Another casualty of my real life crises, trying to keep readers informed about education policy in Texas has suffered here in the Bathtub. My apologies.
The good news is that Don McLeroy’s attempts to eviscerate public school curricula have gotten some attention in the Texas Lege (as Molly Ivins called it). Gov. Rick Perry appointed McLeroy to a full term as chair of the State Board of Education (SBOE), but that appointment needs approval by the Texas Senate. The hearing (if you can call it that) was scheduled for yesterday, and when it actually occurred it became obvious that the senators noticed McLeroy is a one-man wrecking crew, apparently drunk, and loose in the state’s china cabinet.
Will there be more good news, that the Senate can rein in McLeroy?
Schafersman points to an article in the Austin American-Statesman by Kate Alexander, which suggests there’s a chance that McLeroy’s nomination might actually be rejected. The Lege leans so far to the right that the right shoulders of their suit coats are scraped by the pavement, but even the legislators understand that snubbing the economists of Texas A&M and every Spanish-speaking Texan is something your mother would not approve of, and shouldn’t be the normal business of an official state agency like the SBOE. (Austin American-Statesman — another of the great daily newspapers in America, still doing outstanding reporting despite staff cutbacks).
Legislators are rightly concerned about the simple incompetence SBOE demonstrates on every subject, not just science, and the general atmosphere of unnecessary bickering McLeroy has fostered. In the latest, but mostly unreported move, SBOE stopped the review of social studies standards by experts and expert teachers in Texas. Among the chief complaints is that the economics team recommended calling capitalism “capitalism.” McLeroy is unhappy with using the appropriate term to describe America’s economic system.
Is it possible to get much more divorced from reality than that, and still keep one’s driving and hunting licenses?
Schafersman has one paragraph that sums up the situation rather well:
Alexander writes: “Shapleigh said there is a perception that McLeroy is using the chairmanship of the State Board of Education as a bully pulpit for promoting his religious point-of-view and pushing it into the public arena.” McLeroy disingenuously denies this, claiming the fight is over different “educational philosophies,” and “that is the source of the controversy, not his religious views.” While that may be true of some actions, such as forcing a traditional English Language Arts curriculum unwanted by ELA professionals on the state and illegally throwing out a mathematics textbook, in most cases the Fundamentalist Protestant Christian religious beliefs of McLeroy and his six cronies on the State Board were definitely behind their actions. These include the adoption of flawed, damaged science standards, the explicit attacks on evolution, the fossil record, and ancient geological ages of the Earth and universe, adoption of a flawed and inadequate Bible curriculum that will permit unscholarly and unscientific Bible instruction, and the frequent threats to publishers–which is a form of extortion that publishers come to expect–to reject their textbooks if they don’t contain sufficient anti-scientific information against evolution and in favor of Intelligent Design Creationism. McLeroy tried to censor textbooks previously in 2003 by threatening publishers, but failed.
What happens if the Senate rejects Perry’s nomination of McLeroy? McLeroy would remain a member of SBOE. Who, or whether, Perry would appoint to replace McLeroy has not been discussed. Do any of the current members have the respect of a majority of the board, enough to do the job? Is anyone on the board capable of administering the group when religious fanatics appear so hell bent on shattering foundations of public education?
Don’t get hopes up. Rejecting McLeroy’s nomination might be the rational thing to do, but it might push Perry to even deeper acts of irrationality in appointing a new chair, difficult though it may be to imagine that.
Texas Freedom Network’s live-blogging of the McLeroy hearing, at TFN Insider; including this gem: “5:52 – McLeroy: We have to stand up to the education establishment to make sure our children learn. I’m glad if that means I have to stir up a hornets’ nest.” (McLeroy is the education establishment he’s complaining about.)
All of a sudden Texans have a powerful reason to worry about evolution (the mussels are evolving to live in warmer waters?), climate change, ecosystem destruction by exotic species, and water pollution.
Zebra mussels are a bigger problem than any other undocumented immigrant.
Rick Perry put his foot into something during one of the Astro-turf “tea parties” on April 15. Someone asked him about whether Texas should secede from the United States, as a protest against high taxes, or something.
The answer to the question is “No, secession is not legal. Did you sleep through all of your U.S. history courses? Remember the Civil War?”
Alas, Perry didn’t say that.
Instead, Perry said it’s not in the offing this week, but ‘Washington had better watch out.’
He qualified his statement by saying the U.S. is a “great union,” but he said Texans are thinking about seceding, and he trotted out a hoary old Texas tale that Texas had reserved that right in the treaty that ceded Texas lands to the U.S. in the switch from being an independent republic after winning independence from Mexico, to statehood in the U.S.
So, rational people want to know: Does Perry know what he’s talking about?
A&M professor Walter L. Buenger is a fifth-generation Texan and author of a textbook on Texas’ last secession attempt. (The federal occupation lasted eight years after the Civil War.)
“It was a mistake then, and it’s an even bigger mistake now,” Buenger said by phone from College Station, where he has taught almost since Perry was an Aggie yell leader.
“And you can put this in the paper: To even bring it up shows a profound lack of patriotism,” Buenger said.
The 1845 joint merger agreement with Congress didn’t give Texas an option clause. The idea of leaving “was settled long ago,” he said.
“This is simple rabble-rousing and political posturing,” he said. “That’s all it is. . . . Our governor is now identifying himself with the far-right lunatic fringe.”
Three false beliefs about Texas history keep bubbling up, and need to be debunked every time. The first is that Texas had a right to secede; the second is that Texas can divide itself into five states; and the third is that the Texas flag gets special rights over all other state flags in the nation.
Under Abraham Lincoln’s view the Union is almost sacred, and once a state joins it, the union expands to welcome that state, but never can the state get out. Lincoln’s view prevailed in the Civil War, and in re-admittance of the 11 Confederate states after the war.
The second idea also died with Texas’s readmission. The original enabling act (not treaty) said Texas could be divided, but under the Constitution’s powers delegated to Congress on statehood, the admission of Texas probably vitiated that clause. In any case, the readmission legislation left it out. Texas will remain the Lone Star State, and not become a Five Star Federation. (We dealt with this issue in an earlier post you probably should click over to see.)
Gov. Perry is behind Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in polling of a head-to-head contest between the two to see who will be the Republican nominee for governor in 2010 — Hutchison is gunning to unseat Perry. He was trying to throw some red meat to far-right conservative partisans who, he hopes, will stick by him in that primary election.
Alas, he came off throwing out half-baked ideas instead. It’s going to be a long, nasty election campaign.
Another update: How much fuss should be made over the occasional wild hare move for some state to secede? Probably not much. A few years ago Alaska actually got a referendum on the ballot to study secession. The drive to secede got nowhere, of course. I was tracking it at the time to see whether anyone cared. To the best of my knowledge, the New York Times never mentioned the controversy in Alaska, and the Washington Post gave it barely three paragraphs at the bottom of an inside page.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Another press release, FYI. I’ve added some links in for your convenience. Remember, teachers of social studies, social studies is next on the SBOE chopping block — with rumors that SBOE is disbanding the expert panels rather than simply ignore the recommendations. Will they expunge slavery and Native Americans from the history books? Will they rewrite the Vietnam War? Consider Senate Bill 2275, and call your legislator:
Contact:
Steven D. Schafersman, Ph.D.
432.352.2265
tcs@texscience. org
Texas Citizens for Science strongly supports Senate Bill 2275 which transfers authority for curriculum standards and textbook adoption from the State Board of Education (SBOE) to the Texas Commissioner of Education.
For decades, members of the SBOE have censored, qualified, distorted, damaged, manipulated, and rejected curriculum standards and textbooks. All of this was done for political, ideological, and religious reasons, never for educational or pedagogical reasons. In the past, this activity was done secretly, behind closed doors, but now it is being done publicly in full view of the public and press. Recently, inaccurate, censored, and pedagogically- inferior English Language Arts and Science curriculum standards have been written by the SBOE using their power of amendment. This year, the Social Studies standards will be attacked by some SBOE members for non-educational reasons that support their political and ideological agendas.
For textbooks, in the past the SBOE chair would secretly “negotiate” with publishers to make them change the content of their textbooks under the implied threat of being rejected; publishers readily submitted to save multimillion dollar textbook contracts with the state. In numerous instances, textbook content was replaced by watered-down, inferior, and often misleading, inaccurate, and incomplete information. This activity continues today, albeit more openly with both press and public attention. Science textbooks censorship by the SBOE has occurred sinc the 1960s, as has censorship of social studies and other textbooks.
Dr. Steven Schafersman, President of Texas Citizens for Science, says this:
“The Texas State Board of Education has been an embarrassment and a disgrace to Texas for many decades. This Board’s activities that censor and corrupt the accuracy and reliability of specific topics in mainstream Science, Social Studies, and Health Education are well-known to educators throughout the United States as well as in Texas. All educators are aware of the negative and damaging influence the Texas State Board of Education has on textbooks used in Texas and other states.”
“Texas Citizens for Science has opposed the State Board of Education since 1980 in our effort to defend the accuracy and reliability of science education in Texas. We have repeatedly had to defend Biology and Earth Science textbooks from the Board’s predatory efforts to damage their content about such subjects as evolution, the origin of life, the age of the Earth and Universe, the true nature of the fossil record, and several other scientific topics.”
“Although largely successful in the past, only this past month TCS was unable to prevent the State Board of Education from amending the excellent science standards produced by science teachers, professors, and scientists. The State Board’s subsequent amendments created several flawed standards that, while not overtly unscientific, were confusing, unnecessary, poorly-written, and opened the door to insertion of pseudoscientific information, including bogus arguments supporting Intelligent Design Creationism. Among others things the Board accomplished during this exercise in pseudoscience was to remove the e-word and the ancient age of the universe from the standards. These accomplishments were petty, disgraceful, and clear proof of their anti-scientific and pro-Fundamentalist bias. A modern, technologically- advanced state such as Texas does not need such anti-science activity from a state board.”
Texas Citizens for Science urges the Senate Education Committee to approve SB 2275 and send it to the full Senate, the House, and then hopefully signed into law.
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.
As Joe Nick Patoski put it on his blog, and I have been remiss in failing to mention, Patoski’s book on Willie Nelson won the TCU Texas Book Award. The book is Willie Nelson, an epic life.
Friends and neighbors, please click on the letter and it’ll make it big enough so you can actually read what it says.
Woo hoo and Yee haw!
Good news! Now, can we get Willie’s houses in Fort Worth noted on some tour?
Hurry, teachers, get your workshops before the State Board of Education declares science workshops to be illegal:
FREE upcoming teacher training workshops at the Texas Natural Science Center — sign up now! Change Over Timeworkshop — 2 sessions (1 for elementary; 1 for middle school) on Saturday, May 2, 2009.
Enjoy inquiry-based, hands-on activities using the Change Over Time kit containing TEKS-based geological science instructional materials for grades K-8! This workshop is designed to help students master Earth Science concepts tested on the TAKS (Grade 5 and/or Grade 8). Conducted in conjunction with Sargent-Welch, Science Kit, and Ward’s. For information and registration, visit http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/education/profdev/cot/index.html
Texas: Past, Present and Future — 4 one-day workshops: June 30, July 14, July 22, and July 30.
Learn more about geology, paleontology and Texas biodiversity! Participating teachers will explore how animals are adapted to varying environments, investigate how paleontologists use fundamental principles to recreate what life was like in Texas’ past, and learn how to integrate these concepts into the classroom. Workshop participants will receive curriculum guides and be able to check out a Texas Fish and Mammals Loaner Kit for use in their classrooms. For information and registration, visit http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/education/profdev/txppf/index.html
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Historical Item: William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper in New York favored war with Spain in 1898 — the Spanish-American War. When the war got underway, on the top of the newspaper’s first page, in the corners (the “ears”), Hearst printed, “America! How do you like your war!”
Creationism lost on the votes that had been planned for weeks, on issues members of the State Board of Education were informed about. But creationists on the board proposed a series of amendments to several different curricula, and some really bad science was written in to standards for Texas school kids to learn. Climate change got an official “tsk-tsk, ain’t happenin'” from SBOE. And while Wilson and Penzias won a Nobel Prize for stumbling on the evidence that confirmed it, Big Bang is now theory non grata in Texas science books. Using Board Member Barbara Cargill’s claims, Texas teachers now should teach kids that the universe is a big thing who tells big lies about her age.
A surefire way to tell that the changes were bad: The Discovery Institute’s lead chickens crow victory over secularism, science and “smart people.” Well, no, they aren’t quite that bold. See here, here, here and here. Disco Tute even slammed the so-conservative-Ronald-Reagan-found-it-dull Dallas Morning News for covering the news nearly accurately. Even more snark here. Discovery Institute’s multi-million-dollar budget to buy good public relations for anti-science appears to have dropped a bundle in Austin; while it might appear that DI had more people in Austin than there are members of the Texas SBOE . . . no, wait, maybe they did.
SBOE rejected the advice of America’s best and greatest scientists. If it was good science backed by good scientists and urged by the nation’s best educators, SBOE rejected it. If it was a crank science idea designed to frustrate teaching science, it passed. As the Texas Freedom Network so aptly put it, while SBOE closed the door on “strengths and weaknesses” language that favors creationism, they then opened every window in the house.
Read ’em, and tell us in comments if you find any reason for hope, or any reason the state legislature shouldn’t abolish this board altogether. (What others should we add to the list?)
More bad news than good news from the Texas State School Board: Yes, the board failed to reintroduce the creationist sponsored “strengths and weaknesses” language in high school science standards; but under the misleadership of Board Chair Don McLeroy, there is yet <i>another</i> series of amendments intended to mock science, including one challenging Big Bang, one challenging natural selection as a known mechanism of evolution, and, incredibly, one challenging the even the idea of common descent. It’s a kick in the teeth to Texas teachers and scientists who wrote the standards the creationists don’t like.
Do you live in Texas? Do you teach, or are you involved in the sciences in Texas? Then please send an e-mail to the State Board of Education this morning, urging them to stick to the science standards their education and science experts recommended. Most of the recent amendments aim to kill the standards the scientists and educators wrote.
TFN tells how to write:
You can still weigh in by sending e-mails to board members at sboeteks@tea.state.tx.us. Texas Education Agency staff will distribute e-mails to board members.
You don’t think it’s serious? Here’s Don McLeroy explaining the purpose of one of his amendments:
Texas Freedom Network is live-blogging the hearings and proceedings from Austin, again today, before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). [I’ve changed the link to go to the TFN blog — that will take you to the latest post with latest news.] Testimony yesterday showed the coarse nature of the way SBOE treats science and scientists, and offered a lot of “balancing” testimony against evolution from people who appeared not to have ever read much science at all. The issue remains whether to force Texas kids to study false claims of scientific error about evolution.
I will be live blogging the Texas State Board of Education meeting of 2009 March 25-27 in this column. This includes the hearing devoted to public testimony beginning at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 25. I will stay through the final vote on Friday, March 27.
Go to the following webpages for further information:
If you’re not thinking of Edward R. Murrow’s reports from the roof of the building in London as the bombs fell, you’re not aware of how grave things are in Texas.
I will be live blogging the Texas State Board of Education meeting of 2009 March 25-27 in this column. This includes the hearing devoted to public testimony beginning at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, March 25. I will stay through the final vote on Friday, March 27.
Go to the following webpages for further information:
Last month science won a victory when members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) agreed to strip creationist, anti-science language out of biology standards.
New Texas Science Standards Will Be Debated and Voted Upon March 26-27 in Austin by the Texas State Board of Education — Public Testimony is March 25
Radical Religious-Right and Creationist members of the State Board of Education will attempt to keep the unscientific amendments in the Texas science standards that will damage science instruction and textbooks.
THE TEXAS SCIENCE STANDARDS SHOULD BE ADOPTED UNCHANGED!
The story of Saturday, May 26, 1838, a day which began an event the Cherokees would call Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu, “The Trail Where They Cried,” will be told from a new perspective at the premiere of “Trail of Tears” at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 10, in the Davidson Auditorium at the School of Management.
Production background information is available on the PBS We Shall Remainsite.
The third film in the five-part We Shall Remain series produced by PBS’ American Experience, “Trail of Tears” takes a new look at the United States government’s forced removal of thousands of Cherokees from their homes in the Southeastern United States, driving them toward Indian Territory in Eastern Oklahoma.
Admission is free; seating is first come, first served. The film premiere will be followed by a panel discussion with We Shall Remain executive producer Sharon Grimberg; Native American filmmaker Chris Eyre; and series adviser Dr. R. David Edmunds, the UT Dallas Anne and Chester Watson Professor in American History.
Especially for AP history students, this panel should provide a lot of grist for the thinking mills on questions about civil rights, genocidal actions, duties of citizens, and migration, immigration and settlement of the U.S.
North Texas high school teachers and students have great luck living in an area that includes the University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Arlington, and the University of Dallas. This film premiere is one more piece of that luck.
University of Texas at Dallas history professor, Dr. R. David Edmunds will take part in a panel discussion following the premiere of Trail of Tears.
It’s a compelling story that is often mistold. According to UTD’s press office:
For years, the Cherokee had resisted removal from their land in every way they knew. Convinced that white America rejected Native Americans because they were “savages,” Cherokee leaders established a republic with a Euro-American style legislature and legal system.
Many Cherokees became Christians and adopted Westernized education for their children. Their visionary principal chief, John Ross, would even take the Cherokees’ case to the Supreme Court, where he won a crucial recognition of tribal sovereignty that still resonates.
Though in the end the Cherokees’ embrace of “civilization” and their landmark legal victory proved no match for white land hunger and military power, the Cherokee people were able to build a new life in Oklahoma, far from the land that had sustained them for generations.
Edmunds, who is of Cherokee descent, is proud to be a part of the We Shall Remain crew because the series breaks with typical portrayals of Native Americans.
“The thing that sets the We Shall Remain series apart is its ability to get away from two of the biggest stereotypes of Native Americans: the Indian as a warrior and the Indian as a victim,” said Edmunds. “The portrayal of warfare between Native Americans and whites is abandoned for a view of the very civilized, very adaptive ways of the Cherokees, as they try to assimilate to imported culture in order to remain on their lands.
“Additionally, when you see ‘Trail of Tears,’ you’ll see Native Americans as actors in their own destiny. You’ll see them make decisions, which sometimes work and sometimes don’t, but it’s all part of the American experience.”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
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
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