Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Education Policy

  • Teaching Evolution in Florida

    Brandon Haught of Florida Citizens for Science has started a series of posts on the history of the creation-evolution controversy here in Florida.

    In the new year I intend to spend a bit more time on Florida issues and even on county issues (Escambia County in northwest Florida), so you can watch for (and possibly ignore if you’re not from these parts) posts with those tags.

    I expect there to be bills on this, probably falsely called academic freedom bills, introduced into the next legislative sessions, and I will comment on them and track them here on this blog.

    It’s interesting to note how advocates of creationism in the schools have gone from bills forbidding that evolution be taught to “academic freedom” bills. Evolving strategy, eh?

  • Education and Forced Labor or Public Service

    Mark has issued a kind of challenge in his things heard post today on Stones Cry Out, regarding the Obama administration’s intent to require public service in high school and college and improve it everywhere else.

    He points to this post by D. A. Ridgeley at Positive Liberty which quotes Change.gov as saying:

    The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

    Having gone to Change.gov itself, I found this:

    The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start. [emphasis mine]

    . . . a somewhat different thing.

    Now I don’t actually suspect Ridgely of misquoting. I actually suspect Change.gov, and whoever is managing it, of revising. Perhaps a little checking would prove the difference, but since I have no problem with them revising, assuming they did, I’m not going to bother. In fact, I would hope that such proposals would see revision over time.

    The two versions serve to illustrate my view. The version as quoted on Positive Liberty is one I would vehemently oppose. Simply requiring college students, for example, to do 100 hours annually of community service would, in my view, be involuntary service. On the other hand, the version I found on Change.gov this morning is one I would almost entirely support.

    Here’s what I would support:

    • Expanded opportunities for service in areas where it’s needed
    • Tuition support (tax credit or provided in some other way) in return for a level of community service
    • A stated national goal of community service for students

    If the government is paying for your schooling, I have no problem with you being required to serve. In fact, if I had my way all forms of government provided tuition support, including loan guarantees, would have some sort of service requirement attached. If corporate America wants the service of graduates immediately, they can come up with some of the cash required for tuition.

    On the other hand, if you are simply attending school (and I think requiring this at any state institution would be much too sneaky), and not asking the government to provide the support, then it is entirely inappropriate to add some sort of national security requirement. I oppose the draft. I would oppose this. On the other hand, I do not oppose (and in fact I used) benefits in education resulting from military service, and I would not object to providing such benefits for civilian type service programs.

    Thus I will not provide an apology for the proposal as quoted at Positive Liberty. I would regard that as coloring well outside the lines. But the proposal as currently stated is one I would find acceptable and even positive.

  • Idiocy and Firing Michael Reiss

    I realize that journalists write confused stories and that headline writers produce stupid headlines to go with them, but I would think that academic or scientific organizations, irrespective of subject, should be able to be more sensible.

    It may not be so. “Firing” is, of course, my own overblown headline, provided you regard essentially forcing someone to resign as substantially different from firing them. In this case, I think the difference is entirely in framing.

    Reiss advocated responding in a reasonable and rational manner to the objections of children in school who are creationists. He didn’t advocate teaching creationism as equally scientific as the theory of evolution. His view is actually mainstream in his views.

    As an advocate of the theory of evolution I hope that the folks on our side will be clear here on what we do advocate (sound science in the science classroom) and what we don’t (suppression of all discussion).

    I’d commend to you Nick Matzke’s post on the Panda’s Thumb, which covers the scientific and educational point of view. Supplement this with and Doug’s post at MetaCatholic which deals with the religious aspects more fully.

  • Good Decisions on Education in California

    Christianity Today reports on two decisions regarding education in California. In one case, the courts upheld the University of California’s decision to reject certain courses when considering eligibility for admission. In the other, the right of parents without a teaching degree to homeschool.

    Some may see these decisions as contradictory, but that would only be true if you look at them as a question of the place of religion in education. Generally religious parents won in one case, though I should emphasize that not all homeschoolers are Christians, while in the other they lost.

    I think both are appropriate, and I think one makes the other even more important. I think homeschool parents generally do a good job with educating their children, as results on standardized tests tend to show. Yes, there is less exposure to the broader world, and yes, they often don’t learn everything I think they should learn, but they’re not my children.

    I believe evolution should be fully taught in science classes, and until such time as another consensus emerges, something I don’t expect, it should be exclusively taught. But that is for tax supported schools. I believe Christian schools should have the right to set their own curriculum, provided that students can pass the same standardized tests, if any, that are required of public school students.

    At the same time, a university, whether public or private, needs to control admissions and should be permitted to expect students to have studied certain things. Admission to a university is not the same thing as getting out of high school with the minimum effort. As I understand it, one way around these requirements is through passing standardized tests. If the students do know this material, then they can demonstrate it and gain admission.

    I think individual rights and educational responsibility are well-balanced in these rulings, and I hope they are both upheld on appeal.

  • When Neutrality isn’t Neutral

    The news of Chris Comer’s suit against the Texas Education Administration claiming she was forced out illegally should come as no surprise to anyone. The reasoning behind the dismissal clearly silly, and the explanations did not ring true as the real reasons she was asked to resign.

    But as a moderate who likes to see not just both sides of an issue, but all the various gradients between, I want to comment on the idea of neutrality as it applies in this case. While I like moderation, there are some very definite cases where the “right” position will be at one end of the spectrum or another.

    The essence of moderation as I use the term is to identify the full width of the spectrum of possibilities, and then intelligently select the appropriate point. I see at least two types of spectra one might find in such a case. One is a spectrum that balances several valid claims, with varying priority given to these various options. The other is a spectrum that may lead from valid to invalid, with the only necessary choice being to identify the valid end.

    I see health care policy as an example of the first kind of spectrum. There are a wide variety of ideas and you can even divide them up into various spectra, considering costs, who are the providers, who are the payers, and so forth. You have valid goals (providing health care to those who need it, making sure that finances are adequate, not forcing one person to pay for the foolishness of another) that need to be balanced, and you might find many positions for which good arguments can be made, but you have to decide on one policy. I think this is a good place to exercise moderate thinking.

    For a possibly non-controversial example of the other kind of spectrum, I would suggest an aircraft wing. Now I realize that more than one shape can produce lift, but if one assumes a particular general design there are going to be very few workable shapes, and there will be one that will provide the best lift in combination with other factors in that set of circumstances. You can create a spectrum from a large rock to a carefully shaped wing, but you wouldn’t want to be “moderate” or “neutral” about your choice.

    And therein lies the problem for the “neutrality” of the Texas Education Administration in this case. The issue is not between multiple equally scientific (tested, validated, published, etc.) ideas that might be taught. The conflict is between teaching mainstream science, the consensus scientific view of those who work in the appropriate fields, as opposed to picking up a variety of offbeat ideas.

    Now some will say this is not the case. It is a conflict between two equally scientific views, and they are only asking for this one view to be given equal time.

    But on what basis should a view that claims to be scientific be given a place in the public school science classroom? Should it be true if one guy with a PhD claims it is true? In that case we’d have a rather wild assortment of things to teach. There’s a guy who teaches geocentrism who has a PhD. Should it be anyone who has written a book on the topic? That wouldn’t exclude anything.

    How about a certain level of acceptance in the scientific community, specifically by those scientists working in the field in question? Without conducting scientific surveys, that is actually how we work, and if we apply to this topic (ID/intelligent desing vs. evolutionary theory) we will reject ID in the high school classroom and teach evolutionary theory.

    The “neutrality” that Chris Comer was expected to maintain was between teaching science and not teaching science, and all things considered, I would have to commend her for making the choice to advocate teaching science. Anything else seems horribly irresponsible.

    Which leaves one to wonder about the rest of the Texas Education Administration. One must assume that those in authority want those who coordinate science education in Texas to teach something else. That should make Texas residents–and Americans in general–very concerned.

  • Creationism and the Science Curriculum

    With a number of misnamed “academic freedom” bills proposed in various places, and passed recently in Louisiana, it might be a good time to consider some issues other than religion that are related to the science curriculum.

    I have argued repeatedly that these bills are religiously motivated, and that the idea is to create as much of a loophole as one possibly can in order to let creationism sneak into the classroom. I think this would be enough reason to vehemently oppose such bills.

    But not all bad science is religiously motivated. Some of it is motivated by the simple human desire to bypass reality. Many examples of such attitudes exist in alternative medicine. It’s not impossible that a good idea might turn up in such venues, but the very attitude and process is such that bad ideas will tend to predominate.

    We sometimes decry the scientific attitude as closed minded. But I like a certain amount of “closed mindedness” in science. I return to my frequent illustration of the airplane. I only want to fly in an airplane designed by someone whose mind was closed to anything that couldn’t prove itself as part of a successful aircraft design. I simplify this to: Don’t trust any epistemology that you wouldn’t want your aircraft designer to use.

    Having said that, religious motivations illustrate the problem very effectively, not because they are religious, but because they are motivations other than aiming for the best approximation of the truth that is possible. When someone is motivated by something other than accuracy and effectiveness, whether that motivation is religion, laziness, money, or anything else that distracts, that person will produce some bad science.

    If there is bad science and good science, which should be taught in the high school classroom? We debate academic freedom and freedom of speech, but we really don’t want that type of freedom in most areas of the high school curriculum. Why? Well, we want our children to get a good, high quality education. Christian conservatives become justly annoyed when “feel good” programs get in the way of solid academics in public schools. Yet when it comes to creationism they’re willing to play with the same type of ideas, weakening the curriculum in order to provide a place for ideas that haven’t passed must in their field. Those who wish to defend science need to watch out for both.

    I read an excellent illustration of how this works following a link from Dispatches from the Culture Wars to this article by Howard J. Van Till. Now Van Till is professor emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College. He goes over a series of young earth creationist arguments regarding the “shrinking sun.”

    It all starts with an abstract by two scientists who were basically trying to get others working on the data. Amongst the things that follow are:

    • Creationists taking the preliminary data and running with it, making unwarranted extrapolations from it
    • Creationists continuing to cite the data even after it has been called into question by further research. A minimum that a scientist would normally do in such a case would be to cite the research that has called the results into question and explain why he still accepts that data.
    • Creationists continuing to cite one another and the original study years afterward
    • Creationists predictably failing to go to the trouble of doing research for themselves
    • Creationist magazines, both popular and supposedly professional going ahead and publishing all this

    Now in all of this, these creationists are not citing religious grounds. They don’t say, “the earth must be about 6,000 years old according to the Bible so we believe this.” What they do is take a single study and use it for all it’s worth, and then considerably more. They do bad science.

    Now should such flawed work be used in the high school curriculum merely because it doesn’t cite anything religious? Even if it were not religiously motivated–which it clearly is–it should be rejected simply because it is sloppy. We’re working on improving education, we shouldn’t waste the students’ time on trash. The time available to give students a sound scientific education is short enough.

    Academic freedom is a good idea in its place. In higher education, one gets to the point where students are supposed to be working through various ideas. There, the range of ideas of controlled to some extent by the fact that professors, students, and publications must pass review processes appropriate to their roles. In high school the students, and often the teachers, are not prepared to deal with the sheer mass of misinformation that is available in any field.

    Academic freedom bills for high schools are a bad idea. They work directly against the need to provide a sound, basic curriculum to students that will prepare them for careers, further education or life.

  • Distinguishing Freedom and Ability

    I have always preferred our classic statements of rights, such as the bill of rights, to such statements as Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” What interests me is that while our classic statements of rights indicate things that the government is not permitted to prevent you from doing, the latter two freedoms from Roosevelt’s list, and especially the third, indicate things that you get to have.

    The four freedoms Roosevelt mentioned are:

    1. Freedom of speech
    2. Freedom of worship
    3. Freedom from want
    4. Freedom from fear

    This ambiguity comes up in plenty of discussions of rights. What precisely does “freedom from want’ require, who gets to decide just how much want is permissible, and who gets to decide who has to produce all of that? I, for example, would like a much better computer. It would help me in my creative activities. Perhaps someone should give me one in order to improve my mental health.

    Of course I’m not serious about that. Nobody has any duty to give me a computer. I will have to earn the money and buy one. People often assume that we will all have a reasonable definition of “want” in place, but the fact is that we don’t agree on such things.

    That, however, is not my main point. I would like to focus on the distinction between these two types of rights. The first, freedom of speech, is provided by the government failing to take certain actions–not suppressing speech. There is, of course, the positive action of maintaining a lawful framework, but that is a requirement for the existence of any right. Freedom from want requires some positive action on someone else’s part, namely to produce the particular goods.

    While I believe I have an obligation as a Christian, individually and in community, to care for those who are less advantaged, I have a distinct problem with many of the government programs that do what I believe I must do privately, because they tend to make one person have an inherent, legal right (I think those are oxymoronic, but they are commonly used together) to that which someone else must go out and produce. I advocate certain safety net welfare programs in any case, not as a right of those who receive them, but as part of maintaining a workable society.

    But I want to apply this now to speech and to the controversy about intelligent design. There’s a regular chorus going on right now about suppression. I think that chorus is based on a confusion of their rights with someone else’s production.

    I have a right to free speech. I do not have a right to any particular medium. If I can find no publisher for my writing, then my writing will not get printed. Since I am a publisher, I have the right to refuse to print someone else’s drivel, or even their masterpiece, and I am not suppressing free speech, even if they find no other way to publish.

    Besides forcing someone else to produce what they believe is a right, people who make such claim try to take away the rights of others. Again, illustrating with myself. As a publisher, were I required to print the works of someone even though I chose not to, then my right of free speech is abridged. My right of free speech does not require a carpenter to build a stage, an electrician to wire the sound system, a newspaper to print an ad for my event, nor any person to come an listen to me.

    My belief that I have important things to say does not require a college or university to gather students to hear it. There are things that are of value under those circumstances, and other things that are not. If I were the chair of a religion department, for example, I would consider it quite appropriate to refuse a place on the faculty to a KJV-Only advocate, even if he could produce the appropriate accredited degrees.

    In High School curricula, we have the need to cover a great deal of material, and some things are in while others are out. We have groups whose job it is to decide which is which. Subject matter needs to meet a threshold of validity and usefulness in order to merit a place in such a curriculum, otherwise you are forcing students to spend time learning that which will not work to their benefit.

    Now there is a little glitch in the educational plan. What about state sponsored institutions of higher learning? Shouldn’t they have to provide a platform for anyone in the name of free speech? They are the government, after all. I would say rather than if we allow a government to operate an academic institution, that is precisely what we should expect them to run, and that will mean making choices, discriminating against bad ideas (it isn’t prejudice if you studied it ahead of time!), and allowing some in and not allowing others.

    I say to the intelligent design advocates: You don’t have a right to access to scientific journals and faculties. Your presence in such places must be earned. Your ideas should not appear in curricula by right, but rather because they have proven themselves in the appropriate arena.

    ID is trying to create a welfare state for ideas. It’s a bad idea economically, and it’s no better of an idea in the realm of ideas.

  • My Advice for Florida Creationists

    Which, for those in doubt, includes advocates of intelligent design (ID). I know they won’t take it, but here it is:

    Just tell the truth.

    John West, over at Evolution News and Views, has written a quite disingenuous post in which he wonders about the motives of advocates in the Florida House who insisted on passing a measure that differed from the one in the Florida Senate and one which would most likely be rejected. Personally I don’t think there was any certainty that the Senate would decide to reject the House bill in the end, but that’s how it worked out.

    West thinks this “smacks of classic back-room politics by politicians who are trying to play both sides of an issue.” I’m sure back-room politics is alive and well in Florida, despite sunshine laws, but the real “sunshine” problem here is with ID advocates themselves. You see, if you stick with the truth, you only have to remember one story, but if you decide on lies, then you have to agree on your lies, and you have to keep the various stories coordinated.

    What the Florida creationists want is religion taught in public schools, but they can’t write a law to do that directly, so instead they have to write some other scenario, and that’s when things get difficult. The real effect of each of these bills would be to refer the issue to the courts, and the main issue then is just what do you want to take to court with you, considering the truth absolutely won’t do.

    That was the problem in Dover. The people who pushed intelligent design really wanted religion in the classroom, and ID was just the means to an end. Once you get one set of materials in you start working on the next one. As long as you are trying to get something that you can’t admit you want, you’re going to have confusion of strategy.

    I have been astounded at the number of ID advocates who have told me here on this blog, in e-mail, or in person that I am horribly misunderstanding their position because I think ID has to do with religion. But there is simply no possibility that ID, without any religious overtones, has any audience at all. If the whole argument is about the possibility that some form of alien life is interfering with earth life, perhaps a roomful of weirdos would be interested. The fact is that “intelligent designer” is heard (correctly) as a codeword for God, and that is what gives this traction.

    Whether ID advocates are creationists or not–and I think they are–it is certainly creationists in the older sense (YEC or OEC) who are carrying the torch for this movement. What happened in the Florida legislature is that conservative Christians who believe that their particular faith position should be taught in public schools tried to get some portion of it allowed in the curriculum of Florida public schools. There was no back-room deals needed to kill the legislation; differences in the particular form of the lie that should be told in order to reap the greatest benefit spelled doom for the bills.

    I cannot prove there were no back-room deals. If there were, I wish I knew who was involved so I could vote for the people responsible. In the legislature I’d prefer crooks who are in favor of good education to crooks who want to lie for God.

    One more thing from West:

    . . . More importantly, we still live in America, and although Darwinists are doing their best to shut down and intimidate anyone who raises questions about Neo-Darwinism, we still have free speech, and they can’t prevent people from hearing about the debate in the public arena, no matter how hard they try.

    I’m wondering if West is even aware of what this bill was for. This was about High School curriculum. It wasn’t about “the public arena.” The ID movement is the noisiest bunch of “suppressed” people in history. If their voices are cut off, there sure is no evidence of the fact.

  • Something is Wrong in Florida

    Hmmm! I would guess nobody is surprised about that. We seem to draw more than our share of attention down in these parts.

    But I’m seeing three interesting things:

    1. We passed a property tax reform bill with the support of our governor. Though I generally like Governor Crist, I voted against it, because I agreed with analyses that showed we would be having revenue problems for things like schools.
    2. For some silly reason our county school board is trying to figure out how many teachers they’ll have to let go next year. Yes, they’re cutting administrative staff as well, though mostly staff that supports the teachers.
    3. Our legislature is busy with such likely activities as a so-called Academic Freedom bill for our high school teachers. I’m sure this is only taking up a small amount of legislative time, considering the silly wording of some of the bills and proposed amendments, but I’d suggest that any time spent on this is wasted.

    Why do I connect these things? No, the time factor isn’t it. I doubt if the legislators took the time they’ve devoted to this “academic freedom” debate and worked on educational funding, they’d solve much of anything. The connection is that these legislators are busy pandering to the stupid and selfish side of the voters. The property tax bill passed because it would reduce the property taxes of enough people, and because the old system was so bad. But nobody wanted to admit what just about everybody knew–our schools would be paying for it afterward.

    It doesn’t bother the folks in Tallahassee that cuts are being made, because it’s local school board officials who have to try to figure out how to live with it.

    Some folks dislike teaching evolution, so the legislators again pretend to be doing something, in this case largely throwing the responsibility onto individual teachers, who would be policed by the courts. Can you say “lawsuit?” Alternatively some versions would make the school boards responsible for something that should have been settled by the curriculum drafters. The curriculum drafters did an excellent job, but some legislators want to pretend to solve the voters problems.

    Until we demand that our politicians at all levels tell it like it is, we’re going to see much of our time wasted on this type of activity. When a politician says he can make something work, but he’s not going to have to pay for it in some other way, he’s lying. Everything costs. You have to make sure you’re willing to pay those costs.

  • If You Want to Pray, then Pray!

    I worked with a pastor a few years ago who was frequently called up to counsel and pray with other pastors and church leaders. I won’t go into the reasons. In general, he was a bit impatient with talking about the problems, and just wanted to get praying. Normally he’d get a couple of the folks who worked with him to join in praying for the person, and I was often one of those.

    I used to enjoy watching him, because you could tell as the conversation went on that he was getting less and less interested in hearing about the problems. Suddenly he’d break in and say, “Why don’t we just pray about it?” Now whatever you think about the balance between receiving good counsel and having someone pray for you, you can tell from his actions that this pastor was really focused on prayer. Prayer was what was important to him. When prayer is important to you you pray.

    I was reminded of this as I read this post which tells about some reaction to the settlement in Odessa. Now that issue was about teaching Bible in public schools. Personally, as I have said before, I think we would be better off without specific Bible classes in public schools largely because of the difficulty with prescribing a good curriculum and finding qualified teachers. I think the Bible belongs in public schools, but it should come up appropriately in literature, social studies, history, and even music classes. But it is constitutional to have a Bible class.

    Yet when we get into court things get tangled. That’s because the NCBCPS curriculum that many schools are using is not very good and is quite sectarian (read a report by a professor at Perkins School of Theology). It’s interdenominational only in the sense that a number of very conservative denominations would find it acceptable. It doesn’t deal with a broad range of academic issues, and certainly doesn’t handle interfaith issues properly.

    Now if you really wanted to teach a Bible class, it would likely be easier to find or design a curriculum that would pass constitutional muster (there already is one that’s quite good). Then you go ahead and have your Bible class. People like me can object and suggest this is better done at home and at one’s place of worship as part of religious education, but there’s really nothing I can do to stop it.

    On the other hand if you want to make trouble, and get publicity waging some kind of culture war, well, you choose a curriculum that is likely to be challenged, and you use that.

    Similarly with prayer in public schools, if you want your children to pray, they can. There are a number of legal ways to do this, while not disrupting the classroom. You can’t have government mandated prayers, or prayers led by school officials. But if you want to pray, you can quite easily work it out and go ahead and pray. One key element here would be teaching your children to pray so that they could do so without needing an adult to make it happen.

    On the other hand if you want to fuss about praying, and try to make points in the culture war, you find a place where you can’t pray, and you do it there. On the other hand, administrators who would like to make points might just order you not to pray, or not to include religious references in art, or might try to make a music teacher eliminate sacred music from the repertoire. In that case they are making trouble instead of doing their job. Of course, in many cases it’s just ignorance, but the law is not that hard to follow. You can get pamphlets that will cover easily more than 90% of the questions that might arise.

    I’m beginning to believe more and more that the vast majority of these cases arise from a combination of stupidity and the desire to fight, and not from the desire to pray or study the Bible.