It’s a good discussion of the impact one citizen’s vote really makes, a discussion leavened by the science background of Revere. The article would make a wonderful warm-up exercise for classes in civics, government, economics and U.S. history.
Voting is a privilege, but it’s also a duty of good citizenship. Should we require people to vote, by law, with criminal penalties for those who fail to make a choice at the polls?
What do you think?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Must government agencies be “neutral” between science and non-science, between evolution and intelligent design?
The Texas Education Agency lost it’s long-time science curriculum expert Chris Comer last year in a sad incident in which Comer was criticized for siding with Texas education standards on evolution rather than remaining neutral between evolution and intelligent design.
Comes now Timothy Sandefur of the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation with an article in the Chapman Law Review which argues that science is solid, a good way of determining good from bad, dross from gold. Plus, Sandefur refutes claims that evolution is religion, and so illegal in public schools. TEA’s position in the Comer affair is shown to be not defensible legally; Sandefur’s article also points out that the post-modern relativism of the TEA’s argument is damaging to the search for knowledge and freedom, too.
In short, Sandefur’s article demonstrates that the position of the Texas Education Agency is untenable in liberty and U.S. law.
Moreover, science is an essential part of the training for a free citizen because the values of scientific discourse — respect, freedom to dissent, and a demand for logical, reasoned arguments supported by evidence — create a common ground for people of diverse ethnicities and cultures. In a nation made up of people as different as we are, a commitment to tolerance and the search for empirically verifiable, logically established, objective truth suggests a path to peace and freedom. Our founding fathers understood this. Professor Sherry has said it well: “it is difficult to envision a civic republican polity — at least a polity with any diversity of viewpoints — without an emphasis on reason. . . . In a diverse society, no [definition of ‘the common good’] can develop without reasoned discourse.”
Science’s focus on empirical evidence and demonstrable theories is part of an Enlightenment legacy that made possible a peaceful and free society among diverse equals. Teaching that habit of mind is of the essence for keeping our civilization alive. To reject the existence of positive truth is to deny the possibility of common ground, to undermine the very purpose of scholarly, intellectual discourse, and to strike at the root of all that makes our values valuable and our society worthwhile. It goes Plato one better — it is the ignoble lie. At a time when Americans are threatened by an enemy that rejects science and reason, and demands respect for dog-mas entailing violence, persecution, and tyranny, nothing more deserves our attention than nourishing respect for reason.
III. CONCLUSION
The debate over evolution and creationism has raged for a long time, and will continue to do so. The science behind evolution is overwhelming and only continues to grow, but those who insist that evolution is false will continue to resist its promulgation in schools. The appeal to Postmo-dernism represents the most recent — and so far, the most desperate — attempt on the part of creationists to support their claim that the teaching of valid, empirically-tested, experimentally-confirmed science in government schools is somehow a violation of the Constitution. When shorn of its sophisticated-sounding language, however, this argument is beneath serious consideration. It essentially holds that truth is meaningless; that all ways of knowing — whether it be the scientist’s empirically tested, experimentally confirmed, well-documented theory, or the mumbo-jumbo of mystics, psychics, and shamans — are equally valid myths; and that government has no right to base its policies on solid evidence rather than supernatural conjurations. This argument has no support in epistemology, history, law, or common sense. It should simply not be heard again.
Students perform better when schools adjust schedules to accommodate the realities of biology: High school students don’t learn or test well in the morning. Go here for an introductory discussion of the issues.
Of course, in order to boost student performance by starting high school later, bus schedules would have to change. Change costs money. Anyone care to wager whether this quick, proven method for boosting student performance will catch on, considering it costs a little?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In that momentous, often terrible year of 1968, February 1 found the offensive in full swing by the National Liberation Front forces (NFL, or Viet Cong) across South Vietnam. The “General Uprising” kicked off on January 30, the beginning of Tet, the Vietnamese new year celebration (Tet is based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, shifting from year to year; in 2008 the first day of Tet is February 7). News was just beginning to hit the U.S., in the days before videotape from the field and easy satellite uplinks.
On February 1, 1968, Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams accompanied a South Vietnamese police team trying to clear part of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) of Viet Cong; Adams put his camera up to aim as police chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan put a gun to the head of a man suspected of being part of the NFL, Nguyễn Văn Lém. Adams clicked the shutter coincidentally as the police chief fired the gun, killing the suspect.
The photo ruined the life of Gen. Nguyễn. Adams wrote in Time Magazine:
The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?’
Via Wikipedia and BBC. Wikipedia caption: Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem: February 1, 1968. This Associated Press photograph, “General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon,” won a 1969Pulitzer prize for its photographer Eddie Adams. Film also exists of this event, but owing to the more graphic nature of the film, the photograph is more widely known.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Tony Campolo argues that Charles Darwin supported the kind of racism that would eventually lead to Nazism and, by extension, the Holocaust (“The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” Jan. 20). This point cannot be sustained upon closer examination of Darwin’s writings. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin made use of the term race on a number of occasions, but almost exclusively in reference to animals and plants. He did not relate his conclusions about plants and animals to the human world, and he never advocated “the elimination of ‘the negro and Australian peoples,’ ” as Campolo insists.
In Descent of Man, Darwin did not rank “races in terms of what he believed was their nearness and likeness to gorillas,” as Campolo states. In fact, Darwin did the exact opposite, taking apart theories about the origins of humanity that suggested that different races originated from different (and inferior) species. Darwin’s fundamental position was that any differences we have are either overshadowed by our similarities or so mutable that they have little explanatory power.
Jonathan C. Friedman Director
Holocaust and genocide studies
West Chester University
Science has evolved
Tony Campolo’s rant draws a tenuous connection between what he sees as Charles Darwin’s personal prejudices and Nazism in an effort to make us think twice about teaching Darwin’s scientific principles (Inquirer, Jan. 20). Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Should we not study the Declaration of Independence? The fact is that the science of evolution, with 150 years of substantiated science behind it, has evolved well beyond Darwin. David Messing Willow Grove
Teaching equality
Saying Charles Darwin’s “theories are dangerous” (Inquirer, Jan. 20) is like saying Newton’s Laws are dangerous. Darwin’s concepts have been proven by developments in biology, geology, paleontology and other sciences since his time. Fortunately, as Tony Campolo notes, few people currently read Darwin’s works, so we hardly have to feel threatened that “he sounds like a Nazi.” In the last 50 years, we have gone from a society that accepted Jim Crow to one that recognizes it is a diverse, multiracial nation. We have a long way to go to be fully accepting of that diversity, but teaching evolutionary science in the schools is vital and necessary, hardly dangerous. Let’s leave teaching the humanity and equality of all persons to our religious institutions.
Richard S. Greeley St. Davids
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
If Science no longer has the ear of society, if it cannot put forth the results of its findings, good or bad, favorable to me or not, without being shouted down by those who have both reason and the resources to suppress those findings, then we have lost far more than the future benefits of scientific and technological contributions to society. Contributions that, over the last two hundred years, have permitted the human species to achieve a standard of living far beyond the wildest imaginings of pre-Industrial Revolution humanity.
We have lost the essence of Liberty.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).
Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.
Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).
Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.
His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.
Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.
Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.
Tangled Up in Blue Guy hosts the current Carnival of the Godless. I don’t usually note this carnival, partly because evangelizing atheism is not my goal; but that’s not the goal of the carnival, either. TUIB Guy is an occasional reader and commenter here; his hosting job takes an interesting view of carnival hosting. Carnival of the Godless frequently features informative and useful posts. In this one, especially if you are involved in science education, or you know a Ron Paul supporter, you should read this post, from the Atheist Ethicist.
Great material for the classroom:
Four Stone Hearth constantly provides material that I wish I had used the last time I taught that particular topic. Four Stone Hearth #32 at Testimony of the Spade features several posts on neolithic children. This material probably would resonate well with elementary and middle school student. This is a roadmap to how you can make the section on Native Americans and early migration to America come alive for younger students.
LYNDON JOHNSON: It’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
BILL MOYERS: As he finished, Congress stood and thunderous applause shook the chamber. Johnson would soon sign into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and black people were no longer second class citizens. Martin Luther King had marched and preached and witnessed for this day. Countless ordinary people had put their bodies on the line for it, been berated, bullied and beaten, only to rise, organize and struggle on, against the dogs and guns, the bias and burning crosses. Take nothing from them; their courage is their legacy. But take nothing from the president who once had seen the light but dimly, as through a dark glass — and now did the right thing. Lyndon Johnson threw the full weight of his office on the side of justice. Of course the movement had come first, watered by the blood of so many, championed bravely now by the preacher turned prophet who would himself soon be martyred. But there is no inevitability to history, someone has to seize and turn it. With these words at the right moment — “we shall overcome” — Lyndon Johnson transcended race and color, and history, too — reminding us that a president matters, and so do we.
Use of DDT would have started earlier, the article says, but for lack of money.
So, participants in the defense of wise environmental policy and Rachel Carson, against the scurrilous charges of junk science purveyors, should take note:
There is no ban on use of DDT against mosquitoes, in a serious, controlled program of integrated pest management.
No environmentalist is to blame for the lack of DDT use in Uganda (and probably elsewhere). As with anti-malaria programs worldwide, lack of funding or lack of organization generally is the reason for any lack of action against malaria.
I’m flattered at the mention. I’d be happier if I knew Turkey’s ban on blogs had been lifted. I’d be happier if Die Zeit’s view leaned much more toward protecting freedom of the press, and much less toward general xenophobia against Moslems. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the comments.
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is banned in Turkey, China, and blocked in the Duncanville, Texas, school system. What does that mean?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Fillmore’s role in the creation and passage of the Compromise of 1850 may be more substantial than most accounts of the time allow.
In any case, for our much-overlooked 13th president, Electratig points researchers to more information to tell the story. He’s got several posts on Fillmore, more than a dozen in the recent past; noodle around and find all of them. For example:
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 
