Beyond School

This “Critical Thinking” video is worth a watch.

Now: What follow-up questions for discussion or writing will get the most bang for the buck if used in the classroom?

(h/t One Good Move)

Holidays are happy now, vacation having begun. I’ve wanted to share this one for the past few weeks. It concerns a wonderful teach-in by an evangelical Christian professor of biology to a group of what I gather to be creationists, possibly from his church.

A bit of historical background makes it all the more interesting. I mentioned in my “back from the dead” post that I’ve been reading a good bit on the history of science, and that one of those books, Richard E. Rubenstein’s Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middles Ages, zoomed in on the re-discovery of Aristotelian philosophy by Aquinas and other churchmen in the first European universities beginning around 1100 c.e. It traces the twisting relationship of scientific thinking and religious authority from that time forward through the next two or three centuries, with Aristotelian thought and thinkers sometimes embraced by the Church and sometimes condemned and declared heretical by it, depending on the politics and personalities of the day.

One important take-away from the book is its demonstration that religion and science weren’t always at loggerheads, and that many Christian theologians were instrumental in laying the foundation for the ultimate ascendancy of the scientific viewpoint in the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s a refreshing thing to realize in this age of headlines endlessly pitting religion versus science.

That background made all the more refreshing the discovery, via the excellent blog, Science and Religion: A View from an Evolutionary Creationist/Theistic Evolutionist, of the lecture on Youtube. The writer of that blog, the nicely-monikered “Jimpithecus,” introduces the video thus:

In his post on Focus on the Family’s “Truth” Project, Steve Martin had a link to some videos done by Dennis Venema on how a Christian can accept evolution. Dennis teaches biology at Trinity Wesleyan University and was faced with a situation where his church began to use the “Truth Project.” He felt that he needed to respond, so he gave a series of lectures on evolution. He has graciously posted these to YouTube….

I watched the full seven- or eight-episode lecture on YouTube and was thoroughly impressed not only by the tour-de-force “slam-dunk” of the case for evolution — based simply on genomics, only one of evolution’s many lines of overwhelming evidence — but also by the Q&A between Prof. Venema and his audience of creationists willing to listen to him, and think about what he showed. The patience, humor, and civility on both sides was a breath of fresh air.

Venema respectfully explains that he was once one of the first to dispute evolution with its adherents in the scientific community, until he honestly confronted the evidence for evolution made possible by the Human Genome Project. Better still, he — like “Jimpithecus” — underscores the possibility of being a Christian without being an evolution-denier by giving a much-needed mini-lesson in more sophisticated ways of reading and thinking about the Bible.

Regardless of your theology or lack thereof, the lecture is well worth watching on its educational merits alone. He really does a great job of translating the genomic evidence into lay terms, and unpacking the force with which it demolishes the anti-evolutionary position.

I’m embedding the first lecture below, and adding below that a few screenshots of the entire lecture as a teaser for those who need motivating to watch the entire thing.

Screenshots:

The Scientific Method

The Genomic Evidence

Overview of Arguments Based on Genomic Evidence

More screenshots below the fold… Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, the French wit. Just the right sauce for my Freedom Fries:

Asked to sum up Bush’s record on the [climate change] issue, France’s climate ambassador Brice Lalonde chose instead to pass on a story he had heard.

A man comes to the White House asking to see Bush. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” he is told. The next two days he comes again asking the same question, and receiving the same answer.

On the fourth day, the exasperated guard shot back: “I’ve already told you, he’s no longer here.”

“I know, I know,” the man replied. “But it’s such a pleasure to hear you say it.” (source)

It really is a pleasure.

It’s also a pleasure to hear the (at long last) outgoing Texan-in-Chief tell us that there’s “proof of evolution” that Biblical literalism can’t reasonably refute. If you missed that, here’s a little video I cooked up to applaud the occasion:

Help the Texas Freedom Network in their work to defend science in schools.

In case you missed the post on Smart Mobbing against creationism in U.S. science textbooks – my, how I’d love to see high school students jump on this idea – the post is here.

Picture this: enterprising students in cities in Texas, particularly, and other cities nationwide – along with counterparts in Romania, which just mandated a Creationism-only science curriculum (I kid you not), and maybe Turkey, for good measure – organize Smart Mobs to strike, peacefully and simultaneously, out of the blue to demand only 21st century science – yes, I mean evolution – be included in their biology and other science textbooks.

And they do it quickly, before Texas’ Creationist-dominated Board of Education votes next Spring to insert Creationism yet again into its science standards. (See this post.)

They happen at such places as the Texas capitol building, the lobbies of textbook publishers’ headquarters, science museums, the national capitol, and wherever else seems like a good idea.

And they simply follow the steps of this excellent video (h/t to the Personal Democracy Forum):

And, because they’re good, peaceful citizens showing the will and responsibility to act for the education they deserve, the students who organize these events (more than once, please) include this as a bullet on their college application, to show that they’re more original and more consequential than the herd that joins the schooly National Honor Society and such. And the admissions officers at the best colleges see that bullet, and place their applications in the acceptance pile.

And they live actively and powerfully ever after.

If Obama’s doing it, kids, maybe it’s something you should consider as worth your time to learn. It might just help your future more than a couple hundred extra points on your SAT.

(Add to TheIndyDebate map)

So, because the Texas vote will set science standards for the next decade, textbook publishers will likely be aiming to please the creationists until 2018. And other states, to repeat Loewen, will have to choose amongst science textbooks designed for these Creationists in charge of Texas schools.

That’s why it matters. By 2018, Obama will have left his (knock wood) second term in office for a two full years – but most students during his presidency will have studied anti-science textbooks because of the actions of the Texas Board of Education.

Call it an Obama presidency with a Palin education policy.

3. Solutions?

Is it possible to influence the Texas BOE to vote down the provision in January or the following spring? It seems unlikely. Most of the members belong to the extreme religious right, with open ties to the creationist Discovery Institute that supported similar anti-science campaigns in Kansas and Pennsylvania.

But unlikely is not impossible. So here are some ideas:

1. Call on Obama to use the bully pulpit.

Click image to see Climate Change message on YouTube.

Last month, Obama declared an end to climate change science deniers. Earlier in the campaign, he openly voiced his opposition to creationism in all its guises during the campaign. If he appealed not to the ideological BOE, but to the nation – and the textbook industry – to shout down Texas, that might limit the damage to textbook content nationwide.²

2. Use Smart Mob and/or Tipping Point campaigns

Pressure the Texas BOE and, again, the textbook publishers, with opposition. Get schools nationwide to declare their support for evolution-friendly textbooks, and their refusal to buy anything else. (If I were to do that, show of hands: who would support it by spreading the word?)

3. Longer term, organize to defeat the creationists in school board elections.

It’s amazing that Board of Education officials need no scientific or educational expertise to be elected, yet they control the curriculum, standards, and funds of the public school system in Texas.

Worse, as U. of Arkansas Prof. Jay Greene argues,

Local school board elections on off-election days have very low turnout, often in the single digits. Given the obscurity of local school politics, it’s easier for the employees and their organized interests to dominate school politics. They’re just about the only ones following what is going on and voting in those elections.

What’s good for the creationist goose can be good for the scientific gander too – if only the gander played the politics smarter.

4. [Your ideas here]

1. Here’s a good first-hand account of the hearings in Austin. [↩]
2. Add to TheIndyDebate map. [↩]

From the “Telling My Students What I Wish My High School Teachers had Told Me” Department:

Science is downright sexy. It struck me last week as I watched the following video on CNN about scientist Carl Hodges, of the Seawater Foundation, which I promptly found online, bookmarked on Diigo, and noted:

Use rising oceans from global warming to reduce greenhouse gases and create food and green jobs? Scientists are the sexiest saviors in the world.

Watch the video, and ask yourself how, when a science career can lead to a lifestyle at once enjoyable, profitable, and socially valuable, students today are lukewarm about pursuing careers in science:

Embedding problems! Click the image to view the video on CNN.

I’d chew off my left arm to live life like Carl Hodges. Yet, when I try to get students to see the beauty and the excitement of where science careers can lead, they look at me like I’m trying to sell them an 8-track car stereo.

The explanation for this, as usual, has to lie in part on how schools all-too-often teach science: linear, memorized, non-contextual units covering what science knows, garbage in, garbage out, with little to no focus on the more exciting stuff – those challenges science has yet to meet.

Injecting case studies of scientists like Hodges into classroom discussions might tip students more toward science. Emphasizing the creativity and lateral thinking of Hodges’ connections of global warming, rising seas, food and fresh water shortages, and desertification, and the beauty of his transforming a cause of global crisis into a possible solution for it – this bit of sexiness may seduce more students to become the future scientists who might save us, down the road, in different ways.

(And if you have your own “sexy scientist” heroes – or science teachers – do us a favor and drop them in comments )

8 a.m. Sunday morning in Onyang, where Chosun era kings bathed in the local hot springs to cure themselves of all sorts of maladies, and I hope in a few minutes to do the same. (It ain’t all that great a place now, by the way, with its ugly commercial strips and other modern blights.)

Anyway, before I go, I want to quickly note that:

1. I wish there was a way I could keep the last post’s live puppy cam forever atop this blog’s homepage, and keep those six pups forever young, so I could spend as many hours watching them down the years as I have since discovering them a few days ago. They’ve so won me, I now check in with them first thing upon waking, several times during the day, and at night before retiring. (My wife and I had a rear-angle view of one of the pups pooping a couple nights ago, which warmed us almost as much as watching him and his siblings decide to eat it. It did look like a Tootsie Roll.)
2. When I embedded those pups in that post, my mind drifted to Michael Doyle and his science classroom in New Jersey, where I pictured monitors lined along a specimen shelf showing the live puppycam, and imagined live clamcams, chimpcams, sharkcams, and a vast 21st century menagerie of other biological wonders delivered live and free into his students’ lives via the wonders of Ustream.
3. I’ve already plugged Michael here before, and he seems as queasy about the weirdness of mutual admiration societies as I do (though I hope he also values the foundation of them, which is less biological than chemical and secularly spiritual), so I’ll just point to more recent (and excellent) testimonials calling for a wider readership of Michael’s Science Teacher blog at Nashworld and Barry Bachenheimer’s Plethora of Technology, and say that -
4. I follow Nash’s lead by nominating Science Teacher as Best Teacher Blog this year. (I wrote about issues I had with the Eddies last year, and I have issues with their open nomination process this year, but as I said on Nash’s post, in response to Michael’s declining that nomination:

[ Michael:] While I think the Eddies are dubious in many ways (and wrote a post biting the hand that fed me last year, which I linked to under my nomination banner for a few months), putting the damn thing (and Alltop badges, and anything else that communicates to first-time visitors that you’re not some tin-foil-hat-wearing…

Michael

oh, waitaminnit…some dog pawing a keyboard in human underwear) up seems to me worth it, in the balance, since anything that helps a writer’s ideas reach more readers is, um, sort of one of the things most writers want to do.

And I’m going to exit this fine post (it really is fine, Nash) so I can nominate Michael too. Deal, Doyle

I’m nominating Michael for several reasons: I look to science as the only hope we have for getting out of many fateful messes (that, yes, scientists got us into, but largely due to the greedy urgings of commerce and government and pretty much every one of us), so science teaching is important to me; Michael is an edublogger (vile term, said Polonius) who uses technology to write about science and education, not about technology (a meaning-focus, not a tools-focus); he’s whacked-out funny and roots-deep serious by turns, thank god; he is and is not an edublogger; he is and is a writer.

Bill Farren of Education for Well-Being, one of my favorite sites, writes about the fatal assumption of economic theory, and some new economics textbooks that may mark a paradigm-shift by questioning those assumptions from a green economics standpoint. Well worth a read, for both economics and environmental science teachers.

And Dr. Jim Horn, who writes at Schools Matter, a blog I’ve consistently enjoyed since subscribing a couple of months ago, writes a good analysis of the usual suspects who will be lining up outside Obama’s door to push more of the same educational policies from the Bush years here.  Jim describes the focus of Schools Matter in his tagline:

This space explores issues in public education policy, and it advocates for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools. If there is some urgency in the message, it is due to the current reform efforts that are based on a radical re-invention of education, now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of “metastasizing testing” aimed at dismantling a public education system that took almost 200 years to build.

I hope to interview Jim about his take on charter v. public schools soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if anybody is, or knows of, a strong proponent of charter schools to give a counter-argument, feel free to leave a name in comments or on my contact page.

Looking ahead, I have great hope that we will have the courage to embrace the changes necessary to save our economy, our planet and ultimately ourselves.

In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The average age of the systems engineers cheering on Apollo 11 from the Houston control room that day was 26, which means that their average age when President Kennedy announced the challenge was 18.

This year similarly saw the rise of young Americans, whose enthusiasm electrified Barack Obama’s campaign. There is little doubt that this same group of energized youth will play an essential role in this project to secure our national future, once again turning seemingly impossible goals into inspiring success.
–Al Gore, “The Climate for Change.” NYTimes, 2008/11/08 [emphasis added]

How dire is the climate situation? Consider what Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said last month: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Pachauri has the distinction, or misfortune, of being both an engineer and an economist, two professions not known for overheated rhetoric.

In fact, far from being an alarmist, Pachauri was specifically chosen as IPCC chair in 2002 after the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replace the outspoken Dr. Robert Watson, who was opposed by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. So why is a normally low-key scientist getting more desperate in his efforts to spur the planet to action?

Part of the answer is the most recent IPCC assessment report. For the first time in six years, more than 2,000 of the world’s top scientists reviewed and synthesized all of the scientific knowledge about global warming. The Fourth Assessment Report makes clear that the accelerating emissions of human-generated heat-trapping gases has brought the planet close to crossing a threshold that will lead to irreversible catastrophe. Yet like Cassandra’s warning about the Trojan horse, the IPCC report has fallen on deaf ears, especially those of conservative politicians, even as its findings are the most grave to date.
–Source

Your political persuasion aside, I hope we can all agree that the level of engagement and enthusiasm for democratic engagement – for citizenship - seen in the US presidential elections was an inspiration.

It would be sad to watch that high tide recede, now that the elections are over, as if citizenship in a democracy consisted of nothing more than voting once every few years.

That’s why I’m passing along this request from Ståle Brokvam at International School of Manila to encourage both teachers and students to consider going to the 350.org website to call on President-Elect Obama to attend the UN Climate Meetings in Poland this December.

This 30-second activity, done now, might be a memorable experience for students, if you think about it. Sending a personal appeal to such an historic president might leave a deep impression on them (imagine being able to send JFK or Ronald Reagan an online letter), and one that’s good for the future of democracy in the world. Why? Because this is an act not of adulation and celebrity-esque buzz, but is instead one of treating elected officials – even the president-elect – as the public servants we expect them to be. And letting them know the public will by communicating it in writing.

Put another way, teaching kids to feel excited about an historical politician is one thing; teaching them to feel empowered to communicate their will to that person is another. The first is more about pride, which is fine; but the second, finer still, is about citizenship.

An added bonus: since the president of the US affects the world with his decisions, this site is open to the world. There’s even a globe upon which you and your students can pin their identities.

And the best bonus of all: This would not be an act of irrelevant schooliness. Unless you doubt the overwhelming consensus of scientists worldwide (see the article linked above), climate change does require rapid and decisive leadership on the part of President-elect Obama. So this beats filling out a worksheet.

Campaign news, Supreme Court analysis, evolution and intelligent design textbook battles and history, the future of books and reading, “freedom of e-speech,” and more in today’s mix.

• My wife made me canvas for Obama; here’s what I learned | csmonitor.com

  By a Southern banker conservative. Hopeful, wry, beautiful.

  tags: obama, elections08, history, usa

• Declarations – WSJ.com

  Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes a fine endorsement of Obama.

  tags: obama, elections08

  • He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

    Ken Fallin

    A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.

    There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

    This means nothing? This means a great deal.

• Why Obama-McCain race deserves ‘historic’ label

  tags: politics, usa, history, elections08, obama, mccain

  • Take the strong link between age and views on gay rights or abortion. Young people take both for granted. “For every 100 people over age 70 who die and are replaced by 100 people between 18 and 24, you get more liberal social attitudes,” Fiorina said.

  • Not only McCain but much of the conservative intellectual elite warn of an impending turn to European-style socialism at home and appeasement abroad, especially if Democrats seize a monopoly in Washington.

    Historians call the fears exaggerated, a reflection of the country’s 30-year rightward shift. On many issues, Obama is to the right of Nixon, the Republican who proposed a guaranteed income for all Americans, supported affirmative action, imposed wage and price controls, and established much of today’s environmental regulation.

    “A conservative in 1968 was far more liberal than a liberal is in 2008,” said Schulman.

  • An Obama victory offers two potential paths: a major political realignment, following Roosevelt in 1932 and Reagan in 1980. This would require that he rack up successes in his first two years, a honeymoon when presidential power is at its peak.

    If he does, and realignment is under way, he could avoid the catastrophic losses that Clinton suffered after his 1993 health care plan crashed under a Democratic Congress, replaced in 1994 by a Republican one.

    Another model is 1964, with a big Democratic win followed by a collapse four years later, or 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter ran a flawless campaign but proved a weak leader unable to control his party or rally the public.

    “You could have a scenario where Obama is under a lot of pressure from his left and yet can’t do big economic things because of the difficult situation we’re in, where he can’t disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as the base would like,” Fiorina said. Obama could then come under attack from his left, face congressional losses in 2010 and by 2012 a challenge from his own party, perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton.

• Bob Cesca: The Mandatory Rejection of Sarah Palin

I so hope this election serves as a death-knell referendum on the divisive Roveian electioneering of the past 8 years. Here’s to a reformed conservatism in the future that plays to ideas instead of fears.

• tags: palin, conservative, usa, elections08, racism

  • More than Palin herself, I’m looking forward to the end of an era in which the aforementioned gomers — these relatively small pockets of bigots and witch hunters — have enjoyed undeserved attention and disproportionate sway over American politics and policy.

    The truth is that politicians like Sarah Palin are merely manipulating, exploiting and inciting these people. In other words, it’s the ignorance, stupid. And next Tuesday, we have a chance to seriously marginalize this darker, uglier side of America.

    It’d be crazy, though, to suggest that Tuesday will be the last day. To be sure, if Senator Obama wins, we’ll be hearing from these knee-jerk wackaloons quite a bit. Hell, Sarah Palin might try to run for president in four years. Nevertheless, we have a chance to tell the Sarah Palin’s of the world that there’s no room in American politics for fire-eaters who stoke archaic prejudices and fears rather than ameliorating them. We have a chance to tell them that not only doesn’t it work anymore, but that it actually exacerbates electoral failure.

• Excitement and Anxiety Swirl as Chicago Prepares to Host Obama Event – NYTimes.com

  Pray for safety here.

  tags: obama, elections08, politics, history, usa

• The Canadian Press: Quebec comedy duo talks porn and politics with oblivious Sarah Palin

  Unbelievable. Ethics are sticky, but so is the story.

  tags: satire, hoax, palin, humor, politics

• 3 evolution critics on advisory panel that will review standards for science courses in Texas schools | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Regional News

  Science takes another hit in Texas. Troubling.

More below the fold….. Read the rest of this entry »