C.E. Cupp is Ann Coulter before the bottle-blond crap is poured on her head, but maybe slightly less vile.1 She just came out with a new book: Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity
Continue reading New Anti-Evolution Pro-Fundy Christian Book, Reviewed
“Mr. Tangarone, a 17-year veteran of the Weston school system, claims that a program he wanted to teach about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln was rejected by the school administration because it involved teaching evolution — the scientific theory that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor.”
First, there was plain and simple creationism, a Christian idea that, in an ideal Christian world, would be taught as part of any science dealing with the past, including biology (evolution), geology, and presumably history.
But the constitution stood in the way of implementing basic Christian teachings in public schools in the United States, though that battle took decades. Just as creationists were being driven off he landscape, a sort of Battle of the Bulge occurred, in the form of Intelligent Design.
Continue reading Intelligent Design’s Legal Status after Dover
Educating the poor is more than just a numbers game, says Shukla Bose. She tells the story of her groundbreaking Parikrma Humanity Foundation, which brings hope to India’s slums by looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual.
Shukla Bose is the founder and head of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit that runs four extraordinary schools for poor children.
The word “Parikrma” implies a full revolution, a complete path around — and Shukla Bose’s Parikrma Humanity Foundation offers literally that to kids in poor urban areas around Bangalore. Parikrma’s four Schools of Hope teach the full, standard Indian curriculum to children who might not otherwise see the inside of a classroom, with impressive results. Equally important, the schools build an “end-to-end” environment that supports learning — offering lunch every day, health-care and family support. Beyond these schools, Parikrma has inaugurated several afterschool programs and has plans for setting up a central teacher-training hub.
Bose left behind a corporate career in 1992 to found Parikrma with a small group of friends. The nonprofit holds itself to formal business goals and strict accountability, and has developed some clever fundraising and marketing campaigns. As Bose puts it, the goal of Parikrma is to help build a better India by tapping its greatest strength: the vitality and potential of its people.
“Education of children is at the core of our aim to transform poor communities into self-sustaining, contributing communities. ”
–Shukla Bose
After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
Fundamentalist Christian dentist promotes drastic curriculum change.
Click here then click “Texas Textbook Controversy part way down the middle column.
Which creationist was the most nauseating?
From the NCSE:
Continue reading First Annual Upchucky Awards Announced!!!
… when it comes to Creationist Home Schooling.
Continue reading Every child is a casualty…
Har Mar is a funny little shopping mall in Roseville Minnesota. It is the home of the annual Twin Cities Creation Science Science Fair. Sometimes we visit the science fair, but it is not to laugh at the students….
Continue reading There is a small difference between Har Mar and Har Har
A federal appellate court has ruled against a Christian school in Murrieta which had sued the University of California over its refusal to accept high school courses that rely on the Bible as the unerring source of truth.
Next step: Homeschoolers!
(Hat tip: August Berkshire)
Is scheduled!
Continue reading 2010 Home School Science Fair
The following story is current, but the issue is not new. But interesting. …
Science standards for Minnesota schools are about to be set for the next six years. Is the battle to keep pseudoscience out of our classrooms over? Sadly the door has been cracked open for intelligent design, an idea with no real scientific basis cooked up by creationists, to remain in Minnesota’s classrooms.
The same vague science benchmark that was a compromise in the intelligent design controversy early in the Pawlenty administration still exists, unchanged, in this round of science standards. These standards will begin next school year and be in effect until 2017.
Continue reading Will Minnesota Standards Allow Creationism in the Classroom?
Last weekend I attended Science Online 2010, which is a conference of science communicators with a heavy mix of bloggers, many journalists and others from the print industry, an increasingly large number of book authors, and OpenX (X=access, notebook, science, or whatever) advocates and practitioners.
Continue reading #scio10 Science Online 2010 recollections and reflections on the sessions I attended
I just received a mass emailing from Julia’s high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote:
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
What does this quote mean to you? If you don’t know its context, you may be in for a surprise.
Continue reading The Irony of Henry Adams: The most misunderstood quote evah!
Yesterday, I posted a comment on my facebook account that resulted in more response and discussion than any comment I had previously made. The issues at hand pertain to privacy, how public high schools are run, how colleges are marketed. This also may pertain to the ongoing discussion of civility.
Below I describe two scenarios which are anonomized versions of real events that happened a few days apart in two different schools. Please tell me what you think of them.
Continue reading High School Students, Privacy, Civility, and Marketing Higher Education