National Guard history: First African American Medal of Honor

March 18, 2009

From the National Guard Image Gallery: The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was recruited in the spring of 1863 by Governor John Andrew, who had secured the reluctant permission of the War Department to create a regiment of African-American soldiers. Like all Massachusetts Civil War soldiers, the 54ths men were enlisted in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. These Guardsmen would serve as a test case for many skeptical whites who believed that blacks could not be good soldiers. The battle that proved they could was fought on Morris Island, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. Following three days of skirmishes and forced marches with little rest, and 24 hours with no food, the regimental commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, requested the perilous honor of leading the attack of Fort Wagner, a sand and palmetto log bastion. As night fell, 600 men of the 54th advanced with bayonets fixed. Despite withering cannon and rifle fire, the men sustained their charge until they reached the top of the rampart. There, Colonel Shaw was mortally wounded. There, also, Sergeant William Carney, who had earlier taken up the National Colors when the color sergeant had been shot, planted the flag and fought off numerous attempts by the Confederates to capture it. Without support, and faced with superior numbers and firepower, the 54th was forced to pull back. Despite two severe wounds, Sergeant Carney carried the colors to the rear. When praised for his bravery, he modestly replied, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground. Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, the first African-American to receive the award. The 54th Massachusetts suffered 270 casualties in the failed assault, but the greater message was not lost: some 180,000 African-American soldiers followed in the footsteps of these gallant Guardsmen, and proved that African-American soldiers could, indeed, fight heroically if given the opportunity.

From the National Guard Image Gallery: Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 1863; "The Old Flag Never Touched the Ground": The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was recruited in the spring of 1863 by Governor John Andrew, who had secured the reluctant permission of the War Department to create a regiment of African-American soldiers. Like all Massachusetts Civil War soldiers, the 54th's men were enlisted in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. These Guardsmen would serve as a test case for many skeptical whites who believed that blacks could not be good soldiers. The battle that proved they could was fought on Morris Island, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. Following three days of skirmishes and forced marches with little rest, and 24 hours with no food, the regimental commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, requested the perilous honor of leading the attack of Fort Wagner, a sand and palmetto log bastion. As night fell, 600 men of the 54th advanced with bayonets fixed. Despite withering cannon and rifle fire, the men sustained their charge until they reached the top of the rampart. There, Colonel Shaw was mortally wounded. There, also, Sergeant William Carney, who had earlier taken up the National Colors when the color sergeant had been shot, planted the flag and fought off numerous attempts by the Confederates to capture it. Without support, and faced with superior numbers and firepower, the 54th was forced to pull back. Despite two severe wounds, Sergeant Carney carried the colors to the rear. When praised for his bravery, he modestly replied, "I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground." Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, the first African-American to receive the award. The 54th Massachusetts suffered 270 casualties in the failed assault, but the greater message was not lost: some 180,000 African-American soldiers followed in the footsteps of these gallant Guardsmen, and proved that African-American soldiers could, indeed, fight heroically if given the opportunity.

This is one of a series of artworks describing the history of the National Guard.  A sizable gallery of art covers the first muster of a militia in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1637, through rescue and recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Along the way are highlights such as Lexington and Concord, Teddy Roosevelt’s New Mexico Rough Riders in Cuba, including Fort Wagner and the return of General Lafayette.  With some caution on accuracy, these are good for classroom use (the Rough Riders picture shows a man on horseback, but I understand the Rough Riders’ horses had not yet arrived when they stormed up San Juan Hill; it took more than 30 years for Carney to get his medal, etc.).


Leave a Comment » | Heroes, History, History images, Images, Medal of Honor, Military History, War | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Campolo: Still wrong on evolution

March 18, 2009

I’ve been itching to get at Tony Campolo’s republication of his errors on evolution and intelligent design.  There’s a lot on my “to do” list.

Mike at Tangled Up In Blue Guy has beat me to it, and probably done it better than I could have.  Go read, “Is, and ought, and Darwinism.”  I agree.

Related material at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Education, History, Racism, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Michael Hinojosa, Arne Duncan: Are you listening?

March 17, 2009

NYC Educator spells out the difficulties.  It’s not the teachers’ fault when the major systems needed to run a school don’t work — like the lights, heat, phones, furniture, plumbing, etc.

But these guys who tell us the teachers need to be fired — do you think they ever feel the pain?

When was the last time one of these school superintendents had to run a copy machine, let alone repair it before it would run, or bring their own paper to have something to make copies on?

We’re coming up on National Poetry Month; I’d like to find who was the author of this poem:

MY JOB

It’s not my job to run the train, the whistle I can’t blow.

It’s not for me to say how far the train’s allowed to go.

I’m not allowed to blow off steam, nor even clang the bell.

But let the damn thing jump the tracks, and see who catches hell!

Another version here.

Leave a Comment » | Business Ethics, Education quality, Education reform | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Disturbing the universe: National Poetry Month, 2009

March 17, 2009

Poster for National Poetry Month 2009 (April) - Poster by Paul Sahre for American Academy of Poets

Poster for National Poetry Month 2009 (April) - Poster by Paul Sahre for American Academy of Poets (click on image for more information)

4 Comments | Life, literacy, Literature, Poetry | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

James Madison, Father of the Constitution, March 16

March 16, 2009

Col. James Madison of the Virginia Militia, Citizen Soldier – National Guard image

Col. James Madison of the Virginia Militia, Citizen Soldier – National Guard image

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 — date depending on which calendar you use.

Madison was one of our nation’s top two legislating presidents, on a par with Lyndon Johnson.  The essential ally for the creation of America, he is known as the Father of the Constitution for his work to shepherd that compact into existence.  A great ally of George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, and sometimes nemesis of some of these men, Madison campaigned for freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press his entire life.

Madison was delegate to the Virginia assembly, and wrote freedom of religion into the Virginia Bill of Rights.  He wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance defending religious freedom and opposing re-establishment of religion in Virgina, led the assembly to pass instead Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, helped settle the dispute over fishing and navigation in the Chesapeake, between Virginia and Maryland.  In league with George Washington, he convinced the Continental Congress to try to fix the Articles of Confederation with a convention in Philadelphia in 1787, then he hijacked the convention to write a new charter instead.  He wrote most of the Federalist Papers, with Alexander Hamilton, after John Jay was attacked and beaten by a mob.  He campaigned and won a seat in the First Congress, defeating the popular James Monroe who then became his fast friend.  Madison proposed and was chief sponsor of the 12 amendments to the Constitution that we now know as the Bill of Rights — two of the amendments did not win approval in 1791, but one of those did win approval in 1992 — so Madison wrote the first ten and the twenty-seventh amendments to the Constitution.

Electratig has a fine commentary on Madison and his birthday here, explaining the calendar shenanigans.

Go read the First Amendment, read a newspaper, and watch some news; say a prayer, and thank the stars and God for James Madison.

2 Comments | Bill of Rights, Heroes, History, James Madison, Presidents, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hang George Washington . . .

March 16, 2009

. . . in your school.

George Washington, the porthole portrait by Rembrandt Peale

George Washington, the "porthole portrait" by Rembrandt Peale

I have a tie from the Save the Children Foundation, a picture drawn by a young child that shows a teacher in a classroom, with portraits of Washington, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on the classroom wall.  Where have those portraits gone?

At Mount Vernon this past weekend, with more than 20 teachers at the seminar I attended, a significant majority of us remembered those portraits in our classrooms.  Most of us don’t have such portraits today.

The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the group that saved Mount Vernon and operates it today, has  program to donate a large, canvas portrait of Washington to your school, the George Washington Portrait Program.  Two thousand schools have already received the framed portraits, and the program to distribute them, free of charge, to schools, has been extended.

Portraits come with an educational kit — a U.S. flag, flown at General Washington’s home, lesson plans for elementary schools, and a CD-ROM with information for middle and high schools.

Here are the instructions on how to request a portrait for your school.  Here is more information on the program. If you can afford to make a donation, feel free.

Portrait of George Washington, available free to schools, displayed on the grounds of Mount Vernon. Photo, Mount Vernon Ladies Association

Portrait of George Washington, available free to schools, displayed on the grounds of Mount Vernon. Photo, Mount Vernon Ladies Association

Leave a Comment » | Art, George Washington, History, History and art, History images, Patriotism, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

George Washington wrote here: “Dear Dickey . . .”

March 16, 2009

TO RICHARD HENRY LEE
Dear Dickey:
I thank you very much for the pretty picture book you
gave me. Sam asked me to show him the pictures and I
showed him all the pictures in it; and I read to him how
the lame elephant took care of the master’s little son. I
can read three or four pages sometimes without missing
a word. Ma says I may go to see you and stay all day
with you next week if it be not rainy. She says I may
ride my pony Hero if Uncle Sam will go with me and lead
Hero. I have a little piece of poetry about the picture
book you gave me, but I mustn’t tell you who wrote the
poetry.

G. W.’s compliments to R.H.L.,

And likes his book full well,

Henceforth will count him his friend,

And hopes many happy days he may spend.

Your good friend,

George Washington

Letter to a very young Richard Henry Lee, from a very young George Washington

It’s one of the earliest samples of George Washington’s writing we have.  I don’t have a date for the letter, but it is likely to have been prior to 1743, when his father died.  This letter was probably written before George was 11.

Can you imagine George Washington as a giggling little boy? He was.  We have the letters to prove it. I like this letter simply because it offers a view of George Washington too rarely thought of or talked about.

Richard Henry Lee remained a friend of Washington’s until Washington died.   Lee was the man who made the motion at the 2nd Continental Congress that the colonies declare independence from England.   Lee was about a month older than Washington, born January 20, 1732.  He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and was President of the Continental Congress.

That these two men were childhood friends is a delightful little historical nugget.

Grant Woods painting illustrating Parson Weems telling the story of George Washingtons honesty.

Grant Wood's famous 1939 painting illustrating Parson Weems telling the story of George Washington's honesty. "Parson Weems' Fable" hangs in the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Grant Wood, the great American painter, couldn’t imagine Washington as a boy, either.  This painting, showing Parson Weems’s version of a story about Washington’s honesty that has not held up to scrutiny as accurate, shows the difficulty Wood expressed:  Washington is portrayed as a child with an adult, bewigged head — a homonculus.  The painting hangs in the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Maybe some of your troubling students will grow up good and honest, too.  Do we know what would push our students to be such model citizens?  Do we know what influenced Washington?

Adult influences in Washington’s early life were not so good as some might imagine.  His father died when he was 11.  At some point he became estranged from his mother, with her repeated accusations that all her children ignored her (to Washington’s great embarrassment).  Washington’s other great adult male influence was his half-brother Lawrence.  George was sent to live with his Lawrence, but Lawrence died in 1752, when George was turning 20.  Also, Washington got little direction from him after he went to sea with the British.

By the time he was 20, Washington was a military commander in the Virginia militia, making adult decisions and living in an adult world.  Where did his childhood go?  What was it that enabled him to pick himself up and aspire to greatness so often, in so many different ways?  What was it bent the twig of the childhood Washington, who grew into the great man the adult Washington became?

You can find this letter in William B. Allen’s George Washington, A Collection, 1998 Liberty Fund.  Liberty Fund wishes to spread these works as far as possible, and so has made the book available on-line.  It is loaded with materials great for DBQs in AP classes, and other readings that should inspire discussion by students and assignments from teachers that make students think.

He may not have chopped down a cherry tree, but Washington most certainly was a child.  What will our students make of this letter?

1 Comment | DBQ sources, George Washington, Heroes, Historic documents, History, History Methods and Tools, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

4 Stone Hearth, Bone edition

March 16, 2009

Oh, yeah, they call it the Ossa Edition.  Or OSSA Edition — but they are the Swedish Osteological Association, and we all know they mean bones.

4 Stone Hearth #62 is up at Osteologiska föreningen.

Great stuff, as usual.

And I mention it because Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub will host the next edition of 4 Stone Hearth.  No bones about it.

Since I am dense as a stone about some of the great issues this carnival involves, I’m hopeful there will be plenty of good, early entries . . .

The Four Stone Hearth is a blog carnival that specializes in anthropology in the widest (American) sense of that word. Here, anthropology is the study of humankind, throughout all times and places, focussing primarily on four lines of research:

  • archaeology
  • socio-cultural anthropology
  • bio-physical anthropology
  • linguistic anthropology

Each one of these subfields is a stone in our hearth.

Four Stone Hearth is published bi-weekly, Wednesdays in odd-number weeks. If you would like to host the carnival, please write to Martin Rundkvist.

If you would like to submit content to the next issue of the carnival, please write to the keeper of the blog in question [Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub] or to Martin. You are encouraged to submit other bloggers’ work as well as your own.

So, cook something up to bring to the next Four Stone Hearth.  It’s pot luck, the more stuff you bring, the more to share.  Please include a mention of Four Stone Hearth in your e-mail’s title. I get a lot of e-mail, and I hate to miss anything important.

In the interim, take a good look at FSH #62.   Several posts drive directly at the work scientists do with wonderful details about how they do it.  It’s a bit of a slog to follow me to this conclusion, but I was struck by the amount of work required, the careful ways these guys go about it, and the way the work itself rather exposes the paucity of grounding of pseudo sciences.  Science is under attack here in Texas, so I’m a little sensitive to that issue.  Give it a look.

I love a good carnival!

Leave a Comment » | Ancient history, Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Research, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Snow at Mount Vernon; Washington still hot

March 15, 2009

The photos don’t show the beauty, nor do they capture the wonderful quiet that accompanied it.

It snowed briefly and lightly at George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon Friday morning.

Snow at the Quarters, Mount Vernon, Virginia, March 13, 2009 - copyright Ed Darrell

Snow at the Quarters, Mount Vernon, Virginia, March 13, 2009 - copyright Ed Darrell

Al fresco dining would have  been cool, and wet.

Snow on tables, The Quarter, Mount Vernon, Virginia - copyright 2009 by Ed Darrell

Snow on tables, The Quarters, Mount Vernon, Virginia - copyright 2009 by Ed Darrell

Inside, a few minutes later, the conversation was hot.  We opened with a session the night before, and post-dinner meeting with William B. Allen, the editor of a recent collection of George Washington’s papers.  Allen is suave, with a perfectly-modulated baritone voice.  He doesn’t just speak in properly punctuated, grammatically correct paragraphs.  He speaks in chapters that summarize volumes.

Among other telling gems, Allen noted that Washington, who is often regarded as an intellectual inferior to Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton and others, because he “wrote so little,” has had his collected published papers now pass the 100 volume mark.  Reading the letters in full, as we did much of at this meeting, reveals Gen. Washington as little else can.

You should read yourself some Washington.

Tip of the old scrub brush, again, to the Bill of Rights Institute and Liberty Fund, sponsors and organizers of this event.

Leave a Comment » | George Washington, History, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

George Washington’s influence on American geography

March 15, 2009

A quick snippet of learning from my stay at Mount Vernon:

How many places are named after Washington?  How many schools?

At the relatively new museum here I found a display that notes how Americans have honored our First President by naming things after him:

  • 26 mountains
  • 740 schools
  • 155 places (the exhibit said “155 cities and counties,” but the map also showed the State of Washington)

(All of this comes without the aid of a George Washington Legacy Project to inflate his importance and the love of Americans for his work!)

George Washington can still lay claim to his friend Richard Lee’s eulogy, as “first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

I found the display on place names on the way out of the Education Center — a place designed to help visiting teachers learn about resources available for classroom use.

Of course the group works to help teachers who can’t visit at the moment, too.  To that end they’ve published online a series of lesson plans developed by the George Washington Teachers’ Institute, a summer residency program that provides professional development.

Check out the lesson plans at http://www.mountvernon.org.  Lesson plans are here.  I particularly liked the political cartoons included in this lesson plan, all drawn by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists.

Renovations and new construction at Mount Vernon during the past decade have made the place a much more valuable resource for teachers and students.

Let’s tip the entire Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub to the Bill of Rights Institute and Liberty Fund, who sponsored the program at Mount Vernon.

2 Comments | George Washington, History, History museums, Lesson plans, Political cartoons | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cargo cults in global warming, and Arthur Robinson

March 14, 2009

Cargo cult science has deep roots among those who deny global warming or who allow that warming is occurring, but claim we can do nothing about it.  So, it’s no surprise that, at the voodoo science 2nd International Conference on Climate Change, somebody would trot out the old falsehoods about DDT.

According to Traditional Catholic Reflections (you can tell its traditional Catholic because it brooks no comments — you can’t correct an error there):

Speaking at the conference hosted by the Heartland Institute in New York City,[Dr. Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine] said, “There is a current example of genocide by the removal of technology, and that is the ban on DDT, and that has resulted in the deaths of 30 to 40 million people and has left half a billion infected with malaria.”

It’s malaria that kills people, not a lack of DDT.  The removal of DDT from spraying cotton crops  in Texas and California did absolutely nothing to promote malaria in Africa.  Dr. Robinson needs a basic geography course.  Mosquitoes do not migrate from the U.S. to Africa or Asia.

Stopping the spraying of DDT in the U.S. in 1972 wasn’t a factor in the cessation of usage of DDT in Africa seven years earlier, either.  Dr. Robinson could use some basic math sequencing and calendar reading remediation, too.

Dr. Robinson could use some history and public policy instruction, too.  DDT was never banned in Africa, nor was it banned in India or China which together now produce almost all the DDT used in the world, which is a lot.  There’s no ban on DDT in Uganda, where Dr. Robinson’s friends in the business world are suing to stop the spraying of DDT in huts in affected regions — because they are afraid it will harm their tobacco business.

It’s a heckuva lot easier to throw darts at health care workers and disease fighters than it is to talk about real solutions with these guys.

If Robinson is dead wrong on a one-liner about DDT, how wrong do you think he is in the rest of his presentation on climate change?

Is there any crackpot “scientist” who was not at the Heartland Institute’s wing-ding?

18 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Cargo Cults, Climate change, DDT, Disease, Global warming, Health care, Malaria, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Encore post: Feynman and the inconceivable nature of nature

March 14, 2009

[This is an Encore Post, from August 2007 — just as it appeared then.  See especially the links on textbook selection processes, and “cargo cult” science, at the bottom.]

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.  [2009 Update:  James is studying physics in the wilds of Wisconsin, finals week at Lawrence University next week — study hard, and good luck, James!]

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.

3 Comments | Cargo Cults, Education, Feynman, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Heroes, History, History video sources, Manhattan Project, Physics, Science, Textbook Selection, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Worldwide Web – 20 years ago, March 13

March 14, 2009

Almost missed this one:  The Web traces its birth to a meeting 20 years ago, on March 13.  Details at Daily Wireless.org.

Quaint drawings, no?

Leave a Comment » | History, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Great Depression in music and images – look what good film can do

March 14, 2009

History is Elementary once again shows why we ought to be reading her stuff regularly, pointing to the short film “Pennyland” by Eddie and Frank Thomas.

I dare you to plug that into your lesson plans, teachers.  When you do, drop back and tell us in comments what you did, will you?

More:

Leave a Comment » | Bell Ringers, Great Depression, History, History and art, History audio sources, History images, History Methods and Tools, History video sources, Movies, Music, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fighting cargo cult science

March 13, 2009

Creationism is not taught at any major university, as science.  It’s difficult to find creationism taught in any curriculum, including theology schools, because it’s not a part of the theology of most Christian sects.  And yet, creationism continues to pose hurdles to good science education in almost every state (especially Texas).

The hard work of spreading creationism is long entrenched, and continuing, though largely out of the view of most observers of cultural and scientific trends.

For example, consider this blog by a guy who teaches creationism at Bryan College.  It’s been discovered by supporters of science education — but what can anybody do about it?  P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula noted the non-scientific contents of the stuff being taught.  That’s not really enough.

We need to more aggressively promote good science teaching in public schools.

Here’s one thing we might do, as I noted in the comments at Pharyngula.  We need to create institutions to aggressively promote good, powerful science teaching.  Here is what I wrote there, essentially.

Notice that this is Bryan College that Todd Wood preaches at, the college set up to honor William Jennings Bryan, the creationist prosecutor from the Scopes trial. This is part of the evidence that scientists and other lovers of science and good education slept too long on some of these issues (“While Science Slept” might be a good essay somewhere).

Remember Scopes lost his case, and was fined; the overturning on appeal was due to a technical error in the fine, not due to other obviously major flaws in the law (which was signed and promoted by Gov. Austin Peay, who also has a college named after him).  The law against teaching human evolution remained effective in Tennessee until after 1967, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Epperson v. Arkansas — which finally persuaded the Tennessee legislature to repeal the act.

Some people thought H. L. Mencken’s mocking judgment on the Scopes trial was final. Not creationists. While the rest of the world went on, fundamentalists developed a powerful, out-of-the-major-media network to spread and promote their ideas. Part of this network was the establishment of Bryan College, and to some degree, I think Austin Peay State University (though, as a state university with serious intentions on educating people, APSU is in the evolution camp in curricula).

Why is there no Clarence Darrow College? Why is there no John T. Scopes Institute for Teachers (say, at the University of Chicago, where Scopes went back for his advanced degree)?

Unless we get out there and fight in the trenches of education and religion and culture, evolution will continue to face silly opposition. Feynman warned us of the dangers of cargo cult science. (Honestly, though, Wood’s stuff looks like cargo cult cargo cultism, it’s so far removed from real science — doesn’t it?)

In the end it’s odd that a progressive-on-most-issues guy like Bryan would be memorialized by naming a college after him to preserve his most profound errors. It’s effective propaganda. I’d be willing to wager Bryan would have come around to evolution with the evidence stacked as it is now. His error was emotional and theological, I think. Education can prevent and correct such error.  Bryan College doesn’t do that in evolution — something else needs to be done to fight what Bryan College does.

The John T. Scopes Institute for Teachers could run in the summer months, it should have a thousand teachers of science from primary and secondary education in every session, and it should emphasize the best methods for teaching the best science we have. We really need such an agency — or agencies — now. Our children lose interest in science between fourth grade and graduation, their achievement in science plunges in comparison to other nations.

Our economy suffers as a result.

Creationists have Bryan College to help them spread their versions of cargo cult science, with that mission specifically in mind. We can fight fire with fire, but we have to fight ignorance with education. And, my friends in science education, we are behind.

4 Comments | Cargo Cults, Creationism, Education, Education quality, Evolution, Higher education, Science, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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