Sophia Raday: Art Lesson: A Child's Drawing of the War in Iraq

Sophia Raday lives in Berkeley, California, with her soldier/police officer husband, their two children, a bipartisan dog, and assorted firearms. She is the author of Love in Condition Yellow: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, which chronicles her peacenik/warrior love story and provides insight on age-old political divisions in the United States.. This post originally appeared at Sophia Raday's Love in Condition Yellow blog.

A while ago, my seven-year-old son's feelings were hurt at school when a teacher criticized one of his drawings. She looked at my son's drawing of his father and said, "Does my torso look like that?" The drawing was an in-class assignment to illustrate a homework project called "the personal timeline." For every year of my son's life, he wrote one sentence describing something important that happened.

My son's drawing is on a small white paper, about two inches square. Back in January, when he first showed it to me, he unfolded it from a tiny tight little bundle, as if he had tried to make it as small as possible. After I'd reassured him I thought it was a very good drawing, I asked if I could keep it. When he agreed, I tucked it among my credit cards.

A week or so ago, I pulled it from my purse to show a friend who directs an arts education program, while telling her the story of his teacher's reaction. She shook her head, murmuring, "but art is about creating meaning. . . " She looked at the drawing intently, noting the simple figure, the flower-like hands, the black shoes, a long neck, a round head. A sun in the corner had been erased and then enlarged to take up about a quarter of the paper. "Did you ask him what it is?" My friend inquired.

"It's his father." I said.

"But what does it mean?" she said. "Look, the clothes are colored green. Do you think it's a military uniform?"

I leaned over to look at the drawing with her, an uneasy feeling growing within me. It had been weeks since my son came home, eyes downcast, and handed me this picture, asking, "Do you think this is any good?" Weeks since we lay together at bedtime and talked about his feelings of anxiety in his classroom.

Why had I never thought to ask him what the picture meant?

Beacon Press Visits an Exceptional Boston School

Today's post is from Alexis Rizzuto, an assistant editor at Beacon Press.

As soon as we walked through the front doors of Boston Arts Academy, the energy and creativity were palpable. Earlier this month, a delegation of Beacon Press staff (Director Helene Atwan, Associate publisher Tom Hallock, Director of Publicity Pam MacColl, and myself) went to experience the BAA, a public arts high school under the direction of founding headmaster Linda Nathan, firsthand. All of us, having already read about the faculty, students, activities, and principles of the BAA, were thrilled to see them all in action.

The BAA belongs to the Boston Public School system, but as a pilot school enjoys a more freedom than most public schools in curriculum and scheduling. Students from the city of Boston audition for the 140 spots available each year, and are selected for their passion and commitment to seriously pursuing their chosen art form (music, theater, dance, visual arts). The students are trained as scholars as well as artists, and an astounding 94% of them are accepted to college (compared to 50% on average district-wide). Linda writes that the secret to the school's success lies in asking the right questions and listening as all players grapple with the answers. This process has led to practices such as developing a school-wide set of Shared Values, supporting the teachers by giving them time to discuss ideas in a professional learning community, opening doors to college through offering help with the application process, and being open about ethnic and economic differences in students' backgrounds.

These aspects of the school were all demonstrated as we walked through the hallways and into the classrooms and studios of the BAA. The hallway walls were covered not only with some impressive work from the visual arts students and stills from theater productions, but also a bulletin board filled with kudos to students "caught in the act of shared values"—in other words, those who had done good deeds in keeping with the school's ideals of responsibility, integrity, and respect. Another wall displayed the photos of graduates with the names of the colleges to which they were accepted. In studios we saw dance students going through exercises at the barre and heard music students warming up their voices, and in classrooms we observed SAT prep, offered by the school to make sure students who might not otherwise have access to this instruction wouldn't be at a disadvantage.

The Three 'P's: An Education System Where Play is its Own Reward

Today's post is from Chris Mercogliano author of In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness. Mercogliano has been a teacher at the Albany Free School since 1973 and co-director since 1985.

It was heartening to see the New York Times tout the importance of play in school settings. But how sad that the excommunication of play from American culture has reduced the discussion of its value to the question of whether five percent of the school day should be sacrificed to recess; or God forbid, should it be ten?

Let me lay my bias out straight. For thirty-seven years I have been involved with an independent school for students ages 2-14 in which students spend the overwhelming majority of their time playing. And by this I don't mean learning games or organized sports, although they sometimes participate in them too. What I'm talking about here is play as defined by Jean Piaget: "actions that are an end in themselves and do not form part of any series of actions imposed by someone else or from outside." Real play, in other words, is its own reward. It involves imagination, improvisation, and quite often the natural world. It's when kids engage in making-believe, horsing around, and inventing their own games. It's when they paint, or draw, or sing, or dance, or write a poem or story, not in order to fulfill an English or art assignment, but to answer the call of the Muse.

A great many observers consider our approach, which I once teasingly described to a dubious Alfie Kohn as the "summer camp" model of education, to be romantic or naive, if not downright irresponsible or crazy. A dose of play here and there is fine, certainly. As the Times article noted, kids' brains need a rest once in a while. Their bodies also need exercise, and everyone recognizes the vital role of play in social development. But at the end of the day, learning is serious business and a lot of hard work.

Or is it? Let's examine the evidence for a moment, which increasingly confirms the fundamental contributions play makes to every aspect of a child's growth.

Happy Birthday, Darwin

Today's post is from Claire Hope Cummings, an environmental lawyer, journalist, and author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds.

Charles Robert Darwin was born 200 years ago today. Thomas Jefferson was in the White House and life was slower and much quieter. The sounds of the natural world could still be heard in daily life.

Now we live with the constant hum of engines and the ringing and beeping of electronics. We may have advanced technologically, but have we progressed in our ideas about the role of science in society? What would Darwin think if he knew the same old arguments over science and religion were still raging?

Over the last few decades, in the United States especially, religious conservatives have successfully denied the fact of evolution and forced science classes in public schools to teach it as a theory and offer creationism as the alternative.

A study by Jon Miller of Michigan State University surveyed 32 European countries and found that "the U.S. is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicized." Miller began examining American ideas on evolution in 1985. At that time, only 45 percent of Americans accepted the basic idea of evolution. By 2005, that number had declined to 40 percent. (You can read about the study in this New Scientist article. The original article is available by subscription only here.)

Miller says that religious fundamentalism, poor science education in our schools, and partisan politics have resulted in more Americans denying evolution than ever. Just last month, the Texas Board of Education, the largest and most influential textbook purchaser in the nation, finally dropped its 20 year mandate that science teachers include a critique of evolution in their curriculum. Still, 7 of the 15 seats on the board are held by conservatives who vow to keep pushing their agenda.

Darwin, of course, would recognize this old argument. But he would probably see it as it is, a false dichotomy. His writing gave due respect to both nature and his religious beliefs. He might be surprised that so many of us now, especially those of us who think we have accomplished so much in taming the natural world, still think we need to choose.

The Economic Downturn and Student Loans: Some Practical Advice for Borrowers

Today's post is from Alan Michael Collinge, author of The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History—and How We Can Fight Back and founder of StudentLoanJustice.Org, a grassroots organization, and political action committee.

Student loan companies will soon be lined up at the Federal Treasury, seeking loans against bundles of high interest, private loans that they made to students, often with their parents as co-signors. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of students and their families see their livelihoods wracked by student loans in ways worse, even, than defaulting home mortgage borrowers. As we progress through this economic downturn, there is a strong potential for increased predatory activities by the student lending industry, and borrowers need to be prepared to take extra steps to protect themselves.

A bit of history: federally guaranteed student loans have been largely impossible to discharge in bankruptcy for the past decade. The federal guarantee on these loans was used as the reason for removing this basic protection. It was a very weak argument—no other loans, federally guaranteed or not, have special exemptions from bankruptcy protections. In practice, this unique lack of bankruptcy protection has given the green light to lenders to attach penalties and fees onto debt without fear of the borrower. The largest lender in the country, Sallie Mae, saw its fee income increase by 228% between 2000-2005 (its loan portfolio grew by only 87% during this time), and their CEO bragged to shareholders in their 2003 annual report that their record earnings that year were attributable to collections on defaulted loans. So, no bankruptcy protection for the borrower means free money for the lenders, and lots of it!

Removing bankruptcy and other protections from federal loans wasn't enough for the student loan industry, however: in 2005, student loan giants Sallie Mae, Citibank, and others lobbied Congress successfully to remove bankruptcy protections, as part of the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, for private student loans as well. No one seems to be able to find out who inserted this language into the bill—no Congressman can be found who is willing to claim credit. Nonetheless, it happened. That the student loan companies were able to get this passed was shocking to unbiased experts and analysts of this industry.

Obamanomics for the Missing Class

Today's post is from Victor Tan Chen, co-author (with Katherine S. Newman) of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America and the founding editor and president of INTHEFRAY Magazine. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Newsday and the Minority Law Journal, and in the book Chutes and Ladders. He is a Harvard doctoral candidate in sociology and social policy.

Now that Barack Obama has won the presidency, and the Democrats have broadened their majorities in Congress, the picture looks a little less bleak for the country's poor and near poor families.

In policies ranging from taxes to health care, from housing to job creation, Obamanomics will likely provide some welcome relief from the status quo of the last eight years, during which the ranks of low-income households grew. In 2000, 29.2 percent of the population, or 81 million Americans, lived on household incomes of less than twice the poverty line. In 2007, 30.5 percent of the country, or 91 million Americans, fell into this bottom category of poor and near poor households.

In our book The Missing Class, Katherine Newman and I looked at the situation of near poor families at the end of last decade and the beginning of this decade. Rates of poverty and near poverty were steadily falling from their peaks in the early 1990s. Americas economy was roaring. But as we described in our book, even in those boom years near poor families were struggling mightily to find quality health care, housing, and education for their children.

Now that another downturn is upon us, the economic fortunes of the less well-off look far worse. And having just approved a massive infusion of government money to prop up the country's floundering banks, the federal government — even with a progressive president at the helm — will find its options even more limited than is usually the case during recession times, as half-a-trillion-dollar budget deficits feed interest rate rises and worsen the market malaise.

Link Roundup: Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers, Recent Reviews

Scott Horton, in his always excellent blog at Harpers, skewers the "New McCarthyism" in a defense of Rashid Khalidi. More commentary in support of Khalidi, a respected scholar at Columbia University and author of the forthcoming Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East, is flooding the web and mainstream media. Check out this piece in the Washington Post and this DailyKos diary responding to it, and this video posted at Talking Points Memo where John Judis concedes that this campaign is even dirtier than the Bush-Dukakis campaign.

Bill Ayers recently spoke on education in New York.

Rev. Forrest Church discussed his memoir Love & Death and his diagnosis of terminal esophageal cancer on NPR's Fresh Air.

Kate Clinton proposes action for Nov. 5th, whether or not Prop. 8 is defeated in California.

Looking for some good reading? Five librarians got together to compile this list of the Best of the Best of University Presses. Watch their presentation on BookTV. Two Beacon Press books, Once in a Promised Land and Without a Map, made the list.

A quick look at some reviews of recent Beacon Press releases:

PopMatters on The Porning of America

New Orleans Times-Picayune on Confessions of an Eco-Sinner

Cape Cod Times on The Muse of the Revolution

Winston-Salem Journal on Saving Paradise

And recently on Beacon Broadside:

Greenspan Passes the Buck by Marilyn Sewell

Zombie Jamboree in Texas by Glenn Branch

Factory Farms, Dirty Water, and the Bible: Part One and Part Two by Mark Winne

Zombie Jamboree in Texas

Today's post is from Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. With NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott, he edited Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools.

When the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher recently addressed the creationist movement in his Living With Darwin, he judiciously assessed creationism in its latest incarnation as historically respectable but currently bankrupt, and proposed to describe it as "dead" science. "In light of its shambling tenacity," I replied, "'zombie science' is perhaps a preferable label." (I was writing in a scholarly journal, so I resisted the temptation to add a reference to "Romero 1968" or "Wright 2004".)

I guess that Halloween came early to Texas, for the zombies are out in force. Three creationists were just appointed to a six-member committee to review a draft set of Texas state biology standards, which determine what is taught in Texas's public school science classrooms and the content of the biology textbooks approved for use in the state. And since Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, what happens to textbooks there is relevant to the content of textbooks everywhere.

With all that at stake, why would anyone appoint a creationist, let alone three, to such a committee? Oh, right: the chair of the board, Don McLeroy, is a confessed creationist, who offers folksy criticisms of evolution like, "Given all the time in the world, I don't think I could make a spider out of a rock. However, most of the books we are considering adopting, claim that Nothing made a spider out of a rock." The far-right faction on the state board of education, including McLeroy, presently holds seven of its fifteen seats.

Link Roundup: Teaching and Writing, SCOTUS Can't Get No Respect, and Beacon Broadside at One Year

In the New York Times Magazine last weekend, David Gessner, author of Soaring With Fidel, weighed the pros and cons of teaching and writing, and teaching writing.

Salon talks with Carmine Sarracino about our porn-saturated culture. Sarracino is co-author of The Porning of America.

David Moore (The Opinion Makers) was on Greater Boston this Monday (Sept. 22nd) talking about why pre-election polling is suspect. 

On BlackProf, Sherrilyn Ifill analyzes the loss of prestige suffered by an isolationist, ideological Supreme Court.

This Sunday, a handful of politically conservative pastors intend to flout their churches' non-profit status by openly endorsing John McCain from the pulpit. The Interfaith Alliance has countered their action, urging pastors of all political stripes to pledge to refrain from direct political endorsement.

Beacon Broadside is One Year Old

That first year goes so fast! To commemorate our first anniversary, here are the most popular posts of the past year based on page hits. They represent a good cross-section of the topics and voices we've featured here on the blog. If you've enjoyed the blog during this past year, join our Facebook Blog Network or Fan Page. Thanks for reading! 

The Summer Games: Raising an Olympian by Mark Hyman

The Email That Ended a Career: Intelligent Design and Texas Education by Glenn Branch

Sarah Palin: No Friend to Children and Adults with Disabilities by Jane Bernstein

Redefining the Pill: Bush Administration Calls Contraception "Abortion" by Carole Joffe

Obama's Mixed Heritage: A Mother's Perspective by Barbara Katz Rothman

The Porning of Miley Cyrus by Kevin Scott

Wal-Mart Takes Greenwashing to a New Level by Stacy Mitchell

Read This! Instilling a Love of Reading in Kids by Chris Mercogliano

Edna St. Vincent Millay by Mary Oliver

On the Road with Mary Oliver by Helene Atwan

Link Roundup: Student Loans, Funding Locally-Owned Markets, Cow Gas

Kathryn Joyce (whose book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement will be released by Beacon this winter) compares the candidacy of Sarah Palin to the biblical story of Esther.

The student loan credit crunch may just be a "convenient" distraction for lenders who would like to keep attention away from predatory lending practices, says Alan Collinge, author of The Student Loan Scam.

On Democracy Now!, David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, discusses how aggressive tactics by Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes some undocumented immigrants too afraid to evacuate in the face of dangerous hurricanes.

The state of Pennsylvania brings fresh, healthy food to underserved populations with a grant-funding program for locally-owned grocery stores in low-income communities.

A special diet can help reduce cow methane emissions (which is to say "bovine flatulence") and thus reduce the impact of cattle farming on global warming.

Professor’s Perspective: the Red Sox and the History of Racial Inequality

Although Beacon Press is not strictly speaking an "academic publisher," Beacon's books are frequently used in college and high school classrooms around the country. Today we share the perspective of one professor about why she chose Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston as a text for her students. Amy Bass, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History at the College of New Rochelle and is the author of Not the Triumph but the Struggle: the 1968 Olympic Games and the Making of the Black Athlete (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the 20th Century (MacMillan, 2005).

So here's my problem teaching cultural history: I am a devout and devoted, dedicated and dutiful, fan of the Boston Red Sox.

There are many, many, many well known burdens in being a fan of Boston. Until recently, there was the whole "curse" thing. The year 1918, which could be mentioned for many historically important reasons (the flu epidemic, Exterminator's unlikely win at the Kentucky Derby, the creation of Wilson's Fourteen Points, etc.), haunted Boston fans until 2004. I was one of them. I endured.

But perhaps the greatest burden is when I come to the story of Jackie Robinson on my syllabus. It's a topic I address not just when I'm teaching my upper-division seminar entitled "Race, Sport, and Society." I also talk about Robinson at length in my U.S. history survey, "Reconstruction to Present," using his minor and major league debuts, and Branch Rickey's push to make the Dodgers the team that would transform baseball's color line, to describe what was going on in early postwar America to spur on the major civil rights movements that emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. It's not sports history, I tell students; it's history.

But then comes that question. That terrible, terrible question. That question that is part of my burden: which team was the last to integrate?

And here's where Howard Bryant and his wonderful Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston come in.

I used to answer that while the Red Sox were technically the last team to integrate, they had tried to integrate first by getting Robinson board, along with Marvin Williams and Sam Jethroe, as early as 1945. But then I read Bryant's tremendously readable book, and I realized that the word tried was really the wrong one. Bryant's startling telling of the tryout shut down my defense of Boston, and only heightened my understanding of why it wasn't until 1959 that the Red Sox became the last – yes the absolute last – team to integrate, bringing up Elijah "Pumpsie" Green in 1959. By the time Green came on board, Robinson was retired, a fact that makes the "Curse of the Bambino" seem like a story used, as so many are in American history, to overshadow the very real and devastating effects of racism.

Howard Bryant's book isn't just about baseball. And it isn't just about sports. It's about history – American history – and should be read by anyone interested in it.

If you are a professor and are interested in learning more about Beacon Press titles, visit the "For Educators" links on the Beacon Press website. If you have used a Beacon title in your course, Beacon Broadside would like to hear your story, either in the comments stream below or in an email to the editor.

 

God and Man at Dartmouth

Today's post is from Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement. This post originally appeared at On Faith, the Washington/Post Newsweek forum on religion.

I chuckled to myself wondering what William F. Buckley, the author of the landmark conservative tract God and Man at Yale, might have thought of this year's Baccalaureate Service at Dartmouth College. In addition to Christian hymns and Bible readings, there was a Native American prayer offered in the Yuchi language, and recitations from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

The main speaker – yours truly – was a Muslim.

One theme of Buckley's classic work is that God should be at the center of people's intellectual journeys, and therefore should play a far more significant role on campus. And when Buckley spoke of God at Yale, he meant the Christian idea of God. (According to a recent New Yorker piece by George Packer, Buckley refused to promote David Brooks - now at The New York Times - past a certain stage at his National Review because he was not a "believing Christian".)

Buckley would be happy to know that religion is once again being taken seriously on college campuses, but one of the reasons is because of the diversity of traditions present. Jews, Catholics and Protestants have had an institutional presence on campuses for many years, and colleges (including Wellesley, Duke, Princeton, Brown and Georgetown) are increasingly hiring Muslim chaplains to minister to the growing numbers of Muslim students on campus. Dartmouth has all of the above, plus the first ZaZen Chaplain I've ever met on a college campus.

Thinking Critically and Finding Answers: The Benefits of Arts Education

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Ann Hulbert warned against the problem with advocating for arts education by citing its ability to help kids perform well in other areas, particularly on the "testable" areas of education. A recent study released by the Dana Foundation explored the connections between arts education and coginition. Here, we've invited Mark Cooper, co-author of Making Art Together: How Collaborative Art-Making Can Transform Kids, Classrooms, and Communities, to discuss how he feels an education in the visual arts benefits students.

In my experience, arts education provides a format for students to think critically, ask questions, and ultimately, find their own answers. This is especially true for students with little or no art making background in that much of their education revolves around the acquisition of other skills, retention of facts, and meeting specific expectations. Arts education provides a different model and when it succeeds, an ability to "think outside of the box." 

A principal component to succeeding in the creation of an art object is the process of developing an idea about what is desired to be communicated and how best to do so. There are generalities that often hold true; but, the minute a rule is made, someone breaks it in an interesting way. I always encourage students to look at how other artists, from the past and from their moment, problem solve and articulate their ideas. I encourage them to study history, learn from it, and expand upon it, to become "masters of their media," able to make educated decisions and trust their instincts. I help them look to the past as well as the present for ways to enter the dialogue that mirrors their own interests. 

Media, Technology and Bullying: New Partners in Nastiness

by Mara Sapon-Shevin

When I was in middle-school, the way the “popular kids” tormented those of us who weren’t so lucky, was through something called “Slam Books.” A popular kid (it was usually a girl) would start a notebook with individual pages headed with the names of unpopular students. The book would be passed around to the other “popular” kids and they would take turns making nasty entries under the unpopular students’ names. Under Beth’s name, for example, they would write, “Ugly,” “Bad complexion,” “Stupid,” and “Slutty.”

There would be lots of snickering and giggling as the notebook was passed (not that unobstrusively) between the popular kids who were writing the nasty comments. Slam books were the source of public humiliation, and they made the lives of some of us miserable. It was never clear whether or not teachers were aware of what was going on, but I don’t remember any intervention at the time.

Now, however, we have entered the era of high technology, and the ways in which students torment one another are far more sophisticated. Cyberbullying is a growing and distressing phenomenon that has recently received extensive media attention.

Link Roundup: Seed Vaults, Marriage, Reproduction, Updates

"Near Arctic, Seed Vault Is a Fort Knox of Food", in the New York Times last week, discussed the efforts to create a seed repository as a backup of our seed supply. Claire Hope Cummings, in her new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, discusses the "Doomsday Vault" in more depth, and ties its mission to the struggles to maintain genetic diversity in agriculture despite the increasing privatization of seeds by agribusiness. You can hear Cummings on NPR's OnPoint tomorrow. [UPDATE: Here's the link to the segment.]

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Check out Nancy Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, at the Washington Post, the Washington Blade, the Los Angeles Times, and on her new blog, where Polikoff, an expert on gay and lesbian family law, highlights issues in the news that affect the legal rights of all families.

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Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap, appeared on WUWM's Lake Effect radio show. Listen here.

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Kathryn Joyce, whose book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2009, wrote in the Nation about the real motives behind worries that there's a looming European "demographic disaster." The piece was cross-posted at RHRealityCheck, where Kathryn has previously posted about Quiverfull, an anti-birth control movement that urges Christian families to "leave the number of children they have entirely in the hands of God."

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Glenn Branch sent us an update to his post on the evolution debate in Florida (also added as an update to the post):

It happened. On February 29, state senator Ronda Storms (R–Valrico) introduced a bill, SB 2692 [pdf], styled “The Academic Freedom Act.” Purporting to protect the right of teachers to “objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins” and the right of students not to be “penalized in any way because he or she subscribes to a particular position or view regarding biological or chemical evolution,” the bill would not affect the content of the standards, although it is clear that it was introduced at the behest at those who opposed their excellent treatment of evolution. A string of similar bills in Alabama—HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006—failed. With only sixty days in the regular legislative session, perhaps the Florida legislature will be able to find something useful to do, instead of wasting its time mollifying creationists.

Drug-Free School Zone

By Chris Mercogliano

I am in absolute agreement with Bruce E. Levine: it isn’t ODD at all that our society has stepped up its efforts to pathologize young people with biopsychiatric labels like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), when they either cannot or will not march in step with the majority culture, and then dose them with the corresponding biopsychiatric drugs.

As Levine reminds us with his deft bit of historical research, America has a long tradition of marginalizing anyone who deviates from established norms—which currently are narrowing at an alarming rate. Or as French philosopher Michel Foucault pointed out in Discipline and Punish, the control of its citizens has always been a primary aim of the state, and what we are witnessing in modern times is the evolution of increasingly subtle ways in which to do so. Today, instead of relying on brute force as was the case in the days of pharaohs and emperors, social institutions like schools, the military, and the mass media subliminally enforce a conformity so pervasive that overt forms of control are no longer necessary. All who resist and refuse to take their places in the social and economic machine, according to Foucault in Madness and Civilization, are labeled with some form of abnormality, and then, as I argue in my book, Teaching the Restless, about the ongoing ADHD hoax, they are medicated with powerful psychotropic drugs that extend society’s control all the way down to the biochemical level.

This business of labeling and drugging kids who won’t sit still, can’t keep up, or don’t fit in became a deep concern of mine in my role as a teacher at the Free School, a noncoercive, democratic, inner-city school for sixty-five students ages two through fourteen in Albany, NY. In the early 1990s there was a sudden spike in the number of students who came to us having been labeled in their previous schools, and so, curious as to why, I embarked on an exhaustive review of the already considerable ADHD literature.

A New Standard in Florida: Evolution is Fundamental

by Glenn Branch

The missing link?

The recent battle over the place of evolution in Florida's state science standards wasn't quite ripped from the pages of a Carl Hiaasen novel—as far as I could tell from my office in California, at any rate, there were no greedy developers, lubricious politicos, or redneck gangsters involved, and no feral ex-governors emerging from the swamp to save the day. But zaniness was abundant among the creationist opponents of the standards, from the fellow who testified that, according to evolution, oranges are "the first cousin to somebody's pet cat," to the student who argued that evolution was unprovable because "no one was around 6,000 years ago." (Then who was it who left a bottle gourd at the Windover site outside Titusville, Florida, about 7,290 years ago?) Ultimately, however, on February 19, 2008, the state board of education voted to accept a new set of state science standards that recognize evolution as a fundamental concept underlying all of biology.

That's quite a change. The previous set of state science standards sedulously avoided even using the e-word, and when the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation conducted its review of state science standards in 2005, it commented, "The superficiality of the treatment of evolutionary biology alone justifies the grade 'F'." But hostility toward evolution education in the Sunshine State is nothing new: after William Jennings Bryan retired to Florida in 1920, he lobbied for legislation prohibiting "the teaching as true of Darwinism or any other evolutionary hypothesis that links man in blood relation with any form of animal life below man." Bryan was only partly successful; in 1923, the legislature passed a resolution that described such teaching as "improper and subversive," but stopped short of prohibiting it altogether. Two years later, the Tennessee legislature passed a law outright banning the teaching of evolution, and the Great Commoner eventually hauled himself from Florida to Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of John Thomas Scopes.

Note, in Bryan's proposal, the phrase "as true." In a letter to a Florida state senator (quoted in Edward J. Larson's excellent Trial and Error), he explained, "A book which merely mentions [evolution] as a hypothesis can be considered as giving information as to views held, which is very different from teaching it as fact." Bryan died just after the Scopes trial, but his position—that it's okay to teach about evolution, but only as a theory, something conjectural or speculative, and not as a fact—continues to resonate. Creationists who weren't pressing for creationism (whether in the old-fashioned form of creation science or in the new-fangled form of intelligent design) to be added to the Florida state science standards were following Bryan in trying to stigmatize evolution as just a theory. A father in the Panhandle put a Möbian twist on the slogan, saying of his daughters, "I just don't want them to hear a one-sided fact."

Link Roundup: UUs on Street Prophets, Human Guinea Pigs, Teaching Kids About Racism

A link rescue from the not-to-distant past: Carl Elliott, who has a forthcoming Beacon book about consumerism and corruption in the medical industry, had a harrowing piece in the New Yorker about professional human guinea pigs, which is now available on their website.

Most professional guinea pigs are involved in Phase I clinical trials, in which the safety of a potential drug is tested, typically by giving it to healthy subjects and studying any side effects that it produces. (Phase II trials aim at determining dosing requirements and demonstrating therapeutic efficacy; Phase III trials are on a larger scale and usually compare a drug’s results with standard treatments.) The better trial sites offer such amenities as video games, pool tables, and wireless Internet access. If all goes well, a guinea pig can get paid to spend a week watching “The Lord of the Rings” and playing Halo with his friends, in exchange for wearing a hep-lock catheter on one arm and eating institutional food. Nathaniel Miller, a Philadelphia trial veteran who started doing studies to fund his political activism, was once paid fifteen hundred dollars in exchange for three days and two G.I. endoscopies at Temple University, where he was given a private room with a television. “It was like a hotel,” he says, “except that twice they came in and stuck a tube down my nose.”

And one more link rescue, to a story that has timeless importance and made the rounds of AP newspapers a week or so ago: "Ignoring Racist Remarks Is Wrong Lesson For Kids." Many of us have been faced with an uncomfortable situation where someone has made a racially insensitive or offensive comment. Beverley Daniel Tatum, author of Can We Talk About Race, urges parents to broach the issue with the speaker,   but in a way that isn't accusatory or confrontational. The article is a great guide for how to teach children about racism and the importance of honesty, integrity, and diversity.

Over at Street Prophets, this week's Weekly Faith Roundtable is on Unitarian Universalism. Here are a few of the highlights from the discussion:

Lonespark's explanation that she picked the UU church because "I didn't fit into any other boxes."

On the plus side, I love being in a place where my agnostic husband would fit right in if he ever got up that early, where some of my favorite childhood hymns get performed, where all families are valued, where "service is our prayer," and where a dude in my covenant group is very interested in hearing about how I blot to Thor.

A lengthy discussion of where the Seven Principles originated and the possibility of being a "devout UU."

So here's a broader one. We lay claim--lightly--to all of human experience, all science, all scripture, all wisdom traditions as being the heritage of humanity. We draw from those and from individual, personal experience.

So...
    Scripture--check. Our canon is a shade larger and not sealed, however.
    Tradition--check. We see it not as a foundation, but rather as more of a sea anchor.
    Reason--check. Oh yeah. Fiercely. We're coming back around to a wary acceptance of the non-rational, but the irrational is going to be savaged--and that's tradition going back at least to Servetus.
    Experience--check. Very, very much so.

A selection of UU jokes

Great job on the part of Sister Quarterstaff, ogre, lonespark, and bleeding heart, who hosted the discussion.

Dust Off Your Darwin Costume: It's Evolution Weekend!

by Glenn Branch

Not so long ago in Birmingham, England, it was a reggae version of the Origin of Species with a video to match, but soon in San Diego, they’ll be listening to the Galápagos Mountain Boys playing their own brand of scientific bluegrass. In Oslo, Norway, they’ll be attending a series of scholarly lectures on the evolution of language, while they’ll be throwing another shrimp on the barbie by way of celebration in Melbourne, Australia. In Terre Haute, Indiana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Salem, Oregon, they’ll be sitting down to watch the hilarious documentary Flock of Dodos, but in Philadelphia, they’ll be on their feet to play badminton at the Penn Museum. In Seattle, a Darwin impersonation contest is part of the festivities, while across the Puget Sound in Bremerton, it’s a one-man show with Darwin live and in concert. To top it all, in Whitewater, Wisconsin, the reception is going to feature what’s billed as the world’s largest edible tree of life.

Yes, Darwin Day is back, and still going strong. February 12, 2008, is the 199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country—and the world—are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or around February 12, in honor of the life and work of Charles Darwin. Last year, over 850 such events took place worldwide, and 2008—just one year shy of the Darwin bicentennial—is shaping up to be just as abundant in celebration. Darwin Day provides a marvelous opportunity not only to celebrate Darwin’s birthday but also to enjoy, and engage in, public outreach about science, evolution, and the importance of evolution education. The Darwin Day Celebration website, administered by the Institute of Humanist Studies, maintains a useful registry where you can find a Darwin Day event near you and spread the word about your own.

Manipulating the Metaphors: the Bush Record on Education

by William Ayers

In his State of the Union address on January 28, President Bush, our self-styled “education president,” urged Congress to re-authorize the No Child Left Behind Act, calling it a “good law” and claiming that because of this legislation student learning is improving and “minority students are closing the achievement gap.”  In reality, student learning is not improving under NCLB, and the so-called racial achievement gap is a fraud.  But through a combination of sleight-of-hand, cooking the numbers, and manipulating the metaphors George Bush could make those claims with a smile. 

The education revolution that Bush touts is the result of decades of “school reform” spearheaded by business and powered by ideologues.  “Global competitiveness” is the preoccupation, “accountability” and “standards” the watch-words, and all of it results in a ramped-up obsession with standardized testing and an emphasis on minimal competencies along a narrow band of cognition and skills.  The business metaphor dominates the discourse: inputs in relation to outputs, discipline and punishment, incentives and competitiveness.

It’s worth asking ourselves what makes education in a democracy distinct.  Of course we want children to study hard, to be responsible, to stay away from drugs, and to be prepared for work.  But those are goals we share with totalitarian regimes, monarchies, dictators and kings.  So what is uniquely characteristic of democratic education?