ work, he said, had national impact because Texas is such a large buyer of textbooks; what is approved here is often repeated nationally by publishers.

Update, August 2, 2007: Afarensis points us to NPR, who seem to speak admiringly of the dead. Awfully polite of them to do so, unless it’s getting in the way of accuracy.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Education, Education quality, History, History Revisionism, Texas, Texas history, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Condolences pour in: New chair at Texas State Board of Education

July 26, 2007

Some people would say the Texas State Board of Education is “troubled,” or maybe even (that journalistic clichéd kiss of death) “besieged.”

The agency it oversees, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), has a director whose term is expired, the agency has taken hits from almost every daily newspaper in Texas for cheating scandals on the state achievement tests which have been roundly ignored by the agency. The legislature voted to eliminate the Board’s showpiece tests, substituting tests that will have TEA personnel scrambling to make ready, and the legislators didn’t send enough money to buy all the textbooks the agency is obligated to purchase under the Texas Constitution. Meanwhile, Texas kids fall farther behind kids in other states. One member of the board is on the lam after refusing to answer a subpoena to a grand jury investigating whether he actually resides in the district he represents as required by law (he keeps a cot near his office in the district, but spends most time at his farm, outside his district — the farm where he claims residency for homestead purposes under Texas property tax law). Statistics out last week show Texas leads the nation in pregnancies among kids of school age, and a study shows that abstinence-only programs, pushed by TEA, are to blame for high out-of-wedlock-teen pregnancy rates.

But that’s just “business as usual” for the top education agency in Texas for most of the last decade or so. Many Texans might have been disappointed, but none were surprised when Gov. Rick Perry appointed Bryan, Texas, dentist Don McLeroy to be chairman of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).

McLeroy’s politics sometimes appear to the right of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s education policies for the state of Georgia in 1864. McLeroy stared at Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and a letter from four other Texas Nobel winners in biological sciences, all of them urging high academic standards for Texas students, and McLeroy voted instead against including evolution in textbooks, in 2003, and for including language pushing intelligent design. Someone, often alleged to be McLeroy, then telephoned publishers and warned them to tone down evolution and play up intelligent design in a fit of sore losership (no investigation was ever conducted). A “great quote” at McLeroy’s website explains (from Paul Johnson, End of Intellectuals):

The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that scepticism.

Condolence notes stream into Texas from scientists and educators. P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula, Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, the guys at DefConBlog, and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, all cry the blues, and for good reason (read their accounts!).

The Dallas Morning News diplomatically expressed hope that McLeroy might rise above petty and partisan politics at a crucial time for education in Texas, in an editorial published over the weekend: [see below the fold]

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1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, State school boards, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Texas Lege, Textbook Selection | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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