Friends of science and evolution: Testify next week in the Texas textbook process?

I get important e-mail from the Texas Freedom Network; they’re asking for help next week to fight creationism and other forms of buncombe popular in Texas:

Science and the SBOE: One Week to Go

Next week, the Texas State Board of Education will take a critical vote on science in our public schools. We need people like you to make sure the vote is in favor of sound, well-established science.

Up for board consideration are science instructional materials submitted by a number of publishers and vendors who want their product used in Texas classrooms. Even before the board meets, far-right groups have been hard at work trying to ensure materials approved by the board attack and diminish evolutionary science and include the junk science of “intelligent design”/creationism.

The attacks include one from a little-know firm out of New Mexico, International Databases, which submitted instructional materials rife with creationist propaganda.

It gets worse. Far-right SBOE members last month appointed creationists with questionable scientific credentials to teams tasked with reviewing the materials and making recommendations to the board.

And new board chair Barbara Cargill upped the stakes when in a speech just last week she framed the debate over science as a “spiritual battle.”

The board will hold just ONE public hearing on the science materials. Your participation is crucial.

It is critical that you act now by clicking here to express your interest in testifying before the board on July 21.

Please note: The deadline to sign up to testify is 5 p.m. Monday.

We must insist that the SBOE keep junk science – including “intelligent design”/creationism – out of our children’s classrooms. The board must approve only instructional materials that are accurate, that are in line with sound and well-established science, and that will prepare Texas children to succeed in college and the jobs of the 21st century.

Texas Freedom Network advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right. www.tfn.org | www.tfninsider.org | General: tfn@tfn.org

Tell a friend to subscribe to TFN News Clips, Alerts or Rapid Response Teams. Subscribers may choose the issue areas that interest them. To change your TFN subscription preferences – or to unsubscribe – click here.

Copyright 2010, Texas Freedom Network

Trying to carve out time here.  Can you help?

Hearings will be most interesting.  Support for the Texas State Board of Education actually comes, often, from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).  TEA this week laid off just under 200 workers, to deal with the 36% budget chopping done to the agency by the Texas Lege.  Word comes this week that curriculum directors at TEA were let go, including the director of science curriculum.

It’s rather like the first 20 weeks of World War II in the Pacific, with the aggressors advancing on almost all fronts against science.  When is our Battle of Midway?

Information, resources: 

• Texas Citizens for Science; TCS on Facebook
• Teach Them Science
• National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• National Association of Biology Teachers

How to tell the textbook approval process is broken: Virginia’s voodoo history

4th graders in Virginia could learn from their history texts that thousands of African Americans formed battalions in the Confederate Army and fought to save the South, during the Civil War — entire battalions under Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

That’s what the book claims, anyway.  It’s fiction.  The author fell victim to a hoax.

Kevin Sieff exposed the book in The Washington Post last week.  Virginia education officials quickly moved to discourage teachers from teaching the erroneous passages.  Some education authorities pulled the books.  The incident exposes problems in the textbook approval processes popular in southern states.

If you had hoped textbook craziness was confined to Texas, you know better now.

More:

• Kevin Levin provided some of the best information and commentary about this incident, at Civil War Memory;  see especially his rundown of the claims in the book, here
• Robert Mackey blogged about it at the Lede, at the New York Times site; some good discussion
• Valerie Strauss noted the “high irony” that the erroneous book was approved, while Joy Hakim’s outstanding series on U.S. history had great difficulty getting approval; Strauss also relates the history of why southern states have state textbook approval processes (hint:  Think, “War of Northern Aggression”)
• The book’s author is not a historian, and conducted research on-line; history experts had not reviewed the book

Petition to Congress: Tell Texas Board of Education to fly right correctly

E-mail from the Texas Freedom Network:

Tell Your Congress Member to Support Education over Politics

The Texas Freedom Network and the Texas Faith Network this week joined nearly two dozen national organizations in support of a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on the State Board of Education to stop playing politics with the education of Texas schoolchildren. We have signed on to a letter to U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, supporting House Resolution 1593. Congresswoman Johnson introduced the resolution in the U.S. House on July 30. The resolution, which has four other co-sponsors from Texas, calls out the state board for disregarding nearly a year’s worth of work by teachers and scholars who wrote initial drafts of new social studies curriculum standards. It also notes that more than 1,200 history scholars have warned that the heavily revised standards, which the board adopted in May, “would undermine the study of the social sciences in public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of United States society.”

The House resolution is available here. The letter from TFN and other organizations supporting that resolution is available here.

Take Action

Ask your U.S. House representative today to support House Resolution 1593 by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. You can find out who your U.S. House member is here. When you call, tell him or her:

• Teachers and scholars should write curriculum standards and textbook requirements, not politicians.
• Texas schools should give our schoolchildren an education based on sound scholarship that prepares them to succeed in college and their future careers. Decisions about curriculum and textbooks shouldn’t be based on the personal and political agendas of state board members.
• Because of the size of Texas, publishers often write their textbooks to meet curriculum standards in this state and then sell them to schools across the country. Texas should be a model for good curriculum and textbooks, not a national laughingstock.

You can do three other things to stop radical members of the State Board of Education from promoting their political and personal agendas in our kids’ classrooms:

Join the Just Educate campaign, which is working to reform the State Board of Education.

Stay informed by signing up for TFN News Clips and reading our blog, TFN Insider.

Support the Texas Freedom Network by making a special gift today.

Take Action Now

Reform the State Board of Education

In the race to the future, politicians are holding our children back. Find out what you can do about it!

Tell politicians to stop promoting ideological agendas in our public schools. JUST educate the children of Texas!

Sign the petition »

Sounds good to me. Unlikely, and rare for the national Congress to urge state action — but appropriate in this case.

California legislator would bar Texas social studies changes

California may be down, but it’s not dumb.  According to AP in the San Jose Mercury-News (Silicon Valley edition):

Legislation by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, seeks to protect the nation’s largest public school population from the revised social studies curriculum approved in March by the Texas Board of Education. Critics say if the changes are incorporated into textbooks, they will be historically inaccurate and dismissive of the contributions of minorities.

*     *     *     *     *     *

Under Yee’s bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.

The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”

“While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes,” Yee said. “The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation’s diverse history.”

Bully for California and Rep. Leland Yee.

Tip of the old scrub brush to HeyMash.

Social studies train wreck at Texas State Board of Education: Live! A Nation at Risk

Steve Schafersman will live blog the hearings on social studies standards before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) today, at Evo-Sphere.  Schafersman is president of Texas Citizens for Science, and a long-time activist for better education in Texas on all topics.

Rapid updates or live-blogging should be available at the blog of the Texas Freedom Network, TFN Insider.

It’s Item #6 on the SBOE agenda, with a title that tips off the trouble:

Item #6 — Public Hearing Regarding Proposed Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies, and Chapter 118, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits.

Schafersman e-mailed an introduction to the meeting:

Some say the Social Studies public testimony by the religious right, liberals, etc., then the SBOE debate, motions to amend, votes, etc. is a bigger circus than adopting the science standards. Judge for yourself. You can watch the entire circus, carnival, and sideshow on the webcast video at http://www.texasadm in.com/cgi- bin/tea.cgi

This is Texas democracy in action, when sullen and tight-lipped State Board members listen to public testifiers for 3 minutes each and profoundly ignore them since they already know what they are going to do. But I, at least, feel better after speaking so I don’t later feel responsible for the crappy amendments, changes, and policies that come out of this horrible Board because I did nothing. The proposed Social Studies standards written by the panels composed of teachers and professors are excellent (when have I heard this before), but the SBOE can’t wait to shamelessly impose their own Religious Right agenda on them.

You’ll recall that SBOE has at every possible turn disregarded the advice of famous and serious historians, respected free-market-advocating economists, geographers and educators on these standards.  Economists, for example, want Texas kids to learn about “capitalism,” since that’s what it’s called by economists and policy makers, and colleges.  SBOE thinks “capitalism” sounds too subversive, and wishes instead to require Texas kids to learn about “free enterprise” instead.

‘A rose by any other name’ you think, until you start thinking of how Texas kids do on standardized tests, college admission exams, and the punchline on the joke, about Texas kids being told not to study capitalism.  No siree, no capitalism in the fictional home of J. R. Ewing, never mind the real-life capitalists like T. Boone Pickens or H. Ross Perot (Jr. and Sr.).

In Dallas, the city prepares to name a street after Cesar Chavez, the great Hispanic union organizer and advocate for working Americans.  In Austin, SBOE works to strike all mentions of Chavez, because they dislike the politics of heroes of our ethnic minorities (soon to be a majority in Texas).  In Washington historians and policy-makers follow the legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the great civil rights attorney and first African-American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.  In Austin, SBOE thinks Marshall should be left out of history books.  Many of us suspect he’s anathema to the white right-wing in Austin:  A smart, successful and noble man of color.

Mel and Norma Gabler died years ago, but their history lingers in the halls of education policy in Austin.  It’s Shakespearean.

This is a massive battle.  David Barton worked for 30 years to gut history standards nationally to teach a history of America that never was, and as the official religionist appointee of the right-wing SBOE members, he stands on the brink of accomplishing much of the revisionism he’s advocated.  See the Texas Tribune story on the issue, “Hijacking History.”

Generally we shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, Ronald Reagan said.  At the SBOE, we’ve put the terrorists in charge of history and economic curricula — if not the terrorist themselves, at least the terrorists’ camels’ noses.  Texas’s process has earned flashing red-light, claxon-sounding repeating of the words of Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Excellence in Education:  If a foreign nation did this to us, we’d consider it an act of war [excerpt below the fold].

Make no mistake about it.  SBOE’s goal is to roll back any of the reforms left from Reagan’s Commission’s work.  Our nation is more at risk from foreign competition than ever before.  SBOE plans to give away a bit more of our future to China, this week.

Our saving grace is the general incompetence of SBOE members to make significant reform in Texas’s wounded schools, reeling from unworkable and damaging requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act and a testing program that severely limits what can be taught in any social studies course other than those bastions of learning left in International Baccalaureate programs and Advanced Placement courses (estimates are that between 5% and 10% of Texas high school students can take one of those good courses).  Whatever silliness, craziness or lies SBOE orders to  be taught, it can’t be taught and tested well.  Inertia preventing change works to save America in this case.

In business, most CEOs at least appreciate the value of having good front-line employees who are the ones who really deliver the service or product and produce the profit of the enterprise (even if they don’t treat those employees so well as the employees deserve).  Education may be the last bastion of flogging the horse that should be pulling the cart instead.  In this case, having well-trained teachers in the classroom is the last hope for Texas, Texas parents and Texas students — and Texas’s economic future and future in liberty.  Teachers are the last defense of freedom in Texas.  Today SBOE will make another assault on the ramparts that protect the teachers in their work.

When will the French fleet arrive to lend aid?  Will it arrive at all?  And if it arrives, will Texas kids know better than to shoot at the ships?

Carol Haynes, who claims to have a doctorate in some discipline, told the board how to rewrite the standards to completely change the history of the civil rights movement in their last hearing on the topic.  According to Haynes, apparently, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was opposed to civil rights and Barry Goldwater was in favor — the Board didn’t offer to correct her revisionism, but instead asked her to go beyond her three minutes in fawning acceptance. This appears to be SBOE’s approval of various Other Universe hypotheses offered by Star Trek, allowing any damned thing at all to be taught as history (except the right stuff).  Haynes is scheduled to testify again (#128), probably very late at night, but perhaps in time for the 10:00 p.m. Texas television news broadcasts.  Oy.

• List of 135 witnesses scheduled to testify on social studies standards, from SBOE

Excerpt from the Report of the Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk, below the fold.

Stand up for your nation, it’s children and future; sound the alarm:

Trouble at Texas Board of Education: Social studies

Here is a news rundown of stories on the Texas State Board of Education, who have been planning for a year now to mess up social studies standards for Texas public schools, this week.

• Fort Worth Star-Telegram, lots of “strong views” expected at Wednesday’s hearing
• Austin American-Statesman details part of the trouble:  Officials at the SBOE have hired a couple of radical religious historical revisionists, David Barton and Peter Marshall, and ignored educators, historians and economists in revising the standards; both are ministers with a history of conflict with historians and educators. Both have called for emphasis on their Christian sects’ beliefs in history classes.
• In an opposite-editorial piece in the Houston Chronicle, Karen Nicholson, the president of the non-partisan Texas League of Women Voters, warns that Texas children will suffer under some of the proposed changes, falling behind students in other states.
• In the San Antonio Express, Veronica Flores-Paniagua argues that Texas’s large Hispanic population has been ignored by the SBOE, and that all Texas kids stand to lose on the current trajectory
• Dallas Morning News story on the power of conservatives at the SBOE, and coming elections
• Victoria (Texas) Advocate story saying LULAC thinks Hispanics are slighted in history standards
• Almost off topic:  San Antonio Express story on wheelchair-bound kid, Jonathan Stach, who is not allowed to take advanced physics courses by bizarre state standards interpretation
• David Nalle at Blog Critics
• Texas Tribune note on Don McLeroy
• Washington Monthly feature article on the assault on social studies standards by the Texas SBOE
• Texas Education Agency post on the agenda for Wednesday’s SBOE meeting

Get on your horse and warn Texans:  The Idiots are coming to get your good schoolbooks:

Perry to Texas Education: “Drop dead, but not as fast as before”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry named Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, to chair the State Board of Education.

Texas senators rejected Perry’s earlier nomination of Don McLeroy, R-Beaumont, due to McLeroy’s divisive tactics on board issues.  The chair must come from one of the board’s 15 elected members.

Perry was thought to favor a radical conservative to push the anti-education wishes of hard-core Republicans in Texas, whose vote Perry hopes to have in a tough fight for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010.  U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison will try to oust Perry for the party’s nomination.  Some feared Perry would nominate Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, who is even more radical than McLeroy.

In contrast, Lowe has been a relatively reliable vote against Texas teachers and science curricula, but she is not known to be as polarizing as McLeroy.  She has compromised on some issues, voting with educators and students.

Perry’s turning to Lowe indicates his disregard of education as an issue, and his writing off of the vote of Texas teachers and parents of students.  Perry could have named an experienced administrator and peace maker who could push the board to do its legally-mandated work on time, by nominating Bob Craig, R-Lubbock.  Perry’s turning to Lowe instead indicates that a working board is not among his priorities.

Lowe’s appointment to the chair probably is not so bad as a Dunbar appointment would have been.  But unless Ms. Lowe makes serious efforts to push for journeyman policy-making from board members, avoiding intentional controversies and simply resolving controversial issues that cannot be avoided, the SBOE will contined to be little more than political theatre in Austin, except when it actually rules on curricula and textbook issues.

Few expect the board to be a fountain of wisdom, or an example of education excellence over the next two years.

Perry’s action becomes not so bad as the potential slap in the face to Texas education that he might have delivered.  It’s the slap without a windup.  Texas students deserved a kiss instead.

Lowe will serve at least until the State Senate can act to approve or disapprove the nomination; the legislature will meet next in January 2011.  Lowe can serve for 17 months before the legislature meets.

Information:

• Announcement at Texas Freedom Network blog, Insider
• Tony’s Curricublog on the appointment
• Houston Chronicle story on the chair selection from July 5, describing the issues and candidates
• Terence Stutz note at the Dallas Morning News Trailblazer blog
• Associated Press story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
• Austin American-Statesman Postcards blog notice

Pre-nomination information:

• July 10 editorial in The Daily Texan (University of Texas), before the nomination announcement
• Burnt Orange Report comments, on possibility of Dunbar appointment
• Inkbluesky — well, you gotta read this one to get it

Also at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• “David Barton:  Mediocre scientists who are Christian, good; great scientists, bad”
• “Texas social studies curriculum panel reports:  The Great Texas History Smackdown”

David Barton: Mediocre scientists who are Christian, good; great scientists, bad

I’m reviewing the reviews of Texas social studies curricula offered by the six people appointed by the Texas State Board of Education.  David Barton, a harsh partisan politician, religious bigot, pseudo-historian and questionable pedagogue, offers up this whopper, about fifth grade standards.:

In Grade 5 (b)(24)(A), there are certainly many more notable scientists than Carl Sagan – such as Wernher von Braun, Matthew Maury, Joseph Henry, Maria Mitchell, David Rittenhouse, etc.

Say what?  “More notable scientists than Carl Sagan . . . ?”  What is this about?

It’s about David Barton’s unholy bias against science, and in particular, good and great scientists like Carl Sagan who professed atheism, or any faith other than David Barton’s anti-science brand of fundamentalism.

David Barton doesn’t want any Texas child to grow up to be a great astronomer like Carl Sagan, if there is any chance that child will also be atheist, like Carl Sagan.  Given a choice between great science from an atheist, or mediocre science from a fundamentalist Christian, Barton chooses mediocrity.

Currently the fifth grade standards for social studies require students to appreciate the contributions of scientists.  Here is the standard Barton complains about:

(24) Science, technology, and society. The student understands the impact of science and technology on life in the United States. The student is expected to:

(A) describe the contributions of famous inventors and scientists such as Neil Armstrong, John J. Audubon, Benjamin Banneker, Clarence Birdseye, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, and Carl Sagan;
(B) identify how scientific discoveries and technological innovations such as the transcontinental railroad, the discovery of oil, and the rapid growth of technology industries have advanced the economic development of the United States;
(C) explain how scientific discoveries and technological innovations in the fields of medicine, communication, and transportation have benefited individuals and society in the United States;
(D) analyze environmental changes brought about by scientific discoveries and technological innovations such as air conditioning and fertilizers; and
(E) predict how future scientific discoveries and technological innovations could affect life in the United States.

Why doesn’t Barton like Carl Sagan?  In addition to Sagan’s being a great astronomer, he was a grand populizer of science, especially with his series for PBS, Cosmos.

But offensive to Barton was Sagain’s atheism.  Sagan wasn’t militant about it, but he did honestly answer people who asked that he found no evidence for the efficacy or truth of religion, nor for the existence of supernatural gods.

More than that, Sagan defended evolution theory.  Plus, he was Jewish.

Any one of those items might earn the David Barton Stamp of Snooty-nosed Disapproval, but together, they are about fatal.

Do the scientists Barton suggests in Sagan’s stead measure up? Barton named four:

Wernher von Braun, Matthew Maury, Joseph Henry, Maria Mitchell, David Rittenhouse

In the category of “Sagan Caliber,” only von Braun might stake a claim.  Wernher von Braun, you may recall, was the guy who ran the Nazi’s rocketry program.  After the war, it was considered a coup that the U.S. snagged him to work, first for the Air Force, and then for NASA.  Excuse me for worrying, but I wonder whether Barton likes von Braun for his rocketry, for his accommodation of anti-evolution views, or for his Nazi-supporting roots.  (No, I don’t trust Barton as far as I can hurl the Texas Republican Party Platform, which bore Barton’s fould stamp while he was vice chair of the group.)

So, apart from the fact that von Braun was largely an engineer, and Sagan was a brilliant astronomer with major contributions to our understanding of the cosmos, what about the chops of the other four people?  Why would Barton suggest lesser knowns and unknowns?

Matthew Maury once headed the U.S. Naval Observatory, in the 19th century.  He was famous for studying ocean currents, piggy-backing on the work of Ben Franklin and others.  Do a Google search, though, and you’ll begin to undrstand:  Maury is a favorite of creationists, a scientist who claimed to subjugate his science to the Bible.  Maury claimed his work on ocean currents was inspired at least in part by a verse in Psalms 8 which referred to “paths in the sea.”  Maury is not of the stature or achievement of Sagan, but Maury is politically correct to Barton.

Joseph Henry is too ignored, the first head of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry made his mark in research on magnetism and electricity.  But it’s not Henry’s science Barton recognizes.  Henry, as a largely unknown scientist today, is a mainstay of creationists’ list of scientists who made contributions to science despite their being creationists.  What?  Oh, this is inside baseball in the war to keep evolution in science texts.  In response to the (accurate) claim that creationists have not contributed anything of scientific value to biology since about William Paley in 1802, Barton and his fellow creationists will trot out a lengthy list of scientists who were at least nominally Christian, and claim that they were creationists, and that they made contributions to science.  The list misses the point that Henry, to pick one example, didn’t work in biology nor make a contribution to biology, nor is there much evidence that Henry was a creationist in the modern sense of denying science.  Henry is obscure enough that Barton can claim he was politically correct, to Barton’s taste, to be studied by school children without challenging Barton’s creationist ideas.

Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer, the second woman to discover a comet. While she was a Unitarian and a campaigner for women’s rights, or more accurately, because of that, I can’t figure how she passes muster as politically correct to David Barton.  Surely she deserves to be studied more in American history than she is — perhaps with field trips to the Maria Mitchell House National Historic Landmark.  It may be that Barton has mistaken Mitchell for another creationist scientist. While Mitchell’s life deseves more attention — her name would be an excellent addition to the list of woman scientists Texas children should study — she is not of the stature of Sagan.

David Rittenhouse, a surveyor and astronomer, and the first head of the U.S. Mint, is similarly confusing as part of Barton’s list.  Rittenhouse deserves more study, for his role in extending the Mason-Dixon line, if nothing else, but it is difficult to make a case that his contributions to science approach those of Carl Sagan.  Why is Rittenhouse listed by Barton?  If nothing else, it shows the level of contempt Barton holds for Sagan as “just another scientist.”  Barton urges the study of other scientists, any other scientists, rather than study of Sagan.

Barton just doesn’t like Sagan.  Why?  Other religionists give us the common dominionist or radical religionist view of Sagan:

Just what is the Secular Humanist worldview? First and foremost Secular Humanists are naturalists. A naturalist believes that nature is all that exists. “The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be.” This was the late Carl Sagan’s opening line on the television series “Cosmos.” Sagan was a noted astronomer and a proud secular humanist. Sagan maintained that the God of the Bible was nonexistent. (Imagine Sagan’s astonishment when he came face to face with his Maker.)

Sagan’s science, in Barton’s view, doesn’t leave enough room for Barton’s religion.  Sagan was outspoken about his opposition to superstition.  Sagan urged reason and the active use of his “Baloney-Detection Kit.” One of Sagan’s later popular books was titled Demon-haunted World:  Science as a candle in the dark.  Sagan argued for the use of reason and science to learn about our world, to use to build a framework for solving the world’s problems.

Barton prefers the dark to any light shed by Sagan, it appears.

More resources on the State Board of Education review of social studies curricula

• “Texas Tall Tale,” from the July/August 2009 edition of Church and State
• Capitol Annex, with a review of Barton’s paper that notes his incorrect quotes and incorrect citations of Texas law;  and here detailing Barton’s falling victim to an internet hoax (which he cites as fact in his review)
  
• Eye on Williamson, “SBOE’s next trick, history with a conservative religious slant”
• Off the Kuff, “SBOE’s assault on history”
• Three Wise Men said it’s Texas conservatives up to their old, anti-Texas tricks
• Louisiana Coaliation for Science calls Barton one of Bobby Jindal’s “friends in low places”
  

Texas social studies curriculum panel reports: The Great Texas History Smackdown

Just when you thought it was safe to take a serious summer vacation, finish the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin, and catch up on a couple of novels . . .

The sharks of education policy are back.

Or the long knives are about to come out (vicious historical reference, of course, but I’m wagering the anti-education folks didn’t catch it).  Pick your metaphor.

Our friend Steve Schafersman sent out an e-mail alert this morning:

The Expert Reviews of the proposed Texas Social Studies curriculum are now available at

http://ritter. tea.state. tx.us/teks/ social/experts. html

Social Studies Expert Reviewers

• David Barton, President, WallBuilders
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

• Jesus Francisco de la Teja, Professor and Chair, Department of History, Texas State University
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

• Daniel L. Dreisbach, Professor, American University
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

• Lybeth Hodges, Professor, History, Texas Woman’s University
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

• Jim Kracht, Associate Dean and Professor, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

• Peter Marshall, President, Peter Marshall Ministries
  Review of Current Social Studies TEKS

You can download their review as a pdf file.

Three of these reviewers are legitimate, knowledgeable, and respected academics who undoubtedly did a fair, competent, and professional job. The other three are anti-church- state separation, anti-secular public government, and pseudoscholars and pseudohistorians. I expect their contributions to be biased, unprofessional, and pseudoscholarly. Here are the bad ones:

• Peter Marshall is a religious right minister who says America must return to its Christian roots. He is opposed to C-S separation and wants to intermingle religion and government.
  http://petermarshal lministries. com/
  http://petermarshal lministries. com/about/ heritage. cfm
  http://petermarshal lministries. com/about/ rev_peter_ marshall. cfm

• Daniel Dreisbach is a professor at American University in Washington. He is opposed to C-S separation and wants to intermingle religion and government.
  http://www.hillsdal e.edu/news/ imprimis/ archive/issue. asp?year= 2006&month= 10
  http://www.orthodox ytoday.org/ articles7/ DreisbachChurch. php

• David Barton is a very well-known radical religious right pseudohistorian. He is opposed to C-S separation and wants to intermingle religion and government.
  http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ David_Barton
  http://www.wallbuil ders.com/ ABTOverview. asp

Barton may be the worst of the three. He founded Wallbuilders to deliberately destroy C-S separation and promote Fundamentalist Christianity in US government. Just about everything he has written is unhistorical and inaccurate. For example, Barton has published numerous “quotes” about C-S separation made by the Founding Fathers that upon investigation turned out to be hoaxes. Here’s what Senator Arlen Specter had to say about Barton:

Probably the best refutation of Barton’s argument simply is to quote his own exegesis of the First Amendment: “Today,” Barton says, “we would best understand the actual context of the First Amendment by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination. ‘ ” In keeping with Barton’s restated First Amendment, Congress could presumably make a law establishing all Christian denominations as the national religion, and each state could pass a law establishing a particular Christian church as its official religion.

All of this pseudoscholarship would hardly be worth discussing, let alone disproving, were it not for the fact that it is taken so very seriously by so many people.

I am sure these six will participate in a Great Texas History Smackdown before our crazy SBOE. Perhaps this will finally sicken enough citizens that they will finally vote to get rid of the SBOE, either directly or indirectly. Be sure to listen to this hearing on the web audio. Even better, the web video might be working so you can watch the SBOE Carnival Sideshow.

Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
President, Texas Citizens for Science

The non-expert experts were appointed by Don McLeroy before the Texas Senate refused to confirm his temporary chairmanship of the State Board of Education.  The good McLeroy may have done as chairman is interred with his dead chairmanship; the evil he did lives on.  (Under McLeroy and Barton’s reading of history and literature, most students won’t catch the reference for the previous sentence.)

Tony Whitson at Curricublog posted information you need to read.  Texas Freedom Network’s Insider has a first pass analysis of the crank experts’ analyses — they want to make Texas’s social studies curriculum more sexist, more racist, more anti-Semitic, more anti-working man, and closer to Sunday school pseudo-history.  While Dallas prepares to name a major street in honor of Cesar Chavez, Barton and Marshall say he’s too Mexican and too close to Jews, and so should be de-emphasized in history books (a small picture of Chavez appears on one of the main U.S. history texts now).

That’s the stuff that jumps out at first.  What else will we find when we dig?

More to come; watch those spaces, and this one, too.

McLeroy nomination – still dead?

Molly Ivins’ untimely passing becomes acutely painful when the Texas Lege comes down to the last days of a session.  Who can make sense of it without Molly?

We thought a couple weeks ago that Gov. Rick Perry’s nomination of creationist wedge politician Don McLeroy was dead, when the Senate Nominations Committee took testimony and failed to report the nomination, to chair the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).

Then last week, in one of those surprise moves that even the Texas legislators responsible often cannot explain, the nomination rose from the dead and stumbled, zombie-like, to the Senate floor for a vote this week — maybe as soon as today, Tuesday, May 26.

The Houston Chronicle reports that all 12 Senate Democrats will vote against the nomination, dooming it (according to The Lonesome Mongoose, via Pharyngula).

The Bryan dentist has presided over a contentious 15-member State Board of Education that fought over curriculum standards for science earlier this year and English language arts and reading last year. Critics faulted McLeroy for applying his strong religious beliefs in shaping new science standards. McLeroy believes in creationism and that the Earth is about 6,000 years old.

“This particular State Board of Education under the leadership of Dr. McLeroy has been divisive. It’s been dysfunctional, and it has been embarrassing to the point of having commentary on this in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

McLeroy’s leadership, she said, had made Texas “the laughing stock of the nation.”

It takes 11 votes to block a gubernatorial nomination. Van de Putte said all 12 Senate Democrats plan to vote against McLeroy

Don’t count your dead nominations before the silver stakes are driven.  Stay tuned.  Maybe you should call your Texas senator again on Tuesday. Pray, cross your fingers, hope, and pass the ammunition.

If the nomination fails, it is still foggy as Donora, Pennsylvania on its worst days as to who will head the group.  The chairman must come from one of the 15 elected members.  Most people who might win Rick Perry’s selection are creationists.  If Perry is wise, he’ll try to choose someone who is a capable administrator, wise chairman of hearings, and who lacks the desire to annoy key players in education, like administrators, teachers, parents, Texas college presidents and professors, and state legislators.  Alas for Texas, Winston Churchill is not a member of the SBOE, nor is Mitt Romney.

The Senate rarely blocks a governor’s appointment.

There is speculation in the Capitol and within the Texas Education Agency that Gov. Rick Perry might elevate Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, to lead the board. Like McLeroy, Dunbar also holds strong Christian beliefs and recently authored a book that advocates more religion in the public square.

“We believe that Texans deserve better than divisive, destructive, extreme leadership,” Shapleigh said. “If the governor chooses to appoint someone more extreme and more divisive, we’ll have to deal with that at the appropriate time.”

McLeroy’s tenure as chairman of SBOE is one of those waves we were warned about in 1983 lin the Excellence in Education Report, which warned of a “rising tide of mediocrity.”  The divisions and crude politics, heavy-handed destruction of statutory and regulatory procedures, at best distracts from the drive for better education, but more often leans toward the worst, sabatoging the work of students, teachers, parents, administrators and legislatures.

Do you pray?  Pray that Texas education be delivered safely and intact from this time of trial.  Whether you pray or not, call your Texas legislator and tell her or him to straighten out the SBOE.

Resources:

• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, “This guy runs your school board?”
• Thoughts from Kansas, and Seed article on Texas SBOE
• Perry to everybody, “Drop Dead!”
• McLeroy declares war on science
• McLeroy’s war on English students
• Houston Chronicle opinion pages:  “Be very afraid” of Texas SBOE
• “McLeroy Confirmation Alert,” Texas Freedom Network Insider
• “McLeroy backs fringe social studies ‘expert,’” TFN Insider
• “Victory for the Texas Taliban,” Leiter Reports

Man the ramparts: Texans, call your legislators!

Texans, the information on finding your state representative and state senator are below — call them, today.

In a surprise move, the Senate has moved the nomination of Don McLeroy to the floor for an up-and-down vote.

McLeroy has ushered in a new era of bitter, partisan and divisive politics to the State Board of Education.  In the past year he has insulted English teachers, citizens of Hispanic descent, unnecessarily gutted a good mathematics text from the approved list (just to show he can do it), and done his best to butcher science education standards for Texas.  He suspended work on new social studies curricula because, in part, he doesn’t like the term “capitalism,” insisting on “free enterprise” instead, contrary to almost all scholarly writing on the topic.

The man is a menace to education.  He uses wedge political issues to divide educators from parents, parents from schools, schools from the community, students from teachers, and education from propaganda.

I quote the entirety of the post from Texas Freedom Network’s Insider blog, below, to explain:

UPDATE: Click here to see video of the committee vote.

In a surprise meeting on the Senate floor, the Senate Nominations Committee in Austin has just approved the appointment of Don McLeroy as chairman of the Texas State Board of Education. It appears that McLeroy’s supporters plan to bring his confirmation to the full Senate early next week. Confirmation will require a two-thirds vote.

Committee Chairman Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, had said he would not bring up McLeroy’s confirmation for a vote in committee unless he thought there were enough votes to get it in the full Senate. We don’t know at this point whether opposition from nearly all Democrats and some Republicans has softened, but the signs are alarming.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s critical that you contact your senator and tell him or her that you oppose McLeroy’s confirmation. You can find the name and contact information for your senator here.

Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller has released the following statement:

“If the Texas Senate genuinely cares about quality public education, they will reject as state board chairman a man who apparently agrees that parents who want to teach their kids about evolution are monsters. And we’ll see whether senators really want a chairman who presides over a board that is so focused on ‘culture war’ battles that it has made Texas look like an educational backwater to the rest of the country.”

Gov. Perry appointed McLeroy board chairman in July 2007. Since then, the board has turned debates over language arts and science curriculum standards in “culture war” battlegrounds. Chairman McLeroy has also endorsed a book that says parents who want to teach children about evolution are “monsters” and calls clergy who see no conflict between faith and science “morons.” This spring McLeroy led other creationists on the state board in adopting new science curriculum standards that call the scientific consensus on evolution into question and no longer include references to scientific estimates of the age of the universe.

Evolution and state science standards in Florida

WJCT TV and FM in Jacksonville, Florida, has a televised discussion on evolution in the state science standards set for April 23.  It’s set for 8 p.m. — Eastern Time, I’m guessing.

From the station’s blog (quoted entirely):

First Coast Forum – Schools, Science, and the State  – Thursday, April 23rd at 8pm on 89.9 FM and WJCT TV

The Florida Board of Education recently revised its science standards to require the teaching of evolution. The state legislature has met twice since then, and both times lawmakers have proposed bills requiring a “critical analysis” of this scientific theory. The latest bill— sponsored by Jacksonville Senator Steven Wise—didn’t get far in this year’s session, but this controversial debate is likely to continue. Senator Wise says it’s important to expose students to other ideas such as intelligent design. Critics argue that challenging evolution could open a door for religious doctrine in science classes.

What should our students learn and who should decide? We’ll discuss these issues with local lawmakers, religious experts, teachers, and parents on our next First Coast Forum Schools, Science, and the State, April 23rd at 8pm only on WJCT.

Panelists:

• Steve Goyer – pastor representing OneJax
• Dr. Marianne Barnes, UNF Education Professor
• Stan Jordan, Duval County School Board, former state legislator
• Rachel Raneri, Duval County District School Advisory Council Chair
• David Campbell, Orange Park Ridgeview H.S. teacher
• Quinton White, JU
• Paul Hooker of the Presbytery of St. Augustine

Viewers can participate in First Coast Forum
Email questions and comments to firstcoastforum@wjct.org or by calling (904) 358-6347 during the program.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Your Webside Seat to the Texas Evolution Showdown
• Quality public education: Hearts and minds
• Texas board comes down on 2 sides of creationism debate

Texas legislators get the message: Creationism hurts science and jobs

On Darwin’s birthday, two Texas legislators wrote about the stakes in the tussle between creationists on the one side, and educators, scientists and economic development on the other, in the Houston Chronicle.

Somebody gets it!  Will Gov. Rick Perry and SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy get the message?  McLeroy was reappointed as chairman a week ago — but the appointment must be approved by the State Senate.  Is a fight possible?

State Board of Education must be held accountable

By STATE SEN. RODNEY ELLIS and STATE REP. PATRICK M. ROSE
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

[Can a newspaper copyright the words of public servants doing their jobs?]

Feb. 12, 2009, 12:14AM

As scientists and educators across Texas and the nation mark the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin with calls for a renewed commitment to science education, the State Board of Education continues to engage in narrow theological debate about the validity of evolution. If Texas schoolchildren are to succeed in the 21st Century economy, the SBOE must focus less on internal philosophical differences and more on improving science instruction.

Last month, the board once again got bogged down in a bitter dispute over this issue. Members tentatively approved new science curriculum standards that protect teaching of evolution in one area, while creationists succeeded in watering it down elsewhere. Sadly, it was just the latest battle in the “culture war” being fought by a board that decides what more than 4.7 million Texas children learn in their public schools.

Families should be the primary educators on matters of faith, not our public schools. Regardless of board members’ personal beliefs on creationism and evolution, science classrooms are not the place for resolving such disagreements about faith. Those classrooms should focus on science.

Despite one’s personal stance on evolution, its teaching is critical to the study of all the biological sciences.

Scientists from our state’s universities have expressed this to the board, and have warned that watering down science education would undermine biotechnology, medical and other industries that are crucial to our state’s future.

Last session, the Legislature committed to investing $3 billion over the next 10 years in making Texas the global leader in cancer research and finding cures. This historic investment is certain to bring economic and academic opportunities to our state.

Sadly, even as our state takes one step forward, the SBOE moves us two steps back by continuing to support a diminished standard for science education. Texas’ credibility and its investment in research and technology are placed at risk by these ongoing, unproductive debates.

This is a critical issue and a critical time. Study after study has demonstrated that states which do well in science education have the brightest long-term economic future. According to Gov. Rick Perry’s Select Commission on Higher Education and Global Competitiveness, despite improved scores in math and reading, Texas’ students continue to lag alarmingly behind other states in science proficiency.

The National Assessment of Education Progress revealed that only 23 percent of Texas 8th graders achieved proficiency in science, compared with 41 percent of students in the top-performing states — the states with which we compete for jobs.

Yet the board continues to undermine high-quality science instruction, allowing our students to slip further behind.

To ensure that the SBOE works as it should, we have filed legislation to place the board under periodic review by the Sunset Advisory Commission and hold them accountable for their performance, just as we do the Texas Education Agency and other state agencies.

The decisions of the SBOE not only impact millions of young lives on a daily basis, but impact the economic progress of our state as well.

For these reasons and many others, the public has a right to full disclosure and oversight.

The board has escaped such scrutiny for far too long. The disregard for educators, instructional experts and scientists can’t continue. It’s time to take a closer look at the operations and policies of the State Board of Education.

Our state, and especially our kids, deserve better.

Ellis represents the Houston area and parts of Fort Bend County; Rose represents Blanco, Caldwell and Hays counties.

Thank you, Houston Chronicle.

Resources:

• Sen. Ellis’s site at the Texas Senate
• Rep. Rose’s site at the Texas House of Representatives
• Patrick Rose.com
• Rodney Ellis.com
• “Controversy continues on Darwin’s 200th birthday,” Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise
• “Darwin’s ideas still controversial,” Al-Jazeera

13 questions evolution can answer, intelligent design cannot

Stephen Bratteng, a biology teacher at Westwood High School  in Austin put this together.  I got the list from him when I heard him testify in favor of solid science in biology textbooks, in hearings before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003.

Here are questions that evolution can answer, but intelligent design cannot.

If intelligent design cannot offer any insight into these things, but evolution can, why should we allow intelligent design or any other flaccid “alternative” to evolution into science classes?  (Here’s the Institute for Creation Research, spending hundreds of words to fog over their inability to answer a single one of the questions!)

Why not teach our children the best we know, rather than junk we don’t know at all?

Mr. Bratteng’s 13 Questions

1. Why does giving vitamin and mineral supplements to undernourished anemic individuals cause so many of them to die of bacterial infections?
2. Why did Dr. Heimlich have to develop a maneuver to dislodge food particles from people’s wind pipes?
3. Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and strong a tendency toward retinal detachment? But a squid whose eyesight is just as sharp does not have these flaws?
4. Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the United States?
5. When Europeans came to the Americas, why did 90 percent of the Native Americans die of European diseases but not many Europeans died of American diseases?
6. Why do pregnant women get morning sickness?
7. Why do people in industrialized countries have a greater tendency to get Crohn’s disease and asthma?
8. Why does malaria still kill over a million people each year?
9. Why are so many of the product Depends sold each year?
10. Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recover from dysentery as untreated ones?
11. Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele that can make them resistant to HIV infection?
12. Close to home: Why do older men often have urinary problems?
13. And why do so many people in Austin get cedar fever?

Of course, I don’t have the list of all the answers!  (Can you help me out, Dear Reader?  List what you know in comments.)

Resources:

• Steve Bratteng’s lecture on parasites (video)

Found, another missing link: Primitive feathers

Creationists must be brave indeed — or foolish, or non-comprehending — to steam on in the face of almost daily science discoveries.

Some discoveries are bigger than others.  Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has a good, lay explanation of a recent paper documenting the discovery of a fossil with ancient, simple feathers -- a step in the evolution of feathers that was predicted but had not before been confirmed by fossils.

Until now, their existence was merely hypothetical – this is the first time that any have actually been found in a fossil. Other, more advanced stages in feather evolution have been described, so Beipaiosaurus provides the final piece in a series of structures that takes us from simple filaments to the more advanced feathers of other dinosaurs to the complex quills that keep modern birds aloft.

The simple feathers were discovered by Xu Xing, the famous Chinese palaeontologist who discovered such species as Microraptor and Dilong, among many others. The filaments are longer and broader than those possessed by other dinosaurs and Xu calls them “elongated, broad, filamentous feathers” or EBFFs.

Each is about 10-15cm long and 2mm wide – not exactly thick, but still 10-20 times broader than the simple feathers of Sinosauropteryx. They are also unusually stiff, for despite the rigours of death and fossilisation, very few of them are curved or bent.

In other species of extinct dinosaur, simple feathers probably helped to insulate their bodies. But Beipaiosaurus’s feathers were too patchily distributed to have provided much in the way of insulation and they certainly weren’t complex enough for flight.

Instead, Xu thinks that the animal used them for display – their length and stiffness are well-suited for such a purpose, and they’re only found on parts of the body that bear display feathers in modern birds. They provide strong evidence that feathers were used for display long before they were co-opted for flight.

So, what’s that?  243,694 “missing links,” now found?  243,694 for science, 0 for creationism.  Isn’t there a five-inning rule in science?

It will be interesting to watch the next round of hearings at the Texas State Board of Education, to see what sort of excuse creationists will invent for why this chunk of science isn’t exactly what it seems to be.