Scholarly sleuth James E. Crisp will formally reveal to historians this week a jarring error literally carved in stone at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.
In the sweeping lobby of the 6-year-old museum, a few steps from the state Capitol, visitors read on the wall stirring words of Tejano hero José Antonio Navarro:
“I will never forsake Texas and her cause. I am her son.”
The quote is a permanent feature of the museum – or was. Dr. Crisp says Señor Navarro (1795-1871) didn’t utter those words. But he will tell us who did.
The Texas Declaration of Independence was produced, literally, overnight. Its urgency was paramount, because while it was being prepared, the Alamo in San Antonio was under seige by Santa Anna’s army of Mexico.
Immediately upon the assemblage of the Convention of 1836 on March 1, a committee of five of its delegates was appointed to draft the document. The committee, consisting of George C. Childress, Edward Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney, prepared the declaration in record time. It was briefly reviewed, then adopted by the delegates of the convention the following day.
As seen from the transcription, the document parallels somewhat that of the United States, signed almost sixty years earlier. It contains statements on the function and responsibility of government, followed by a list of grievances. Finally, it concludes by declaring Texas a free and independent republic.
Prior to statewide testing, this used to be a key part of 7th grade and other curricula in social studies.
There must be a celebration somewhere in Texas today, but I can’t find it.
Step 1:
Visit Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Independence Convention signed the Republic into being. It’s now a state park with state-of-the-art interactive exhibits open year round, with plenty of rousing events during the week of March 2.
Step 4:
Throw a Happy Birthday Texas party. Suggest that guests come dressed as cowboys or Alamo freedom fighters; serve cowboy camp grub and Tex-Mex goodies, play songs about Texas and tell Texas jokes.
A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.
In this election year we must define the common good and begin again to shape a common good and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.
I covered that convention as a stringer for a western television station. I recall the spirit in the hall when Jordan spoke, and the great spirit that enveloped the entire convention and the City of New York. After the convention every night the cops would stop taxis so delegates could ride. I remember watching two cops help a woman out of a wheel chair and into a cab, and the cabbie saying that the cops had never done that before — and he liked it. Jimmy Carter came out of that convention, and won the election, defeating Gerald Ford.
32 years ago. Barbara Jordan didn’t live to see her party come up with a woman and an African American man as the top two candidates for the nomination. That’s too bad. She could have given a great, appropriate speech. Maybe the Dems oughtta just run a film of Jordan from 1976.
While the minions and poobahs at the Texas Education Agency work to frustrate the teaching of evolution in science classes, real Texas scientists practicing real Texas science dig away at the Gault Site, an archaeological dig that recently has yielded 1.5 million artifacts from ancient Texans, Clovis Man, living 13,500 years ago.
So far nothing indicates any of these ancient people were Baptist or creationist. Surprisingly, perhaps, they didn’t play football, either.
Pamela LeBlanc, a digger at the site wrote the article in first person.
The pasture, named for the Gault family who once farmed the land, made its debut into professional archaeology in 1929 when J.E. Pearce, founder of the UT archaeology department, excavated here. Over the years, visitors could pay a fee to dig at the farm, hauling off what they found and leaving behind shallow craters.
Today, it’s considered the most prolific site of its kind. Gault has generated more than half of the excavated artifacts from the Clovis people, long considered the first human culture in America. Until recently, most archaeologists believed the Clovis came from Asia across the Bering Strait land bridge at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago, walked down the ice-free corridor of Western Canada and slowly spread across the Americas.
Collins and others believe people arrived in the Americas much earlier, probably by boat along the North Atlantic and North Pacific shores. And they believe this site will help prove it. “What we’re trying to do here is expand on our knowledge of the peopling of the Americas,” Collins says.
Even better, you can volunteer to help out at the site, to dig for prehistoric information.
To volunteer at the Gault site, contact Cinda Timperley at ctimperley@austin.rr.com. Membership in the Gault School of Archaeological Research is not required to volunteer, but members have priority. Membership is $10 for students; $45 for adults; and $65 for families. The school also needs non-monetary donations of everything from equipment to electrical work. For more information, call 471-5982.
Not only does the Austin paper print news that sticks in the craw of Don McLeroy, they give details on how you can participate in making such news.
Some students really struggle with the idea of the role of religion in the founding and settling of America. Among interesting misconceptions I’ve run into in the past 18 months: Spanish settlers of Texas were Baptists (since so many Texans are Baptist today); the religious fights in England leading to the English Bill of Rights was between “Christians and others.”
Are churches doing their part in teaching the importance of freedom of religion, and especially of the history of religious strife in the western world? It doesn’t appear so. Maybe that list is the 100 top places for educators to visit to ask for help in getting the kids straight on the history of religion.
By the way: Spanish settlers of Texas were Catholic; the religious fights in England tended to be between Catholics and Anglicans, both considered Christian sects, to the surprise of too many students. Oy.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Students learn history best when it affects them directly, or when they can see the stuff close up. The Legacies Dallas History Conferences focus on history in and around Dallas, Texas. This is prime material for Texas and Dallas history, economics and government classes.
If you’re teaching at a high school or middle school in the Dallas area, print this off for every social studies and English teacher at your school, and pass it out to them Tuesday (or Monday if you’re open then).
Many of the conference presentations roll down that alley of a topic most Texas students need more of, the events around World War II. One session dives into Vietnam, one goes back to the Civil War, and World War I is remembered.
Bob Reitz, the public historian who curates the amazing Jack Harbin Museum of Scout History at Dallas’s Camp Wisdom, alerted me to the conference with a plug to his colleague’s presentation. Anita Mills-Barry will present her paper, “Homefront Scouting During World War II: Participation by Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the Civilian Effort in Dallas County.”
A copy of the web invitation to the conference below the fold.
The association’s president said UNT is a logical choice. Among its selling points, UNT has the state’s biggest program in Texas history and a university press that publishes many books on Texas subjects. The association also has four fellows and a former president from UNT.
“We felt that UNT not only made the best offer in terms of what it could give us, but it was also the best fit on a day-in, day-out basis,” said Frank de la Teja, president of the association.
The group publishes a scholarly journal called Southwestern Historical Quarterly. And anyone who’s ever Googled the Battle of the Alamo, Juneteenth or some other Texas subject is probably familiar with the association’s Handbook of Texas Online, a comprehensive encyclopedia that averages 4 million page views a month.
Details are still being worked out, but UNT hopes the association will move to campus in the fall, said Michael Monticino, associate dean of UNT’s College of Arts and Sciences. He said the university is poised to pay for renovations, worth about half a million dollars, and to contribute about $200,000 a year for other expenses.
The move may be good news for history teachers closer to Denton, including those in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving, Tyler and Abilene. Chiefly the move indicates how Texas’s higher education quality has spread out well beyond Austin and College Station, homes of the first branches of the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, respectively.
Full story below the fold (as insurance against the whims of electronic archivists at the Dallas Morning News).
No, unfortunately, not at either the State Board of Education/Texas Education Agency nor the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
At a better place, perhaps. A permanent exhibit on evolution, “Explore Evolution, opened October 1 at the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas. The exhibit, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, explains evolution for students. It appears essentially the same at six different museums in the Midwest:
Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan
Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
Science Museum of Minnesota
University of Nebraska State Museum, and
Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas.
Explore Evolution permanent exhibit opens Sept. 10 at NU State Museum
Lincoln, Neb., Sept. 7, 2005 — Using cutting edge research, a new exhibit at the University of Nebraska State Museum gives a modern shine to Charles Darwin’s 146-year-old theory on evolution. The permanent exhibit, Explore Evolution, which opens to the public Sept. 10, was developed by a consortium of six partner museums led by the NU State Museum and prominently features the work of two UNL scientists.
The project is made possible by a $2.8 million, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Informal Science Education program and consists of nearly identical permanent exhibit galleries at six partner museums in the Midwest and South — regions where evolution education is controversial. Other components of the project include a Web site, inquiry-based activities for middle-school children in the form of a book titled “Virus and the Whale, Exploring Evolution in Creatures Small and Large,” and collaborations with five statewide 4-H programs.
“Interested 4-H’ers will have the opportunity to explore exciting scientific concepts and cutting-edge research methods,” said Bradley Barker, UNL 4-H.
Priscilla Grew, director of the museum, said the exhibit is a big win for Nebraska.
“By funding the Explore Evolution project, the National Science Foundation has elevated UNL’s State Museum into a national leadership position in museum science education,” she said. “Evolution has been called the cornerstone of modern biology. The scientific understanding of evolution is fundamental to advances in modern medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. It is essential both to scientific research on the biodiversity of today’s world, and to the scientific interpretation of the fossil record through geologic time.”
The museum exhibit features seven current research projects, each presenting a major discovery about the evolution of life by a leading scientist or team of researchers. Through graphics and interactive displays, museum patrons explore evolution in organisms ranging form the smallest to the largest.
UNL’s contributions to the project are significant. While the exhibit galleries were built by the Science Museum of Minnesota, a team from UNL played major roles in the creation of the artwork and content. Judy Diamond, professor at the NU State Museum, wrote the original grant request for the project and is the team leader on the project. Research from two UNL scientists — virologist Charles Wood and geologist Sherilyn Fritz — is featured in two of the seven sections of the exhibit.
Wood’s research takes him to central Africa to study how the HIV/AIDS virus is transported from mothers to their infants. Wood’s research showcases the virus and how it evolves rapidly in newborns, with new strains being produced that are resistant to the infant’s immune system.
Fritz, working with Edward Theriot from University of Texas at Austin, used core samples from Yellowstone Lake to investigate the evolution of an organism called a diatom. Sampling tracks the diatom’s evolution from the lake’s formation 14,000 years ago and shows how diatoms — which are good barometers of climate change — developed within the first 4,000 years of the lake.
Other scientific endeavors featured in Explore Evolution include Cameron Currie’s work on farmer ants and their coevolving partners; Kenneth Kaneshiro on sexual selection among Hawaiian flies; Rosemary and Peter Grant on Galapagos finches; Svante Paabo on the genetic ties between humans and chimps; and Philip Gingerich on fossil discoveries of walking whales.
High school U.S. history students have been alive less than half the time since the assassination. To them it is ancient history, even more than the Vietnam War. Teachers need to find ways to make the history stick even in years that are not multiples of 5.
A new film offers some aid. “Oswald’s Ghost” had it’s world premiere at the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff, the place where Lee Oswald was arrested. Restoration of the theater is not complete, but it is far enough along to host events.
The movie is in severely limited release prior to a January 14, 2008 premier on PBS stations. Director Robert Stone places the assassination in history and tells some of the effects on America, rather than dwelling on facts or controversies around the shooting. The movie got a good review from the Dallas Morning News:
“Nobody had stepped back and told the story of the debate itself,” he says.
“How did these ideas come about? Who propagated them and why were they so widely believed? And what had they done to this country? Seventy percent of Americans still believe the government was involved in the Kennedy assassination or has worked to cover it up. And that’s had a huge impact.”
In the end, a seemingly disparate chorus of voices – including the late Norman Mailer – accomplish the filmmaker’s objective.
As he says, Oswald’s Ghost is “a way of explaining the ’60s. We’re not arguing anymore about what happened in Dealey Plaza. It’s an argument about explaining what came after … and how did everything go so wrong.”
With luck, it will be on DVD for classroom use by early February.
Dallas’s PBS outlet, KERA, is showing another locally-produced film this week that I have found useful in the classroom, focusing on the news coverage that day, JFK: Breaking the News. For slightly more adult teachers, there is the fun of finding news people in their infant careers, people like Robert McNeil then of NBC, Peter Jennings, and then-local Dallas reporters Jim Lehrer and Dan Rather, and Fort Worth reporter Bob Schieffer. Few other one-day events have produced such a stable of news greats — the Kennedy assassination spurred the careers of more new people than any other event with the possible exception of World War II. Jane Pauley narrates the story.
The Kennedy assassination kicked the wind out of America. In many ways it was the event that triggered 1968, perhaps the worst single year in American history.
44 years, and we still don’t know the full set of ramifications of the events of that day. Historians keep chipping away.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Thanksgiving? Texas had it first. No kidding (unless you count the Vinlanders, who probably were grateful to be out of Greenland, but left no records that they ever actually had a feast to say so — but see the comments in the posts linked at various places).
Mrs. Bathtub is in the hospital. Nothing major, but it appears the staff who should have signed her out yesterday all headed off for Turkey Day and may not return until mid-December, so Mrs. Bathtub languishes at the expense of the insurance companies because security is tight and there are only enough sheets to get her down two stories, and she’s on the third floor (and the people-with-unknown-fathers at the hospital have sealed the door to the balcony anyway — that’s got to get you thinking). So Mr. Bathtub is frantically reading the back of the Libby’s Pumpkin can, and you can imagine what antics are up in the kitchen today. Blogging will be sparse.
So it’s reprise post stuff, mostly, today. If you need more, go here:
Who was first between Plymouth and Jamestown? No, the pilgrims did not tie their ship to Plymouth Rock; no, the Prudential logo is the Rock of Gibraltar, not Plymouth . . . and more travel stuff, from today’s New York Times.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Your classes are gearing up for the competition, no?
Alfie Kohn might not like the idea of competition in history. In a state famous for competition in almost everything, but most famous for athletic competitions to the detriment of academics, I find great appeal in a contest that requires kids to find, analyze and write history.
A. Texas History Day, a part of the National History Day program, is a yearlong education program that culminates in an annual state-level history fair for students in grades six through twelve. It provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate their interest in, and knowledge of, history through creative and original papers, performances, documentaries, individual interpretive web sites, or three-dimensional exhibits.
Over the course of the school year, students research and produce a History Day entry, the results of which are presented at a regional competition in early spring. From there, some students advance to the state fair in May, or even to the national contest held each June at the University of Maryland at College Park. At each level of competition, outstanding achievement may be recognized through certificates, medals, trophies, or monetary awards. The most important rewards are the skills and insight that students acquire as they move through the History Day program.
As many as 33,000 young Texans are involved in the program at the regional and state level each year. More than 900 students participate in Texas History Day, and approximately 60 students represent Texas at National History Day each year.
Notice that this class, as many in Texas do, puts the geography unit up front, not quite isolated from the rest of the class. Regardless of how well geography is covered, I think we end up shorting the subject its due.
Kudos to Pin Oak MS, to Mr. Gomez, and I hope to see more.
(Surely there is a class in Texas that is farther along in integrating the internet into the Texas history curriculum — point them to us, Dear Readers?)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Some Texas educators are disappointed that no one like Mike Moses got the job. Moses is a long-time public school educator who was a very popular and knowledgeable. But disappointment was tempered by relief for what might have happened. Gov. Perry earlier in 2007 named a creationist and hard-back conservative to chair the State Board of Education. Scott is not thought to be that deep into right-wing political ideology.
Scott is a policy wonk, coming out of legislative staff to staff TEA. This is the second time he was acting commissioner. Oddly, he is so little known that it is unclear whether he is the Robert Scott who appears to have acted contrary to ethics and law in an earlier TEA contract problem, or whether it was another TEA employee also named Robert Scott. People who would usually know the difference in such situations, appear not to know in this one.
Were there a stock market in state educational attainment, Texas’s stock would have dropped 8% yesterday, with analysts saying it was better than the expected 12% decrease.
Can teachers alone save Texas’s education system? It’s a risky experiment.
Teachers looking for good interactive graphics on human migration in prehistoric times should take a look at the website of Australia’s Bradshaw Foundation. The map requires an Adobe Flash player, and I cannot embed it here — but go take a look, here. “The Journey of Man” seems tailor made for classroom use, if you have a live internet connection and a projector.
Ancient art is the chief focus of the foundation.
Examples of some of the most famous cave and rock paintings populate the site, along with many lesser known creations — the eponymous paintings, the Bradshaw group, generally disappear from U.S. versions of world history texts. The Bradshaw Foundation website explains:
The Bradshaw Paintings are incredibly sophisticated, as you will see from the 32 pictures in the Paintings Section, yet they are not recent creations but originate from an unknown past period which some suggest could have been 50,000 years ago. This art form was first recorded by Joseph Bradshaw in 1891, when he was lost on an Kimberley expedition in the north west of Australia. Dr. Andreas Lommel stated on his expedition to the Kimberleys in 1955 that the rock art he referred to as the Bradshaw Paintings may well predate the present Australian Aborigines.
This ancient art carries a story that should intrigue even junior high school students, and it offers examples of archaeological techniques that are critical to determining the ages of undated art in the wild:
According to legend, they were made by birds. It was said that these birds pecked the rocks until their beaks bled, and then created these fine paintings by using a tail feather and their own blood. This art is of such antiquity that no pigment remains on the rock surface, it is impossible to use carbon dating technology. The composition of the original paints cant be determined, and whatever pigments were used have been locked into the rock itself as shades of Mulberry red, and have become impervious to the elements.
Fortuitously, in 1996 Grahame Walsh discovered a Bradshaw Painting partly covered by a fossilised Mud Wasp nest, which scientists have removed and analysed using a new technique of dating, determining it to be 17,000 + years old.
Texas history and geography teachers should note the Bradshaw Foundation’s work on prehistorica art in the Pecos River Valley: “Pecos Experience: Art and archeaology in the lower Pecos.” There is much more here than is found in most Texas history texts — material useful for student projects or good lesson plans.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Examples of some of the most famous cave and rock paintings populate the site, along with many lesser known creations — the eponymous paintings, the Bradshaw group, generally disappear from U.S. versions of world history texts. 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
