Visiting Colleges

Well, I have arrived at that moment in life where my kids are looking towards college.  My oldest daughter, whom I affectionately refer to as 'Squirrelly Girlie the Elder," is now halfway through her junior year in High School, which means that over the next 7-8 months she will need to familiarize herself with the college application and admissions process, choose colleges to apply to, and submit applications for admissions and for scholarships.

And given that she has expressed some interest in studying in Southern California, I have taken advantage of my need to visit the Los Angeles area for work to make it also a college visit trip and brought my daughter along.

It has been a very good trip so far -- informative for her, but also interesting for me.  Even though I work at an elite University, it's fascinating for me to see how the admissions process is handled from the point of view of a parent and prospective student going through the process.

Anyway, we've spent the past two days visiting a variety of colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area.  We've been to USC, Loyola-Marymount, Occidental College (where Obama briefly attended), and UCLA (the big state University).  And today (Saturday), our last full day in Los Angeles, we're going to make an unplanned trip out to the Claremont area to see the well-known community of liberal arts colleges that make up the Claremont college consortium (Claremont-McKenna, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, etc.)

It's been a great visit so far, and I hope it has been beneficial for SG the Elder as she starts her foray into the college search process.

Santorum the Troglodyte

This medieval joke of a candidate actually called Barack Obama a snob for, of all things, wanting to make sure that every American who wants to go to college can actually do so:



Let me tell you how infuriated I was to hear this.  First off, Santorum's negative representation of the value of a college education is a slap in the face of every working-class person who wasn't able to go to college, but who thinks of college as a sure path for upward social and economic mobility for their children and grandchildren.

It's offensive to people like my parents who never even graduated High School, much less attended any college class, but who sacrificed incredibly to make sure that college was not only an option, but also a reality for me and my siblings.

What Santorum is doing by propagating this line of horse manure is encouraging people against the values of higher education and reducing them to a life devoid of the opportunities that a college education can provide.

I would bet any amount of money that if Santorum went around and asked each of the members in his audience what they feel about elitist liberal college intellectuals, he'd get a pile of vicious hatred and resentment spewed forth about us college-educated types.  That's what he's angling for.  But if he went around to each of these folks individually and asked them if they thought college was important for their children and could be helpful to their futures, I'd bet dollars-to-doughnuts that 99% of them -- at least those who actually care about the future well-being of their children and grandchildren -- would answer affirmatively.  Snobs would they all be, if Santorum had anything to say about it.

In fact, there's not a person I know, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, literate or illiterate, etc., etc., for whom the prospect and opportunity to take advantage of a college education would elicit an outright negative response.  Lay a college scholarship on the lap of any parent for his or her kid and see if that scholarship is brushed off as nothing more than a losing proposition, a vehicle for liberal indoctrination, and the machinations of "snobs."  Anyone who would do such a thing is a fool, and Santorum is encouraging people to be fools.

The irony is that Santorum himself is college-educated.  The vast majority of this country's most productive and innovative and entrepreneurial and materially successful individuals are college educated.  And there's no question that college education is positively correlated with such success and accomplishment.  To say that Obama is a "snob" for wanting Americans to have access to a college education is one of the worst and most cynical displays of medieval feudalistic thinking I've ever heard come out of the mouth of a modern politician.  And to think that this person is a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination!  To think that this troglodyte has a realistic shot at it!  There is a fundamental rot in the GOP that has made this possible.

And let me also turn to something else Santorum says in his regressive sermon.  He said that the reason why Obama wants folks to be college-educated is because he wants them to be shaped in his effete liberal intelligentsia image, and not in the working-class, non-college educated image of the folks sitting around in that room!  It's almost too absurd to even fathom imagining this is what Obama wants.  First off, the very people in the audience all likely want college for their kids and understand its value.  Second, where is the responsibility Santorum places on the folks in that very room for making sure that their kids are raised according to the wholesome values of hard-working GED holders?  What kind of backhanded insult is it to all the parents in that room who have college-age kids that Santorum implies that their parenting sucks so badly that when their kid steps onto a college campus, they will instantly be brainwashed by liberal college professors.  My God!  What is the matter with this man?  What is the matter with the GOP?  Where is the dignity and self-esteem of the people who would listen to Santorum excoriate them for believing that higher education is a good thing and then cheer him for his suggestion that they keep their kids uneducated and tied to the assembly line like they themselves may be?  What kind of parent listens to a political candidate who crushes a part of the American dream leading to upward social and economic mobility and cheers him on for it?  It is absolutely, gob-smackingly, unbelievably, mind-blowing absurdity.

"Paddling" A Relic of the Past at St. Augustine

I know that there are many who disagree with the efforts to end the practice of corporal punishment at St. Augustine High School, including many whose opinions on a lot of things I respect; but I think the final agreement to ban paddling as a manner of discipline is the right course of action. I just don't think whipping a kid is a productive way to handle misbehavior. I just hope the St. Augustine community of alumni and supporters will be able to put the controversy behind them and move forward.

9th Annual TUCLA

That's Tulane Undergraduate Conference on Latin America (TUCLA).

Which is taking place pretty much all day tomorrow on Tulane University's campus.

It's always a great event and very exciting to see our senior majors in Latin American Studies present their major research projects from the Capstone Seminar.

More information here.

If you're in the area, have an interest, and can drop by for a session or two, please do: you are most welcome.

But, above all, congratulations to the students for their intellectual achievements that brought them to tomorrow's events.

See y'all there.

Abuse of Power

Watch Campus Police at the University of California, Davis, pepper spray a completely peaceful and unarmed group of Occupy Davis protesters on the University Campus.



There's just no excuse for this type of authoritarian behavior.  It was completely unprovoked.  The campus police were never in any danger and were never threatened by these students.  The President/Chancellor (or whatever she's called) should be fired.

But what's even more absurd is the fact that if the police and University administration had just ignored these students, they would have set up their tents for a few days, had their say, gotten bored, and packed up shop.  Now, the university has to contend with a national incident.

Posse

Part of what has been consuming my time and energy this fall semester is my role as Tulane University's assigned mentor for the freshman group of Posse Scholars. It's been a wonderful, albeit challenging at times, experience. For those of you who don't know about the Posse Foundation and its programs, I encourage you to check it out. It's really a simple idea, but one that has been quite revolutionary in advancing a particular kind of college education. Mind you, as someone intimately involved in the program by virtue of being a trained mentor, I can say that it's not picture perfect and that there are some challenges to the program; but on balance, I think it is a very worthwhile and successful idea. I'm proud to be a part of it and to have had the chance to get to know 10 really special young scholars.

Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Academy

Over at Professor Mondo's blog, the subject of Dr. Ted Gup's piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on liberal bias and intellectual diversity in the academy was given some play. In this article, Dr. Gup, a self-identified left-leaning academic, laments the lack of ideological diversity within the academy and calls for ways to create a more comfortable environment for conservative students at college/university. Of course, I've discussed this before, but I left a comment on this blog that I think is worth repeating here. I wrote:

I’ve engaged this topic here before, but I’ll only say the following now: yes, it is true the academics in the academy lean left; but it is also true that more and more conservative high school students, and their parents, are bringing a hardened and defensive spirit into college that makes any realization of Dr. Gup’s recommendations nigh to impossible. What does it mean when a conservative student, already expecting to be uncomfortable and subject to attack simply because of holding a different belief system, is (1) either unable to articulate a reasoned defense of a position or (2) is confronted with a fellow classmate who respectfully refuses to buy into his arguments and doesn’t back down in defending a differing position, but who automatically interprets the frustration of either outcome as de facto evidence of liberal bias and ideological persecution? Just because a student spouts off a conservative or liberal position doesn’t mean that challenging that position is evidence of hostility to the ideological basis of that position — but more and more conservative students are reading into the critical thinking process evidence of ideological bias. Challenging students to think critically can be uncomfortable, regardless of political ideology. I’ve called out many liberal students for making uncritical ideological claims and challenged such students to articulate a reasoned defense of their claims, and these students never respond by thinking I’ve attacked their core belief systems; but if I do the same to a conservative student, the reaction I get more and more from them is less an openness towards developing a critical capacity regarding defending their claims and more a confirmation of Horowitz’s own brainwashing crusade that they are being persecuted because they are conservative. I’ve said before that my own experience leads me to believe that though the academics in the academy are disproportionately left-leaning, that does not necessarily translate into a left-leaning propagandistic pedagogy. If it were truly as conservatives believe it is, then a much greater percentage of college-educated students would be liberal mind-bots upon graduation. Do conservative academics really think that they are the only members of the profession who can teach a course without proselytizing their political ideology and without respecting the different ideological inclinations of their students? If they don’t hold this view, that I would ask conservative academics to give their liberal colleagues the same courtesy and benefit of the doubt that they themselves would want.

And I'll leave it at that.

Come To Think Of It: I AM a Homeschooler

You know, I have been pondering the whole homeschooling topic once again because it has recently been the subject of a number of postings on Rod Dreher's blog.

A good while ago, I wrote a blog posting entitled: "Why I Don't Home School My Kids." And I stick to that blog posting.

However, I began to wonder what it was about the homeschooling movement that kept (and keeps) nagging at me. Then I had a bit of an "A-HA!" moment about this that made sense to me. What bothers me about homeschoolers is that their appropriation of the term "homeschooler" is a kind of judgment on what goes on in the homes of us parents who send our children to "regular" school for a part of their day. I know that this differentiation is probably not intentional, but it does nevertheless set parents like me and my wife, who send our kids to regular public school, apart from the parents who keep their kids out of institutional school environments and call what they do as homeschooling. That differentiation implies that my wife and I are somehow not homeschoolers. But I would beg to differ. In many ways, we are just as much "homeschoolers" as they are, and so I find the differentiation between us to be a cultivated falsehood.

Let me try to explain it this way: what most often vexes me about the homeschooling movement is why it is often thought of, by those who claim the label as its practitioners, exclusively as a temporal and spatial alternative to “regular” schooling.

But here's my problem with that view... Yes, my children attend a regular public school from 8am-3pm. But it is also a fact that they are home with my wife until 5pm and with me and my wife from 5pm until bedtime. We are always together on the weekends. And when we are together, we are constantly “homeschooling” our children. Whether it's helping out with homework, discussing current events, or going to the Zoo on the weekend, we are constantly in the process of participating actively in the learning process of our children. What's more, we are actively involved to the extent we feel is appropriate in their 8am-3pm experience, too. And my children definitely bring the "homeschooling" they get that outside of the 8am-3pm time slot of their day with them to their “regular” school. It's not like my wife and I are completely divorced from their 8am-3pm life. Nor is it the case that their life outside of the regular school day doesn't inform what they do during their 8am-3pm regular school day experience. But what my children get that pure 100% "homeschooled" children don't get is the good that comes from having a "regular" school experience. Let me delve into this a bit more.

As I understand it, a huge part of the homeschooler movement views the “regular” school always with suspicion and often with dread. The refrain I often hear about not sending kids to “regular” school is less about the positives of homeschooling and more about the negatives of regular schooling. Homeschooling is always the alternative to the “bad” in regular schooling; and the “good” of homeschooling is always preferable to the "good" of "regular" schooling [at least to the extent that pure homeschoolers think there actually IS anything good to be gotten from "regular" school.]

But the good of both kinds of school experiences (homeschooling and "regular" schooling) are different kinds of good. And it’s my belief that sacrificing the good of the regular school experience in order to avoid the bad of the regular school experience actually cheats kids. Why do I believe this? Well, because I reject the notion that I and my wife are not homeschooling our kids just because our engagement with their intellectual, spiritual, and moral lives takes place outside of the 8am-3pm, M-F, 9 months out of the year “regular” school schedule.

My wife and I DO homeschooling our kids, and for much more time than they spend in “regular” school. So they get the benefits of homeschooling without sacrificing the good of attending regular school.

When folks self-identify as homeschoolers and think of that movement in its neat, conventional box (and make no mistake: the homeschooling movement IS a conventional movement), I know they wouldn’t include me in that number because my kids happen to go to “regular” school.

But why is that? It’s kind of offensive to me to think that somehow I’m not a homeschooling parent, too. It makes me wonder what homeschoolers think us “regular” school parents do with our children outside of the 8am-3pm day. It also makes me wonder if they think we abdicate responsibility and have no engagement with the 8am-3pm environment in which our children pass these hours of the day. In fact, I’d argue that sending my children to be in a structured learning environment that my wife and I sanction and monitor IS part of our “homeschool” strategy. By not "hovering" over them during a part of their day, and by letting our children have their own experiences of learning with peers away from the comforting gaze of a protective parent always nearby, we actually ARE pursuing a kind of homeschooling pedagogy. It's as much a choice on our part as parents concerned about and involved in our children's education as is a "homeschooling" parent's choice about what curricular or extracurricular experiences their children will have.

So, for this reason, I am taking back the term from folks who would deny it to me: I AM a Homeschooler, too!

From the Archives: Advice to Young Conservatives

I have a habit of re-running this particular blog entry at the start of every new college school year.

The Myopia of Knee-Jerk Conservative Opposition to the US Department of Education

A meme I hear a lot on the budget-slashing bandwagon of the conservative Tea Party express is the push simply to cut the entire U.S. Department of Education. Just obliterate it without a second thought. When I hear conservatives jump on this "cut-the-entire-Department-of-Education" bandwagon, I know that these folks have really no clue about the U.S. Department of Education and its various programs. It leads me to think that such bombast is nothing but an ill-considered visceral opposition to what is perceived as an agency of worthless liberal brainwashing programs. The ignorance that envelops this radical position is so very clear to those who have even a cursory knowledge of what the U.S. Department of Education really does. Conservatives who claim that the federal government has a constitutional obligation to protect the security of the United States fail to even look at how the U.S. Department of Education has been vital to that critical constitutional function over the years. When I hear such blathering conservative antipathy to the U.S. Department of Education, I ask those holding such positions if they have ever considered the national security ramifications that such a position entails. And I'm often met with a blank, open-mouthed stare. I see it in their eyes and I know what they are thinking. They're thinking: What could the U.S. Department of Education possibly have to do with national security?

And so I always lay out for them just one example of many that I know very well about: the Title VI program that provides federal funding for global area studies and foreign languages instruction. Without this federally funded program, and given this country's linguistic and cultural ethnocentrism, we'd have very few people who would be able to speak Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Swahili, Tamil, Quechua, Guarani, or any of the other dialects that we really need to have some competency in to protect our national security. If left to the states, do you really think that the individual states would think about national security concerns enough to fund the study of Arabic in their state universities? Come on! Get real! Most states would think that teaching "ethnic studies" and those "terrorist" languages are just un-American! And yet the security of the country so desperately depends upon developing knowledge of global cultures and foreign languages. Additionally, without Title VI funding from the U.S. Department of Education, we'd have even fewer people in our country, in an already dismally ignorant environment when it comes to understanding the world (see Sarah Palin as exemplary display number 1 on this front), who could identify where Libya is on the map, much less understand what the different tribal groups are in that country's sociopolitical makeup. [Aside: Do you really think conservative patriots who can sing the Marines' Hymn can even identify what countries the "halls of Montezuma" or the "shores of Tripoli" refer to, much less the historical moments they address?]

And I haven't even mentioned U.S. Department of Education programs like the Fulbright/Fulbright-Hayes program, or the myriad other international research and cultural exchange programs that the U.S. Department of Education funds, or the collaborative role that the U.S. Department of Education plays in providing resources that make the Foreign Area Officers program of the U.S. Defense Department successful. So, if you ever hear any conservatives argue for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, don't take them seriously, especially if they fashion themselves as supporters of the constitutional mandate for the federal government to protect the national security. They're just probably swept up by a visceral hatred of state-led education initiatives as nothing more than a vehicle for liberal brainwashing, an attitude propagated by the likes of David Horowitz. They haven't studied what the U.S. Department of Education is actually doing. Not one iota. They represent nothing more than the thoughtless ravings of anti-state-originating education troglodytes. A real national security, constitutionalist conservative would at least look at what programs the U.S. Department of Education has in the service of national security interests -- programs that wouldn't likely be done well by any other agency -- before calling for the entire agency's head on the chopping block.

How Many Conservatives Hate the Rich

I've been thinking recently about the whole subject of wealth in its many different forms. Of course, when we speak of wealth and riches, we most often mean pecuniary wealth. But it is not all that uncommon for us to speak of wealth and riches in other, non-pecuniary ways, too. We talk about the riches of family life, or the riches of creativity or ideas. I'd like to ponder the idea of a kind of wealth related to intellectual capital, or what we might know more commonly as the "wealth" of knowledge -- a phrase that I would say is familiar to many. But it's in that one area of capital accumulation -- the area of knowledge -- where many conservatives hate, despise, and/or envy the rich.

Let me start with a recent example of something that I happen to experience a fair amount in my dealings with conservatives, especially in intellectual debates. I hold a Ph.D. That's no secret. But I can honestly say with full confidence that I never flaunt this in my dealings with others, and I never use this as a cudgel to try to beat down another in an exchange of ideas. To the extent that it ever does enter into a debate, it is usually as an example of an accomplishment that I am proud of, especially given that the conditions of my upbringing and class background are such that my earning a Ph.D. would have been such an unlikely outcome. I am the oldest child in a family of six siblings born to working-class parents who married extremely young (Dad - 18, Mom - 17) and who never even earned a high school diploma (though both eventually earned their GEDs). I take pride in my Ph.D. because I did it all myself. My parents created an environment that was supportive and encouraging, and for that I am lucky and grateful; but my parents did not have the benefit of experience to guide me through the undergraduate college experience, much less to even comprehend the world of graduate school, comprehensive exams, field research, and dissertation writing. In effect, my education is the most significant "pulling-myself-up-by-the-bootstrap" accomplishment in my life. I fortunately had the God-given talent to do a doctorate in my chosen field; and, by God, I earned it. There was nothing about my academic accomplishment that was handed to me on a silver platter from a position of privilege. And the material fruits of my hard work have come not in pecuniary wealth, but in a wealth of knowledge. When it comes to knowledge, I'm a pretty rich dude, so to speak.

And yet ... it is precisely in this area of wealth where I find the most spiteful disdain levied at me by a fair number of conservatives.

For instance, in a recent debate I was having in a comment thread over at a conservative blog, I had the fact that I have a Ph.D. (i.e. my wealth) thrown out at me out of the blue in a discussion where my Ph.D. had absolutely no relevance at all to the debate. You can read the comment thread for yourself, but let me note that the debate centers around the validity of a generalization that liberals blog and think in a particular way that is, shall we say, disreputable and flawed, compared to how conservatives blog and think, which is, shall we say, admirable and correct. In the midst of this debate, in which I disputed the notion put forward by my debate opponent that a generalization could be made about the way conservatives and liberals blog so as to be able to render a value judgment on their thinking, my debate opponent threw in this comment:

I don’t wish to take on a condescending tone here. But you need to take note of the meaningful difference between a hard-and-fast rule that is so be imposed on people, with no exceptions, and an observation of a general trend. A trend of events which, if somehow objectively measured, would yield statistics validating the suggested trend.

Does earning a Ph.D. have something to do with losing track of this difference, or maybe assuming a fair-weather-friendship with it, looking past it when it doesn’t service whatever point you’re trying to prove? A lot of people would say that about Ph.D.’s before they even catch wind of these exchanges we have over this issue, and here you are proving it.

I have no idea what the relevance of my Ph.D. is to the actual argument itself, so I am left to assume that throwing this comment in the debate was meant as some kind of anti-elitist dig at me. And given the hostility that conservatives generally tend to have towards folks with advanced academic degrees, I think the odds are clearly in favor of that interpretation, even though I think this conservative blogger and commenter is generally a respectful and good fellow. But, even if this was the intent of bringing my having a Ph.D. into the debate, that's fine. I'm used to this. It's not an experience that is all that uncommon for me in such contexts. And it certainly does nothing to diminish the pride and value I ascribe to my academic accomplishment and the wealth of knowledge it has afforded me. But what strikes me as ironic is that this kind of reaction is coming from conservatives who would consider such a reaction as pretty despicable if that wealth that I possessed wasn't a richness of knowledge and academic achievement, but was rather a pecuniary wealth derived from entrepreneurial behavior in the "business" world.

Accumulating intellectual capital, or generating a wealth of knowledge, is the one area where many conservatives tend to become the very anti-rich class-warrior demagogues that they claim to despise.

Public Service at Tulane Gets Props

I have to say that I am proud of having been right in the thick of developing Tulane's Public Service and Service-Learning initiative. It's not without its glitches and bumps in the road, but on balance it's been a very positive and worthwhile evolution of Tulane's academic culture:

 

Anti-Islam Bigots on the Texas State Board of Education Strike Again

These fundamentalist Christian yahoos on the Texas State Board of Education are playing the victim card yet again in a thinly-veiled expression of anti-Islamic bigotry. The claim this time is that school textbooks give an imbalanced picture of Islam versus Christianity and claim that this imbalance paints a relatively positive picture of Islam and a relatively negative picture of Christianity. And this is absolute bunk. Let's just get down to some facts:

A national poll released earlier this week by the Angus Reid polling firm found that a narrow majority of Americans holds a generally unfavorable opinion of Islam, with 45 percent saying it is a religion that encourages violence. By contrast, only one American in 10 believes that either Christianity or Judaism "encourages violence,” the poll found.

To which one can only say with some irony to those bigots in Texas: "Yeah, with statistics like these, it's clear that people educated in this country are coming away from their schooling with an overly rosy picture of Islam (just a mere 45% Americans think of Islam as religion that encourages violence) and an overly negative picture of Christianity and Judaism (because of that excessively high 10% of Americans who think these religions encourage violence)." Do these bigots not think Americans are smart enough to see the wool that they are attempting to pull over our eyes? Do they think Christianity and Judaism in this country are more reviled and that Islam is more embraced here? These people are simply nuts. To them, 45% of Americans holding such a negative view of Islam (a religion that encourages violence) is not enough, and yet 90% of Americans holding a positive views of Christianity/Judaism (religions that do not encourage violence, i.e. religions of peace) is too little -- and that this somehow is the product of an imbalance in textbook coverage? Get real. If anything, this paints a clear picture of imbalance in exactly the opposite direction.

New Graduate Student Orientation

Completed! Phew! It's been an exhausting couple of days, but always very worthwhile, in which my department welcomes the newest additions to our intellectual community of advanced scholars of the region of Latin America. We've got eleven extremely bright, wonderfully talented, and extraordinarily diverse new graduate students. I'm looking forward to watching these newest members of our intellectual community grow and thrive in their academic pursuits. Bienvenido!

From the Archives: Advice to Young Conservatives

getting ready for college.

More Texas Board of Education Shenanigans

I don't think there can be any doubt that what is motivating the reform of the Texas public education curriculum is bald-faced ideological bias. In fact, the conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education are making absolutely no efforts to hide this:

McLeroy [a conservative Republican member of the Board] believes the Texas history curriculum has been unfairly skewed after years of Democrats controlling the board.

So, he's just going to skew it in the other direction! Even if one accepts that the curriculum has represented an ideologically leftist position, does that then justify going in the other direction? Should ideology even factor into the debate? Where is the discussion about trying to be as neutral as possible in representing facts? Shouldn't that be the discussion instead of trying to present knowledge in any ideologically skewed direction? If there is a clear ideological bias in the curriculum towards the left, then by all means remove it, because it shouldn't have a place in the curriculum. But don't then try to do the same thing, only replacing liberal bias with conservative bias!

Read the article and check out some of the ludicrous aspects being debated here. One effort made by a clearly Obama-hating Republican on the Committee was to insist that Obama be identified by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. Clearly, since this requirement applies to no other President (do these textbooks demand reference to the middle names of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, etc.), the intent of this effort is purposefully to try to use Obama's middle name as an anti-Islamic smear. I mean even some of this dude's fellow Republicans on the Committee were embarrassed by this effort and by their colleague's clear motivations and intentions in making this proposal.

Another one of my favorite absurdities involves reference to labor leader Dolores Huerta:

The board rejected a renewed effort to include labor leader Dolores Huerta as an example of good citizenship in third-grade history classes. Huerta, who worked alongside Cesar Chavez for farmworkers' rights, was removed from the list in January amid concerns that she was affiliated with socialists.

Even if Huerta was "affiliated with socialists" (and is there some crime in that worthy of excluding her from history?), shouldn't any evaluation of her inclusion in curriculum have to do with the significance of her work as a citizen? What's next, removing references to Martin Luther King, Jr., from the curriculum as an unworthy example of "good citizenship" because he "affiliated with" socialists and radicals? Maybe Texas can remove the Bushes from the curriculum because the Bush family has had cozy relationships with those radical, terrorist-funding Saudi royalty. See how absurd this can get once ideology replaces some measure of objectivity in developing curriculum? Sheesh!

Texas, School Texts, and Historical Revisionism

Texas social conservatives on the State's board of education are attempting to push through a mandated revision of school textbooks that are clearly imbued with ideological bias.

Among the recommendations facing a final vote: adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and including positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the GOP’s Contract with America.

Other amendments to the state's curriculum standards for kindergarten through 12th grade would minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state; require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action; assert that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society; and rename the slave trade to the "Atlantic triangular trade.”

First, what does it mean to include "positive" references to anything? Why not just teach facts and let the "positive" or "negative" dimensions of them surface accordingly. The need to spin things implies that they need spinning, that they can't stand on their own merits. And the spinning of things also implies imbuing history with a non-neutral ideological character. How would anti-abortion conservatives like it if Roe v. Wade were presented with a "positive" reference as opposed to a factual and ideologically neutral reference?

Second, why would anyone ever try to "minimize" the role of one of our founding fathers in world and U.S. history strictly because of his thinking on one particular issue? It seems to me that we ought to take Thomas Jefferson as he is, and not whitewash him to fit a particular ideological agenda on a controversial subject. But the absurdity of the movement to restructure a curriculum according to an ideologically driven agenda, as opposed to a factual agenda is no more evident than in the ludicrous effort to call the Atlantic slave trade the "Atlantic triangular trade." Huh? What the heck does the "Atlantic triangular trade" mean? That the trading of geometrical shapes took place in the Atlantic? That Atlantic trading followed a triangular trade route? Sheesh! The Atlantic slave trade is a friggin' historical reality. But I have no friggin' clue what an Atlantic "triangular" trade is!

If nothing more, what we see here is evidence of a movement not dedicated to objective truth in education, but to historical revisionism cloaked in political ideology. It's sad and disturbing. Like the whole upset over "ethnic studies," this story demonstrates again what I think is a last-gasp convulsive reaction, rooted in fear, to the inevitable and unstoppable evolution of American culture and identity away from a particular homogenous mythology. The culture and identity of America ain't what it was 50 years ago, or 100 years ago. And no amount of revision to school textbooks is gonna change that.

Eugene Robinson Nails It On Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban

For anyone outraged at the State of Arizona's recent efforts to ban "ethnic studies" in its schools, this editorial by Eugene Robinson is an absolute must read. I mean, Robinson just eviscerates this mean-spirited effort. Read the whole thing all the way through -- many times. But this little snippet is a gem all by itself:

Arizona's top education official, Tom Horne, fought for the new law as a weapon against a program in Tucson that teaches Mexican American students about their history and culture.

Horne claims the Tucson classes teach "ethnic chauvinism." He has complained that young Mexican Americans are falsely being led to believe that they belong to an oppressed minority. The way to dispel that notion, it seems, is to pass oppressive new legislation aimed squarely at Mexican Americans. That'll teach the kids a lesson, all right: We have power. You don't.

Good thing there's no "ethnic chauvinism" in Horne's postion, right!?!?!?

As someone who teaches in and works for a Latin American Studies program at a Title VI National Resource Center on Latin America, I'd add one other little note to Robinson's critique: Arizona's ban on "ethnic studies" is an assault on intellectual freedom. It's anti-intellectual. It is knowledge censorship as bad as, if not worse, than book banning. There is absolutely nothing inherently treasonous or anti-American or any other gross exaggeration of the pursuit of knowledge in the study of different races or ethnicities. Hell, what's next? Banning Jewish Studies? Even from a conservative/libertarian perspective, one should find this effort absolutely repulsive for its patronizing and freedom-squashing and culturally-homogenizing intent. What? Do they think that students are incapable of thinking for themselves? It's 100% pure, unmitigated nativist fascism.

From the Archives: School Vouchers

I was just looking at my blog archives and realized that I have been blogging on and off, but somewhat fairly regularly, for almost 8 years now. I started blogging in the summer of 2002. When I look back on that, I have to say that it's pretty incredible. I don't know really when the blogosphere took off, but I do believe that I was right there pretty close to the beginning and certainly before blogging became so popular and prominent. Now, granted, I haven't accomplished anything anywhere close to what many have been able to do with the medium, but I still take some pride in the longevity of my blog. It's changed somewhat over the years, but not too much. I was looking over the first month of my blogging and came across a posting that I made then on the whole school voucher idea that I still think has relevance today and which I still think hasn't adequately been answered by voucher supporters (at least I haven't come across any adequate answers to my critique). Anyway, I believe it was a thoughtful posting then and think it's worthy of reposting now, so here it is:

Just a quick point to ponder about the School Voucher debate: It's a very nice thought that School Vouchers equals School Choice - but does it, really, provide for such a choice - or at least a meaningful choice? Would highly-regarded suburban public schools and urban private/parochial schools (or should I say the students and the parents of the students in these schools) welcome inner-city voucher students to their learning communities? Putting a voucher in someone's hand doesn't neatly translate into supporting REAL school choice. In order for school choice to mean anything, voucher students must have the option to REALIZE their choice, which is something most voucher advocates haven't really thought much about. To use a common metaphor, it's as if someone were to hand me a fishing pole, some bait, a boat, and even give me fishing lessons; but then tell me that the lake with all the good fish in it that he fishes in was, ahem, off limits.

Original blog posting here.

Gulf South Summit

I've been attending the Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, for the past few days. It's been an enlightening and rewarding conference.

This morning, I moderated a round-table discussion at breakfast. The theme of my table's discussion session was "Teaching the Civics of Public Service: Should Professors 'Politicize' Knowledge?" This is a particular subject of interest that I have and I was glad to have the chance to share some conversation around the subject.

All in all, a very well-run conference. I'll be looking forward to next year's conference in Roanoke, VA. Back to the N'Awl later this evening.