April 23, 2010
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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Astrobiology, Economics, Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Curriculum, Economics, Education, geography, History, People for the American Way, Politics, Social Studies, state board of education, TEKS, Texas | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
April 11, 2010
Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Toles in the Washington Post, March 19, 2010
It’s pretty embarrassing when the State Board of Education’s actions leave Texas open to jokes about whether Texans remember the Alamo. Remembering the Alamo is as much a Texas monument or icon as anything else — maybe moreso.
Tom Toles demonstrates why Texas should be embarrassed by the Texas State Board of Education’s work on social studies standards.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
March 31, 2010
Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle on Texas SBOE social studies standards, in 2009
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2 Comments | Accuracy, Cartoons, Economics, Education, Education quality, History, Political cartoons, Politics, Separation of church and state, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Cartoons, Education, education standards, History, Houston Chronicle, Nick Anderson, Political cartoons, Politics, Social Studies, state board of education, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 19, 2010
Tony Whitson from Curricublog made the killing observation:
BookTV [C-SPAN] this weekend has Steve Forbes talking about his new book,
“How Capitalism Will Save Us.”
With these new Social Studies TEKS, TX students won’t know what such a
book is about.
Small bit of humor from a truly sad situation. One of the leaders of the Texas State Soviet of Education defended the evisceration and defenestration of social studies standards saying they didn’t need to listen to liberal college professors.
In economics, the professor was a conservative, well-respected economics professor from Texas A&M University, one of the most conservative state universities in the nation (with a Corps of Cadets numbering in the thousands and tradition deeper than Palo Duro Canyon and broader than the Gulf of Mexico). Calling these people “liberal” is tantamount to complaining about the communism espoused by Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower — that is, it demonstrates a divorce from reality and rationality.
In the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge problem, but it’s more than a trifle. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully comprehend market economics in the U.S. without understanding what capitalism is, and how it works. Teachers will be left to find their own materials to explain “free enterprise” and, if the students ever make it into a real economics course in college, they will discover “free enterprise” is a quaint, political term that is not discussed in serious economics circles. Texas students will, once again, be pushed to the hindmost by Don McLeroy’s odd views of America and what he doesn’t want Americans to know.
For example, look at the Council for Economic Education — while “capitalism” is not the only word they use for market-based economies, you’ll have a tougher time finding any definition of “free enterprise.” Or, more telling, look at the Advanced Placement courses, or the International Baccalaureate courses. AP and IB courses are the most academically rigorous courses offered in American high schools. The Texas TEKS step away from such rigor, however (while the Texas Education Agency rides Texas schools to add rigor — go figure). IB courses talk a lot about enterprise, but they don’t censor “capitalism,” nor do they pretend it’s not an important concept.
At the very conservative and very good Library of Economics and Liberty (which every social studies teacher should have bookmarked and should use extensively), a search for “free enterprise” produces 77 entries (today). “Capitalism” produces almost ten times as much, with more than 750 listings.
Which phrase do you think is more useful in studying American economics, history and politics?
Teachers will deal with it. It’s one more hurdle to overcome on the path to trying to educate Texas students. It’s one more roadblock to their learning what they need to keep the freedom in America.
Capitalism - Warren Buffett - BusinessWeek image
Free Enterprise - Bernie Madoff
The real difference? Literature on capitalism frequently address the issue of moral investments, and the need for some regulation to bolster the Invisible Hand in producing discipline to steer markets from immoral and harmful investments. The essential history politics economic question of the 20th and 21st centuries is, can economic freedom exist without political freedom, and which one is more crucial to the other? We know from every period of chaos in history when governments did not function well, but bandits did, that free enterprise can exist without either political freedom or economic freedom. I think of it like this:
Capitalism
|
Free Enterprise
|
| Adam Smith |
Blackbeard the Pirate |
| Warren Buffett |
Bernie Madoff |
| Investing |
Spending |
| Building institutions |
Taking profits |
| Retail |
Robbery |
| Wholesale |
Extortion |
| Save for a rainy day |
debt-equity swap |
| Antitrust enforcement to keep markets fair |
Don’t get caught, hope for acquittal |
| Milton Friedman |
P. T. Barnum |
| Ludwig von Mises |
Charles Ponzi |
| Friedrich von Hayek |
Richard Cheney, “deficits don’t matter” |
| Paul Krugman |
Kato Kaelin |
| Stockholders |
Victims and suckers |
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Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economics, Education, Education reform, Freedom - Economic, History, Rampant stupidity, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Capitalism, Economics, Free Enterprise, Rampant stupidity, Social Studies, Texas, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 11, 2010
Texas Tribune quickly establishes itself as a Really Useful journal on Texas politics, especially with features like this summary of the proposed Texas social studies standards, with comments on changes and the history of the changes.
For example, explaining an insulting cut of Texas and African American heroes, Texas Tribune explains:
Tuskegee Airman Commander dumped: Board member McLeroy made the motion to pull Oveta Culp Hobby and Benjamin O. Davis from this standard. Hobby — a Houston newspaper publisher, the director the federal health department in the 1950s, and the wife of Texas Governor William P. Hobby — shows up elsewhere, in the 7th grade curriculum. Davis, however, does not. Davis was the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force and the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen in the World War II. The board did insert a phrase on the “contributions of the Tuskegee Airman” in the next section.
Straightforward explanation. If it raises your ire, it’s not because the writing is inflammatory, but because the facts are so clearly presented.
Tip of the old scrub brush to the Texas Freedom Network and their e-mail alerts.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
March 4, 2010
Were I to advise Diane Ravitch right now, I’d tell her to change all her computer passwords and redouble the security on her servers. Why? After what happened to the scientists who study global warming, I expect many of the same wackoes are working right now to get her e-mails, knowing that the mere act of stealing them will be enough to indict her change of heart on education in America.
It’s much the same mob crowd in both cases. [I’m hopeful it’s not a mob.]
Dr. Ravitch thinks big thoughts about education. She stands in the vanguard of those people who are both academically astute in education, and who can make a case that appeals to policy makers. Working under Checker Finn at the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement, we quickly got familiar with Ravitch’s works and views. Finn and Ravitch, good friends and like-minded in education issues, were the running backs and sticky-handed receivers for any conservative education quarterback, back in the Day.
Finn was Assistant Secretary of Education for Research under Bill Bennett. Ravitch succeeded Finn, under Lamar Alexander. While Bennett and Alexander took troubling turns to the right, and Finn stayed much where he was, Ravitch has been looking hard at what’s working in schools today.
Ravitch doesn’t like the conservative revolution’s results in education. She’s changed her views. Says one of the better stories about her changing views, in The New York Times:
Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.
“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ ” Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.
This is big stuff, and good news to teachers who, since I was at Education in 1987, have been telling policy makers the same things Ravitch is saying now.
David Gardner and Milton Goldberg wrote in the report of the Excellence in Education Commission in 1983 that America faces a “rising tide of mediocrity” because of bad decisions. That’s true of much education reform today, too.
Gardner and Goldberg also said that, had a foreign nation done that damage to us, we’d regard it as an act of war.
Maybe Ravitch’s turn can help mediate an end to the Right’s War on Education and pogroms against teachers.
Here in Texas the conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education didn’t like Ravitch’s views when she was in the conservative camp, so Texas has started, finally, to vote out commissioners who don’t get it, who prefer a state of war on Texas’s children to promoting public education
Let’s hope more people listen to Ravitch now.
More:
Be sure to listen to the NPR interview from Morning Edition, yesterday (you can read it, too).
And, in next Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, a story about how to build a better teacher; do you know the difference between testing and teaching?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
January 24, 2010
Every Texas school kid learns that the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 created one of the great turning points in American history. Parts or all of 15 different states came out of the land acquired from Napoleon in that deal. Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery spent more than two years mapping the newly-acquired territory, and didn’t really scratch the surface of the riches to be found.
Why was Napoleon so willing to deal Louisiana, so cheaply?
What else happened in 1803? Haiti’s slaves rose up and cast off French rule. Haiti had been the jewel of France’s overseas colonies. Napoleon became convinced that holding and ruling North American territories could be more pain and trouble than it was worth
So, along came John Jay to secure navigation rights in the territory . . .
CBS Sunday Morning featured a good story on the event, and on Haiti, on January 17. You can read the transcript here.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
January 15, 2010
News reports in Texas this morning said that several of the right-wing, gut-education-standards changes proposed to social studies standards had failed in voting on Thursday, January 14. But, much more was to be done, and the SBOE adjourned early last night to continue voting today.
In a pattern familiar to education advocates in Texas, board member Don McLeroy (R-Pluto) today proposed a long series of amendments, apparently off-the-cuff, but probably written up in earlier strategy sessions. These last-minute amendments tend to pass having missed any serious scrutiny.
Will he be able to ruin Texas education for the next decade? I cannot follow the live webcasts; Steve Schafersman is working to stop the amendments, rather than merely blog about them. We probably won’t know the extent of the damage for weeks. McLeroy cherishes his role as a Port-au-Prince-style earthquake to Texas education. (Pure coincidence, I’m sure — Ed Brayton summarizes McLeroy’s politics today.)
Watch that space, and other news sources. I may provide updates here, as I can get information.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
July 14, 2009
Dallas Morning News columnist Jackie Floyd gets at the real issues week after week, stripping away the spin and silliness other reporters cover in the misaimed hope for objectivity.
And today her column looks at the social studies recommendations from a special review panel, released last week: “Curriculum debate marred by ideologues.”
A lot of what the expert advisers have to say about the standards for teaching social studies to Texas kids is genuinely depressing stuff.
It’s depressing because, as you wade through the half-dozen point-by-point reports that will be used to advise the people deciding what your kids will learn, you might wonder whether the people who oversee our public schools care a lot less about education than they do about ideology.
You might even get the sense they care an awful lot less about helping the next generation of Texans lead meaningful, productive lives than about telling them how to vote.
It’s not a big surprise, since some members of the State Board of Education sometimes behave as if schooling children is simply a matter of making them memorize an encyclopedic list of political talking points.
She names names, though I doubt she had a chance to actually kick the butts that need kicking.
And it’s the board that appointed a panel of experts that includes a family-values activist from Aledo and a minister in Massachusetts who specializes in “Christian heritage.” It’s that awful, embarrassing fight over evolution all over again.
As a result, what is presumably supposed to be a sensible discussion about what children need to learn has been reduced to a self-serving bickering match over who gets to be commandant of the indoctrination camp.
“To have Cesar Chavez listed next to Ben Franklin is ludicrous,” snarls one of the panelists; another says kids must be drilled more about Roe vs. Wade, which he says has “arguably more impacted American life than any other Supreme Court decision in the 20th century.”
Another expert makes careful tallies over whether curriculum recommendations cite Latinos with the same frequency as black and white historical figures – as if classroom studies can be reduced to a racial quid pro quo of the number of times specific historical figures are mentioned.
It’s not all ideological flag-waving, of course – but a lot of it is. There’s a silly freedom-fries debate over whether to substitute the term “free enterprise system” for “capitalism,” of whether suggested teaching examples should exclude Carl Sagan or Neil Armstrong or the guy who invented canned milk; of whether there are too many women and minorities and not enough founding fathers; of whether religion and the rule of law should be taught with more or less vigor than civil liberties and colonial adventurism.
Best, she notices that there were a couple of real experts on the panel whose reports have gotten short shrift in the news, and whose reports will be give short shrift by the politically-driven education board.
Miraculously – or at least astonishingly – in one of the reports, I found that awareness candidly articulated.
Somehow, Dr. Lybeth Hodges, a Texas Woman’s University history professor and a last-minute panel appointee, did not see a need to draft a political manifesto. She just made (get this!) sensible, useful curriculum recommendations.
She pointed out items that might actually help kids learn more and be better prepared for tests, such as that specific grade-level curriculum doesn’t always match the dreaded TAKS tests.
She noted that there are more than 90 “student expectations” for fifth-graders, an unrealistic pipe dream given that “some sound like test questions I give my college freshmen.”
Hodges, unlike some other appointees, took the blessedly pragmatic view that constantly trying to balance dueling ideologies will only result in a bloated, unmanageable list of standards that few kids will find meaningful and retain.
“It should not be a political exercise,” she said briskly, when we spoke a few days ago.
“I never thought about the political aspect at all,” she said. “I thought we were being asked to do what is reasonable and helpful for teachers. … They have enough red tape as it is.”
As we talked, my head was gradually swaddled in a pleasurable sense of optimism: Here was one person, at least, more interested in getting something useful done than in endlessly re-enacting the same old tired-out culture battle.
Call me a starry-eyed dreamer, but American education isn’t supposed to be a tedious exercise in demagoguery.
“To me, teachers aren’t there to carry out indoctrination in our schools,” Hodges said. “These people are trying to open little minds.”
If we’re going to open them successfully, we need more big minds at the top.
Also, check out the comments on the newspaper’s education blog, on the report of Gail Lowe being appointed chair of the SBOE. It’s instructive.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
July 7, 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to take a serious summer vacation, finish the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin, and catch up on a couple of novels . . .
The sharks of education policy are back.
Or the long knives are about to come out (vicious historical reference, of course, but I’m wagering the anti-education folks didn’t catch it). Pick your metaphor.
Our friend Steve Schafersman sent out an e-mail alert this morning:
The Expert Reviews of the proposed Texas Social Studies curriculum are now available at
http://ritter. tea.state. tx.us/teks/ social/experts. html
Social Studies Expert Reviewers
- David Barton, President, WallBuilders
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
- Jesus Francisco de la Teja, Professor and Chair, Department of History, Texas State University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
- Daniel L. Dreisbach, Professor, American University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
- Lybeth Hodges, Professor, History, Texas Woman’s University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
- Jim Kracht, Associate Dean and Professor, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
- Peter Marshall, President, Peter Marshall Ministries
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
You can download their review as a pdf file.
Three of these reviewers are legitimate, knowledgeable, and respected academics who undoubtedly did a fair, competent, and professional job. The other three are anti-church- state separation, anti-secular public government, and pseudoscholars and pseudohistorians. I expect their contributions to be biased, unprofessional, and pseudoscholarly. Here are the bad ones:
Barton may be the worst of the three. He founded Wallbuilders to deliberately destroy C-S separation and promote Fundamentalist Christianity in US government. Just about everything he has written is unhistorical and inaccurate. For example, Barton has published numerous “quotes” about C-S separation made by the Founding Fathers that upon investigation turned out to be hoaxes. Here’s what Senator Arlen Specter had to say about Barton:
Probably the best refutation of Barton’s argument simply is to quote his own exegesis of the First Amendment: “Today,” Barton says, “we would best understand the actual context of the First Amendment by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination. ‘ ” In keeping with Barton’s restated First Amendment, Congress could presumably make a law establishing all Christian denominations as the national religion, and each state could pass a law establishing a particular Christian church as its official religion.
All of this pseudoscholarship would hardly be worth discussing, let alone disproving, were it not for the fact that it is taken so very seriously by so many people.
I am sure these six will participate in a Great Texas History Smackdown before our crazy SBOE. Perhaps this will finally sicken enough citizens that they will finally vote to get rid of the SBOE, either directly or indirectly. Be sure to listen to this hearing on the web audio. Even better, the web video might be working so you can watch the SBOE Carnival Sideshow.
Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
President, Texas Citizens for Science
The non-expert experts were appointed by Don McLeroy before the Texas Senate refused to confirm his temporary chairmanship of the State Board of Education. The good McLeroy may have done as chairman is interred with his dead chairmanship; the evil he did lives on. (Under McLeroy and Barton’s reading of history and literature, most students won’t catch the reference for the previous sentence.)
Tony Whitson at Curricublog posted information you need to read. Texas Freedom Network’s Insider has a first pass analysis of the crank experts’ analyses — they want to make Texas’s social studies curriculum more sexist, more racist, more anti-Semitic, more anti-working man, and closer to Sunday school pseudo-history. While Dallas prepares to name a major street in honor of Cesar Chavez, Barton and Marshall say he’s too Mexican and too close to Jews, and so should be de-emphasized in history books (a small picture of Chavez appears on one of the main U.S. history texts now).
That’s the stuff that jumps out at first. What else will we find when we dig?
More to come; watch those spaces, and this one, too.
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5 Comments | Bogus history, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Religion, Separation of church and state, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, Texas history, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, Voodoo history, War on Education, War on the Constitution | Tagged: Bogus history, David Barton, Don McLeroy, Education, education standards, Separation of church and state, Social Studies, Texas, Texas State Board of Education, Voodoo history, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
June 17, 2009
(This issue has moved a bit since I first drafted this post — watch for updates.)
Ain’t it the way?
46 of the 50 states agreed to work for common education standards through a project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Texas is one of four states not agreeing. News comes from a report in the venerable Education Week (and to me directly via e-mail from Steve Schafersman at Texas Citizens for Science).
National standards for education are prohibited in the U.S. by law and tradition. Education standards traditionally have been set by each of the more than 15,000 local school districts. After the 1957 Sputnik education cleanup, and after the 1983 report of the Excellence in Education Commission, the nation has seen a drive to get at least state-wide standards, though a jealous regard for federalism still prevents national standards.
Almost all other industrialized nations have a set of national standards set by the national government, against which progress may be measured. All the industrialized nations who score higher than U.S. students in international education comparisons, have standards mandated by a national group.
So if it’s an internationally recognized way of improving education, as part of their continuing war on education, and their war on science and evolution theory, the Texas State Board of Education takes the Neanderthal stance, avoiding cooperation with the 92% of the states working to improve American education.
You couldn’t make up villains like this.
Article below the fold.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
May 27, 2009
Tim Ritz cartoon, for Americans United
Texas Freedom Network’s Insider blog reports that embattled chairman Don McLeroy is working to create a panel of experts to review studies curricula. The experts he has proposed so far are all well-known cranks in academia, people who bring their axes to grind on the minds of innocent children.
This panel is a bold insult to Texas’s community of economists, historians, and other practitioners of fields of social studies, not to mention educators. A more qualified panel of experts could be assembled in the coffee break rooms of the history departments at most of Texas’s lesser known state colleges and universities.
Why does Don McLeroy hate Texas so?
I’ve been buried in teaching, grading, planning and the other affairs of the life of a teacher, and had not paid much attention to the movement on this issue (“movement” because I cannot call it “progress”). My students passed the state tests by comfortable margins, more than 90% of them; this news from SBOE makes me despair even in the face of the news that our achievements are substantial in all categories.
The panel lacks knowledge and experience in economics, geography and history. The panel is grotesquely unbalanced — at least two of the panel members remind me of Ezra Taft Benson, who was Secretary of Agriculture for Dwight Eisenhower. When he resigned from that post, he complained that Eisenhower was too cozy with communism. Barton and Quist lean well to the right of Ezra Taft Benson. Quist has complained of socialist and Marxist leanings of Reagan administration education policy and policy makers.
Samuel Morse sent the first telegraphic message on May 24, 1844: “What hath God wrought?”
Sitting here on the morning of May 27, 2009, I wonder what rot hath Don.
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Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, Curricula, Economics, Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Hoaxes, Politics, Social Studies, State school boards, TAKS, TEKS, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo history, War on Education, War on the Constitution | Tagged: Bogus history, Christian nation, Corruption, Don McLeroy, Economics, Education, geography, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Right Wing, Voodoo history, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
April 14, 2009
From image maker Colin Purrington: Texans' fondness for Biblical literalism indirectly ruins science education for the rest of the country. Texas is the nation's biggest consumer of textbooks, so authors will often write their books "for" the Texas State Board of Education, which usually has at least one delusional freakazoid who believes that fossils are the result of the Great Flood. On the State School Board!! I kid you not. Really amazing, and sad.
Another brilliant creation of Colin Purrington’s Evolution Outreach project.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
January 22, 2009
Testimony of Richard Neavel, PhD, to the Texas State Board of Education January 21, 2009
I oppose the inclusion of strengths and weaknesses in the TEKS and I’m going to do a show and tell about why.
At the last public hearing, Board member Gail Lowe asked me whether I was familiar with “polystrate fossils.” I had to admit that I wasn’t.
I Googled the term, and found creationist Paul Ackerman writing: “Polystrate fossils in numerous places around the world are one dramatic piece of evidence that the [young earth] creationists may be right [about earth’s history].” (Footnote [1])
Now I know why I wasn’t familiar with them. Geologists don’t refer to polystrate fossils – creationists do.
Ms. Lowe questioned me about the Lompoc whale fossil that was supposed to be “standing up” within many strata, that is layers of rock. How could this happen, she asked if the strata accumulated over millions of years. (See Figure 1 – next page and Footnote [2].)
That’s the kind of question a student might ask to demonstrate weaknesses of geologic theories.
I didn’t have an answer, so I researched it and here’s what I found.
The fossil is found in Miocene-age rocks about 10 million years old near Lompoc, California.
Creationists have cited it as an anomaly ever since it was uncovered.
Creationists explain it by saying a catastrophe, such as Noah’s flood, buried the whale very quickly.
Here’s what really happened.
Lompy, the whale, is eating plankton in a lagoon off the California coast 10 million years ago.
The ones he doesn’t eat die and their shells drift down to make a silica-rich, oozy sediment.
OH!. OH! Heart attack. Lompy dies, rolls over and sinks to the bottom of the lagoon. (Figure 2)
He rots away, and his skeleton gets covered with more sediment. (Figure 3)
The sediments harden to rock. Along comes a mountain-building force and the rocks are tilted up.
A company mines the rock, called diatomaceous earth, and uncovers Lompy’s skeleton. (Figure 4)
Creationists go wild – it’s a miracle – a whale on its tail.
I’m a PhD geologist and I didn’t have a ready answer to Ms. Lowe’s questions about polystrate fossils.
Do you think a high school science teacher would be able to answer a student’s questions about Lompy?
Members of the Board: Do you really want students to waste time discussing this kind of creationist nonsense in science class? Not weaknesses – just nonsense.
Every other creationist so-called “scientific weakness” can be explained just like this by real scientists — but not necessarily by high school teachers.
PLEASE! PLEASE! DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS EDUCATION. IT’S TOO IMPORTANT TO AMERICA’S FUTURE.
PLEASE BE PATRIOTIC. THANK YOU.
ANY QUESTIONS, CLASS?
[Pictures coming when I can get them to stick in the file! — E.D.]
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
3 Comments | Creationism, Evolution, History, Science, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Texas, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 22, 2009
Obama promised to put science in its proper place, in federal policy.
In Texas, however, evolution and science education are under assault today as the State Board of Education (SBOE) looks at revising science standards for public schools. Creationists have been sharpening their knives for months, with a stiff-necked creationist heading SBOE as a fifth columnist.
SBOE votes today (perhaps already, but I can’t find the story of a vote). At issue is the recommendations by scientists, educators and parents to teach evolution without creationist language that misleads students. SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy has vowed to insert more religion into science classes. The board is nearly evenly split between creationists and backers of science, so the vote could go either way.
Here at the Bathtub we’ll feature testimony from science supporters in a few posts, as we can snag them from witnesses.
McLeroy and his supporters at SBOE worked hard to stack the witness list, to prevent testimony from parents, teachers, scientists and educators who all favor new standards that eliminate a decade-old statement about “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution theory, hoary old creationist propaganda that has no place in a curriculum for the 21st century. Several science witnesses were bumped from testifying, and the board was quite rude to some of America’s best scientists, appearing to fear what the scientists had to say.
It’s an ugly situation. Say a prayer for Texas.
Resources:i
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Leave a Comment » | History, Science, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: Creationism, Education, education standards, Evolution, Science, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 