For good reason, we now know. An opposite-editorial page article in the European edition shows why.
Richard Tren and Donald Roberts, two anti-environmentalist, anti-science lobbyists, wrote a slam at scientists, environmentalists, malaria fighters and the UN, making false claims that these people somehow botched the handling of DDT and allowed a lot of children to die. Tren, Roberts and the Wall Street Journal should be happy to know that their targeting essentially public figures, probably protects them from libel suits.
Most seriously, the article just gets the facts wrong. Facts of science and history — easily checked — are simply stated erroneously. Sometimes the statements are so greatly at odds with the facts, one might wonder if there was malignant intent to skew history and science.
This is journalistic and newspaper malpractice. Any national journal, like the WSJ, should have fact checkers to check out at least the basic claims of op-ed writers. Did Murdock fire them all? How can anyone trust any opinion expressed at the Journal when these guys get away with a yahoo-worthy, fact-challenged piece like this one?
Tren and Roberts make astounding errors of time and place, attributing to DDT magical powers to cross space and time. What are they thinking? Here are some of the errors the Journals fact checkers should have caught — did Murdoch fire all the fact checkers?
DDT wasn’t the tool used to eradicate malaria from the U.S. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control — an agency set up specifically to fight diseases like malaria — says malaria was effectively eradicated from the U.S. in 1939. DDT’s pesticide capabilities were discovered in mid-1939, but DDT was not available to fight malaria, for civilians, for another seven years. DDT does not time travel.
DDT doesn’t have a great track record beating malaria, anywhere. Among nations that have beaten malaria, including the U.S., the chief tools used were other than pesticides. Among nations where DDT is still used, malaria is endemic. DDT helped, but there is no place on Earth that beat malaria solely by spraying to kill mosquitoes. Any malaria fighter will tell you that more must be done, especially in improving medical care, and in creating barriers to keep mosquitoes from biting.
Beating malaria in the U.S. involved draining breeding areas, screening windows to stop mosquitoes from entering homes, and boosting medical care and public health efforts. These methods are the only methods that have worked, over time, to defeat malaria. Pesticides can help in a well-managed malaria eradication campaign, but no campaign based on spraying pesticides has ever done more than provide a temporary respite against malaria.
DDT is not a magic bullet against malaria. Nations that have used DDT continuously and constantly since 1946, like Mexico, and almost like South Africa, have the same malaria problems other nations have. Nations that have banned DDT have no malaria.
DDT has never been banned across most of the planet. Even under the pesticide treaty that specifically targets DDT-classes of pesticides for phase out, there is a special exception for DDT. DDT was manufactured in the U.S. long after it was banned for agricultural use, and it is manufactured today in India and China. It is freely available to any government who wishes to use it.
People in malaria-prone areas are not stupid. Tren and Roberts expect you to believe that people in malaria-prone nations are too stupid to buy cheap DDT and use it to save their children, but instead require people like Tren and Roberts to tell them what to do. That’s a pretty foul argument on its face.
DDT is a dangerous poison, uncontrollable in the wild. Tren and Roberts suggest that DDT is relatively harmless, and that people were foolish to be concerned about it. They ignore the two federal trials that established DDT was harmful, and the court orders under which EPA (dragging its feet) compiled a record of DDT’s destructive potential thousands of pages long. They ignore the massive fishkills in Texas and Oklahoma, they ignore the astounding damage to reproduction of birds, and the bioaccumulation quality of the stuff, which means that all living things accumulate larger doses as DDT rises through the trophic levels of the food chain. Predatory birds in American estuaries got doses of DDT multiplied millions of times over what was applied to be toxic to the smallest organisms.
DDT was banned in the U.S. because it destroys entire ecosystems. The U.S. ban prohibited its use on agriculture crops, but allowed use to fight malaria or other diseases, or for other emergencies. Under these emergency rules, DDT was used to fight the tussock moth infestation in western U.S. forests in the 1970s.
Again, DDT’s ban in the U.S. was not based on a threat to human health.DDT was banned because it destroys natural ecosystems. So any claim that human health effects are not large, misses the point. However, we should not forget that DDT is a known carcinogen to mammals (humans are mammals). DDT is listed as a “probable human carcinogen” by the American Cancer Society and every other cancer-fighting agency on Earth. Why didn’t the Journal’s fact checkers bother to call their local cancer society? DDT is implicated as a threat to human health, as a poison, as a carcinogen, and as an endocrine disruptor. Continued research since 1972 has only confirmed that DDT poses unknown, but most likely significant threats to human health. No study has ever been done that found DDT to be safe to humans.
Slandering the World Health Organization (WHO), Rachel Carson, the thousands of physicians in Africa and Asia who fight malaria, or environmentalists who have exposed the dangers of DDT, does nothing to help save anyone from malaria.
Tren and Roberts have a new book out, a history of DDT. I suspect that much of the good they have to say about DDT is true and accurate. Their distortions of history, and their refusal to look at the mountain of science evidence that warns of DDT’s dangers is all the more puzzling.
No world class journal should allow such an ill-researched piece to appear, even as an opinion. Somebody should have done some fact checking, and made those corrections before the piece hit publication.
If you’re teaching world history, or art, or government, or environmental science, or geography, this might be a great blog to track.
Senegal is a very interesting place. Note on the map how it completely surrounds its neighbor nation of The Gambia.
Senegal, map courtesy of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
France held the nation as a colony once upon a time, from 1850 to independence of the Mali Federation in 1960 — one of the national languages is French, but regional languages are numerous, Wolof, Soninke, Seereer-Siin, Fula, Maninka, and Diola. The Mali Federation was short-lived, and Senegal broke off in August of 1960.
If you listen to NPR, you’ve probably heard their reporter signing off in that distinct way she does, “Tthis is Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, for NPR, in Dah-KAHHH!” (Not to be confused with Dacca, Pakistan).
The French colonies of Senegal and the French Sudan were merged in 1959 and granted their independence as the Mali Federation in 1960. The union broke up after only a few months. Senegal joined with The Gambia to form the nominal confederation of Senegambia in 1982, but the envisaged integration of the two countries was never carried out, and the union was dissolved in 1989. The Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC) has led a low-level separatist insurgency in southern Senegal since the 1980s, and several peace deals have failed to resolve the conflict. Nevertheless, Senegal remains one of the most stable democracies in Africa. Senegal was ruled by a Socialist Party for 40 years until current President Abdoulaye WADE was elected in 2000. He was reelected in February 2007, but has amended Senegal’s constitution over a dozen times to increase executive power and weaken the opposition, part of the President’s increasingly autocratic governing style. Senegal has a long history of participating in international peacekeeping and regional mediation.
The country is tropical, hot and humid. Geographically, it is low, rolling plains.
Dakar is about as far west as one can go on the African continent. (See the map inset — Senegal is in dark green).
Senegal has iron ores, and phosphorus (ancient bird droppings?). It’s not a rich nation, but it’s better off than many developing countries.
Adkins is in for a great adventure, no?
Africa, showing Senegal - CIA Factbook
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
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.
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.
Informing Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein that Georgia is a republic, not a democracy; recognizing the great differences between these two forms of government; and for other purposes.
WHEREAS, on March 16, 2010, Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein appeared before the Georgia General Assembly for the State of the Judiciary address, and in her speech Chief Justice Hunstein mistakenly called the State of Georgia a democracy; and
WHEREAS, the State of Georgia is, in fact, a republic and it is important that all Georgians know the difference between a republic and a democracy -– especially the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court; and
WHEREAS, the word “republic” comes from the Latin res publica, which means “the public thing” or “the law,” while the word “democracy” comes from the Greek words demos and kratein, which translates to “the people to rule”; and
WHEREAS, most synonymous with majority rule, democracy was condemned by the Founding Fathers of the United States, who closely studied the history of both democracies and republics before drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and
WHEREAS, the Founding Fathers recognized that the rights given to man by God should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be restrained by a king or monarch; and
WHEREAS, it is common knowledge that the Pledge of Allegiance contains the phrase “and to the Republic”; and
WHEREAS, as he exited the deliberations of the so-called Constitutional Convention of 1787, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin told the awaiting crowd they have “A republic, if you can keep it”; and
WHEREAS, a republic is a government of law, not of man, which is why the United States Constitution does not contain the word democracy and mandates that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”; and
WHEREAS, in 1928, the War Department of the United States defined democracy in Training Manual No. 2000–25 as a “government of the masses” which “[r]esults in mobocracy,” communistic attitudes to property rights, “demagogism, … agitation, discontent, [and] anarchy”; …
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that the members of this body recognize the difference between a democracy and a republic and inform Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein that the State of Georgia is a republic and not a democracy….
Tip of the scrub brush to the Volokh Conspiracy, where you’ll find erudite and entertaining comment, and where Eugene Volokh wrote:
Now maybe this is just a deep inside joke, but if it’s meant to be serious then it strikes me as the worst sort of pedantry. (I distinguish this from my pedantry, which is the best sort of pedantry.)
Whatever government Georgia has, and whatever government the English language has, it is not government by ancient Romans, ancient Greeks, the War Department Training Manual, or even the Pledge of Allegiance. “Democracy” today includes, among other meanings, “Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In mod. use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.” That’s from the Oxford English Dictionary, but if you prefer the American Heritage Dictionary, try “Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.” Government by the people’s representatives is included within democracy, as is government by the people directly.
“Joke” is an accurate description, but one that escapes the sponsors and irritates the impedants on the Texas SBOE.
When legislatures have too much time on their hands, and engage in such hystrionics, one wonders whether the legislature wouldn’t be better off left in the dark by not inviting the views of the Chief Justice in the future. Perhaps the Chief Justice should decline any invitation offered.
What we now know is that some Georgia legislators are all het up about the difference between a republic and a democracy, though I’ll wager none of them could pass an AP world history or European history quiz on Rome and Greece. And what is really revealed is that some Georgia legislators don’t know their burros from a burrow.
You can also be sure of this: Such action is exactly what the so-called conservatives on the Texas SBOE wish to have happen from their diddling of social studies standards.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I am forever grateful for that nameless White female, who, in her clunky shoes and calf-length tweed skirts, passed out poems on mimeograph paper to her first-grade students. When talking to students myself, I often tell the story of the very prim and ebony Mrs. Covington who challenged her junior high school English class to memorize “Invictus” before telling us who had authored the poem.
Words to teach by. “Invictus?” You know it, even if you don’t think you do.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
At the age of 12, Henley became a victim of tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated at the age of 25. In 1867, he successfully passed the Oxford local examination as a senior student. In 1875, he wrote the “Invictus” poem from a hospital bed. Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his death at the age of 53.
What came after Paul Revere’s ride? The Battle of Lexington, and the Battle of Concord.
Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” was written in 1860, 23 years after Emerson wrote “The Concord Hymn” for the dedication of the monument to the Minutemen at Concord Bridge.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Malaria plagues too many nations, still. Between 400 million and 500 million people in the world get infected with one form of the malaria parasites every year. About a million die, most of those children. Death disproportionately strikes pregnant women, too.
World Health Organization (WHO) chart on the life cycle of malaria
Advances in medicines and advances in controls of the insects that help transmit the disease led to several campaigns to eradicate the disease over the past 60 years. Malaria no longer torments most of Europe and most of North America, but it remains a serious, economy-crippling disease across Africa and Asia.
Malaria also poses as a political football. Over the next couple of weeks you can find dozens of articles on valiant efforts to fight malaria, including the RollBack Malaria Campaign, and efforts by the Gates Foundation and histories of the work of the Rockefeller Foundation. But you can also find a pernicious political campaign against malaria fighters and “environmentalists,” claiming that DDT is a magic potion that could have ridded the world of malaria by killing off all the mosquitoes, if only that great mass murderer, Rachel Carson, had not imposed her will on the unstable dictators of African nations who did all they could to prove to Ms. Carson that they were environmentally friendly by banning DDT.
Over the next two weeks I will ask myself a hundred times, why do these people fiddle with trying to impugn scientists, physicians and environmentalists, while fevers burn in the brains of children across Africa and Asia?
U.S. Postal Service stamp commemorating Longfellow and the poem about Paul Revere's Ride, from 2007 - image from Bowdoin College: The stamp by artist Kazuhiko Sano features an older Longfellow based on a photograph taken around 1876. The background pictures evoke Paul Revere’s Ride with a glimpse of the steeple of the Old North Church, where “a second lamp in the belfry burns” to indicate the arrival of the British by sea.
WhereMinute Man National Historical Park, Concord and Lincoln (map)
DescriptionMinute Man National Historical Park, in partnership with hundreds of Colonial and British reenactors, celebrates the opening battle of the American Revolution with a day full of exciting living history activities. At Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln, from 9:30 to 5:30, you will have the chance to talk with reenactors and park rangers, see a historic home and tavern that stood witness to the events of April, 19, 1775, and enjoy a variety of 18th-century activities including demonstrations of musket drill, artillery, crafts, and games. At 8:30 am, the Commemoration of the North Bridge Fight in Concord shatters the peace of the countryside with the sounds of marching men and musketry. British and Colonial Reenactors, Park Rangers and Volunteers bring the fateful morning of April 19, 1775, to life in this stirring commemoration of “the shot heard round the world.” Parking for North Bridge events is on Monument Street; the NPS staff will direct you. At 12:30 pm, the Bloody Angle Tactical Demonstration features hundreds of British and Colonial Reenactors encamped at the Hartwell Tavern and Captain William Smith house in Lincoln. They will stage a running tactical weapons demonstration along a half-mile of the original Battle Road. Hartwell Tavern is located on Rt 2A in Lincoln; NPS staff will direct you to parking.
WherePaul Revere House, 19 North Square, Boston (map)
DescriptionEnjoy a lively concert of music that accompanied colonists as they marched, danced, wooed their beloveds, and waged war. David Vose and Jim Snarski provide fascinating insight into each selection they perform. Free with museum admission: adults $3.50, seniors and college students $3.00, children ages 5-17 $1.00. Members and North End residents admitted free at all times.
But of course, we studied the Civil War in our U.S. history classes last fall, in the first six weeks, as a review of what the students were supposed to get in 8th grade.
In your classroom, how do you deal with anniversaries when they are out of the current course of study? How have you seen it done well?
The Surrender, by Keith Rocco – image from National Park Service, via Pillar to Post
The frequently quotable Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., circa 1930. Edited photograph from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Original photo by Harris & Ewing. LC-USZ62-47817. Copyright expired.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., attributed. (see Felix Frankfurter, Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court, Harvard University Press, 1961, page 71.)
I found reference to the quote in a book about eminent economists, through Google Scholar:
Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies
By Michael Szenberg
Published by Cambridge University Press, 1993
320 pages
On page 201, Szenberg refers Holmes’s view of “taxation as the price of liberty.” In a footnote, he points to Justice Frankfurter’s book. The quote is dolled up a little. According to Szenberg’s footnote:
More precisely, he rebuked a secretary’s query of “Don’t you hate to pay taxes?” with “No, young fellow, I like paying taxes, with them I buy civilization.”
Frankfurter is a reliable source. It’s likely Holmes said something very close to the words Friedman used.
April 13 should be a holiday, don’t you think? Religious Freedom Day, or Public Education Day, or Self-evident Truths Day — something to honor Thomas Jefferson.
Here’s another opportunity to put real, cutting edge technology in your classroom. In fact, your kids could probably invent all sorts of new uses for it.
Have you even heard of this stuff? Can you use it, live, with the equipment you’ve got?
Blaise Aguera y Arcas of MicroSoft demonstrated augmented-reality maps using the power of Bing maps, Flickr, Worldwide Telescope, Video overlays and Photosynth, to an appreciative and wowed audience at TEDS:
My prediction: One more advance in computer technology that classrooms will not see in a timely or useful manner.
But have you figured out how to use this stuff in your geography, history, economics or government classes? Please tell us about it in comments. Give examples and links, please.
It’s not exactly family safe, so I’ll link. For a college class, I’d ask students to determine if the piece is accurate, and if not, what really happened.
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.
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
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 