Press reports are still interpreting the Michigan decision like this, “The State Board of Education decided on Tuesday, Oct. 10 that Intelligent Design can be taught in a public school classroom, but the board also sent a strong message in support of teaching the Theory of Evolution.”
Category Archives: Social Studies
TX GOP to ban use of Economics Standards?
October 16, 2006 – 7:26 am
The 2006 Platform of the Texas State Republican Party declares that “We support the objective teaching and equal treatment of scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, including Intelligent Design. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as scientific theory not scientific law; that social studies and other curriculum should not be based on any one theory.”
Time now for a new Constitutional Convention?
October 13, 2006 – 3:19 pm
Jeff Weintraub’s post Re: Jefferson, Madison, & Burke on the US Constitution includes his own comments, followed by the text of a review by Cass Sunstein in The New Republic of a book by Sanford Levinson on how the US Constitution is and has been viewed, and used, from the contrasting views of Jefferson and Madison to the present day. I think there’s a lot here (in the book, review, and commentary) that could be put to great use in social studies.
ISI & the “civics crisis”
October 6, 2006 – 12:46 am
Is there bias in the newly-released Coming Crisis in Citizenship report, reflecting a possible conservative orientations of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI)? These questions have been raised in a thread of an email list for professors of social studies education.
Book TV: Travels of a T-Shirt, and National Book Festival
September 29, 2006 – 11:23 am
note: if you would like to know about any rebroadcasts of the T-Shirt program in future weekends, use the RSS feed. See
http://tonywhitson.edublogs.org/2006/09/03/booktv-notification/
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The weekend schedule for CSpan-2 is at
http://www.booktv.org/schedule/ .
A big chunk of time this weekend will be live coverage of the National Book Festival, which means the scheduling is more flexible and we don’t have descriptions of author presentations [...]
racist revisionism in MD politics
September 24, 2006 – 11:51 am
At People For the American Way, the Right Wing Watch project reports on the radio ad in Maryland which was ‘apparently intended to boost the Senate candidacy of Michael Steele, [by urging] African Americans to stop voting for Democrats, because, among other things, “Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws” and “Democrats started the [...]
Florida law: history is fact–not constructed
September 24, 2006 – 11:23 am
After this bill was passed by the Florida legislature and was waiting for Jeb Bush’s signature, I posted these pages from the omnibus 2006 Florida Education Law [pdf file] to a couple of email lists that I am on.
I have recently received requests from a couple people who want to make this available to their [...]
on the character of Social Studies in the US
September 17, 2006 – 5:42 pm
For the BookTV program featured in the post right before this one, I also posted a notice to the TRSE email list, maintained by CUFA (the College and University Faculty Assembly), which is associated with the NCSS. When I post such things to that list, I usually get private emails from CUFA members thanking me for the information, and [...]
Antietam
September 17, 2006 – 3:08 pm
Re-airing on Saturday, December 23 at 11:15 am and Tuesday, December 26 at 4:00 am [ET]
http://www.booktv.org/History/index.asp?segID=7367&schedID=468
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note: if you would like to know about rebroadcasts in future weekends, use the RSS feed. See
http://tonywhitson.edublogs.org/2006/09/03/booktv-notification/
============
I did not intend to record this, since it looked like one of those “reenactors” events that I generally don’t see as worthy [...]
Lynne Cheney vs. Howard Zinn; and an invitation to participate in an online history project
September 9, 2006 – 12:46 am
Please join in developing a collaborative wiki alphabet book of Great American Accomplishments. Please add your own entries, or add to the entries that are already here! Click here for the Index page. Why would I (or anybody) do this? Here’s an explanation of where the idea for this wiki comes from:
During an interview that was [...]
YAF’s “Battleplan” for Conservative Campus Activism
September 8, 2006 – 7:22 pm
added June 26, 2008: I see now that the post I was reporting here, and linked below, has disappeared.
The YAF page is now at http://yaf.org/students/activists/battleplan/index.cfm . As of now, it says
The 2008-2009 Campus Conservative Battleplan will be released soon.
Please check back for availability.
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Coming soon to a campus near you …
New Guide Offers Students Ways [...]
dilemma: hi-stakes history test ?
September 3, 2006 – 12:49 pm
== UPDATE ==
Bender’s talk will be re-aired on Sunday Sept. 10, 2006 at 3:00 am EDT. See:
http://www.booktv.org/History/index.asp?segID=7137&schedID=449
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See http://www.booktv.org/History/index.asp?segID=7137&schedID=448 for info on a talk by one of my favorite American Historians on his most recent book, which concerns the teaching of American History as part of World History.
During the Q&A, Bender commented on the dilemma of high-stakes [...]
History: US in the World; also hi-stakes testing
September 3, 2006 – 9:15 am
Bender is right about US & World history; but I disagree with the notion that history can or will really be taught if we have high-stakes testing for history.
