HUMOUR:

RELIGIOUS MYOPIA:

Yet another winner from Kirktoons.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:

THE ITALIAN STUDENT MOVEMENT:

All across Europe, from Ireland in the west to Greece in the east students are rising up against the austerity programs of their respective governments. Like the European workers they see no reason why they should have to pay for a crisis not of their making. In Italy students have been protesting against so-called "reforms" in education ie cutbacks since October. This struggle has merged with intermittent general strikes on the part of the larger unions and with a widespread disgust that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government survived a vote of confidence (by a mere three votes mind you). This vote led to street battles in Rome as many ordinary Italians expressed their disgust with a politician whose level of corruption surpasses even the ordinary expected of an Italian politician. Berlusconi is actually a classic piece of work. From a Canadian point of view he makes our late unlamented Brian Mulroney look like a monk who has taken a vow of poverty and stuck to it. Also, to my knowledge, no other elected politician has ever made a major part of his program out of passing laws that would retroactively legalize his previous crimes. Truly impressive !!!

The student movement in Italy has refused to accept defeat, and tomorrow they plan yet another round of demonstrations that will no doubt end in conflict when the police attack. The Italian government, meanwhile, has been playing a strategy of alternating conciliation with threat. As the Financial Times reports while they have released previous arrested demonstrators a senior government minister has floated the idea of "preventative detention", one step short of a police state. Also, almost farcically, the same report tells about how a bomb was found on the Rome Metro "without a detonator". To say the least this is reminiscent of the long history in Europe of 'provocations' carried out either by the police themselves or by their fascist agents. See the wikipedia article on Operation Gladio. At least this time the provocateurs minimized the potential for injury even if they (obviously) sacrificed what little credibility they might have.

What follows is an analysis of what is happening in the Italian student movement written for Molly's Blog by the independent Italian commentator Sabrino Sollazzo. As he points out the idea promoted by the government that the student demonstrations are "infiltrated" by "militant elements" is a lie. Authoritarians have a hard time imagining that people can actually think for themselves, and in the Italian case they are so conspiratorial themselves that they cannot imagine people thinking independently and coming to a conclusion in opposition to their plans.

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What's going on in Italy?

A free opinion on the student's movement

What's on in Italy? The first time, it was called "The Wave", a free movement created by the collective intelligence of the students. After two years, somebody would call it "The Wave II", but this is different, totally free: no political parties are involved in it; no unions is beside the students: this is a free and independent protest against the education cut provided by the minister of Pubblica Istruzione Gelmini, which follows a scheduled privatization of all the welfare state, piece by piece.


The boys and the girls are free from anybody, no infiltrations, no terrorists, no black bloc, but autonomy of thoughts, another view of the public school and the university system.


Many high schools are occupied by the movement, which want to reach strongly the deaf ears of politicians, who are over and over authoritarians, post fascists, not only conservatives , that is the Italian government, since its way of thinking is:"We order, we speak, you keep silent, or you can protest, but without disturbing the driver!"


The independence of university is at risk; many teachers of the high schools, and not only them, refused to put in practice what is the law intent: impossible! Schools are not a farm, or something resembling a private corporation, as it is meant by those guys in Rome.


Knowledge is research, which must be free, and the possibility of instruction, till the last degree, should remain the same, as intended by the Constitution: free and for everybody.


So the students move actively: they want independence, to sum up.


The streets are the theatre of heavy battles against the guardians of the sick system which is bringing all the world to collapse.


Banks, preferring an egg today instead of a chicken tomorrow, can't properly provide a long term plan: it is tautological; but they want to rule states, to say what must be done, even if they are the problem, even if they don't think about the collective wealth, but their stockholders' (and we saw what has happened in the U.S.A. and Europe!).


The students, teachers, researchers, and so on are on he street, they shout their anger against all this, and they point out that they want pay for the crisis produced by capitalism, an economical and social Darwinist theory of the world.

CANADIAN POLITICS:

SHANNEN'S DREAM:

For far too long Canada's aboriginal population has endured substandard conditions in their schools. A young woman, Shannen Koostachin , tried to change that. Since her untimely death others have taken up her torch. The following appeal to keep her dream alive come from the online news service Public Values.

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Youth are challenged to take up 'Shannen's Dream'

Educators active in campaign calling for First Nations' education equality being launched in memory of youth activist.

Shannen Koostachin was a young Aboriginal activist who campaigned for more equitable funding and better conditions for First Nations' schools before she died tragically last May. She was just 15 years old, but she had already established herself among First Nations, social justice and trade union activists as a powerful young fighter for truth and justice.

Now educators are taking the lead in throwing support and funds behind a campaign to have students across Canada take up her challenge.

"Shannen's advocacy helped us see very clearly the impact of underfunding by the federal government on schools in First Nations communities," said Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) President Sam Hammond. "We're challenging teachers and students in elementary schools to support the Shannen's Dream campaign to ensure that every young Canadian — no matter where they live — realizes the same fundamental right to decent schools and education in order to reach their full potential."

The campaign, initiated by MP Charlie Angus (NDP-Timmins-James Bay), was formally launched on November 17th in Ottawa. Earlier this fall, Angus introduced Motion 571 "Shannen's Dream" in the House of Commons. It calls for the right of First Nations children to high-quality, culturally relevant education, transparency in school construction, maintenance and replacement, and funding that will put reserve schools on par with non-reserve provincial schools.

"Shannen was tireless in her fight for equitable school rights for First Nation children," said Angus (Timmins-James Bay) in calling on the House of Commons to push to finally act on this national disgrace. "She became the face of a generation of forgotten First Nation school children. We are carrying on the work she started so that other children will not be left behind."

"Because of its fiduciary responsibilities under the Indian Act, the Department of Indian Affairs is functioning as a school board," said ETFO's Hammond. "How then can the Department justify that funding for Aboriginal students is $2,000 less than that for students in the provincially funded public and Catholic systems? In the case of Attawapiskat, it is unacceptable that the community has waited over 10 years for the Department to build a new school there, despite protests from First Nations and many others including ETFO."

ETFO and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers (OSSTF) is among the organizations that have donated to the Shannen's Dream campaign to help develop short videos, posters and other materials that will encourage students across Canada and others to call for an end to underfunding of First Nations schools. The campaign has also set up a scholarship to support education projects and scholarships for youth from the isolated James Bay coast.

Shannen Koostachin began her campaign because she and her classmates were forced to attend school in portables because her school was sitting on a toxic brownfield. There is still no new school despite a promise by the Federal Government in 2009 to build one. Since Shannen died in car accident last spring, Angus and others have worked to keep Shannen's Dream alive.

"Shannen was an inspiring young woman who has been recognized nationally and internationally for her human rights work for education," said Angus. "I am amazed at how many people are coming forward to make her legacy a reality."

Donations may be sent to: First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, 302-251 Bank Street Ottawa, ON K2P 1X3. Cheques should be made out to "Shannen’s Dream Campaign"

AMERICAN POLITICS:

TEXAS TEXTBOOK WAR COMING TO SHOWDOWN:

Last August Molly blogged on the present situation in the education system of the state of Texas where new "politically correct" (in a right wing sense) textbooks are aiming to eliminate all references to Hispanics from social studies texts ie pretend they never existed. As might be expected the United Farm Workers, with its heavily Hispanic membership, opposes such an attempt to falsify history. Here is a recent repeat of their appeal to join them in protest against this change.

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Stop Texas from erasing Cesar Chavez and Hispanics from school books:

We urgently need your help to stop the Texas state Board of Education from erasing Cesar Chavez and all Hispanic historical figures from public school text books. Since Texas is such a major textbook purchaser, such a move could have a nationwide impact.

This Wednesday, Jan. 13, the state board will take a preliminary vote to adopt new standards for social studies texts. These new standards would eliminate all Hispanics since the conquest of Mexico in the early 16th Century. Cesar Chavez, arguably the most important Hispanic civil rights leader of the 20th Century, is among the historical figures to be eliminated. One of Lowe’s so called "experts" said that Chavez "lacks the stature…and contributions" and should not be "held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation." Also eliminated are a number of key Texas history makers such as Irma Rangel, the first Hispanic woman elected to the state Legislature.

Board members and their appointees have complained about an "over representation of minorities" in the current social studies standards. This is ironic as Hispanics will soon comprise the majority of all Texas public school students.

Please take a few moments right now to send board Chair Lowe an e-mail. Tell the TX State Board of Education not to allow a handful of ideological extremists to revise history by eliminating people of color. Please act now.

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THE LETTER:

Please go to this link to send the following letter to the Texas Board of Education.

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We are outraged that the Texas State Board of Education is taking a preliminary vote Jan. 13 on a proposal to effectively erase Cesar Chavez and all Hispanic historical figures from the state’s public school textbooks. At a time when the majority of public school students in Texas will soon be Hispanic, how can the board allow ideological extremists to revise history by eliminating all Hispanic history makers since the 16th Century conquest of Mexico? It is important that our children learn about historical figures such as Cesar Chavez and Irma Rangel--the first Hispanic woman elected to the state Legislature.

As a supporter of the farm worker movement, please explain to me how Cesar Chavez "lacks the stature...and contributions of so many others" and should not be "held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation," as claimed by one of the "experts" advising your board?
Don’t let a handful of ideological extremists decide what is taught in the public schools by eliminating people of color. A full and accurate teaching of the diverse history of Texas is required in taxpayer-supported school textbooks.
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THE BACKGROUND:
Here's a little background on this issue from a recent edition of the Washington Monthly. Hopefully, after reading this, you may be more inclined to ass your voice to the protest campaign against this latest effort of the 'American Taliban'.
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Revisionaries
How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks:
By Mariah Blake

Don McLeroy is a balding, paunchy man with a thick broom-handle mustache who lives in a rambling two-story brick home in a suburb near Bryan, Texas. When he greeted me at the door one evening last October, he was clutching a thin paperback with the skeleton of a seahorse on its cover, a primer on natural selection penned by famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr. We sat down at his dining table, which was piled high with three-ring binders, and his wife, Nancy, brought us ice water in cut-crystal glasses with matching coasters. Then McLeroy cracked the book open. The margins were littered with stars, exclamation points, and hundreds of yellow Post-its that were brimming with notes scrawled in a microscopic hand. With childlike glee, McLeroy flipped through the pages and explained what he saw as the gaping holes in Darwin’s theory. “I don’t care what the educational political lobby and their allies on the left say,” he declared at one point. “Evolution is hooey.” This bled into a rant about American history. “The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.” (by building up debt that has to be paid by future generations-Molly )





Views like these are relatively common in East Texas, a region that prides itself on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. But McLeroy is no ordinary citizen. The jovial creationist sits on the Texas State Board of Education, where he is one of the leaders of an activist bloc that holds enormous sway over the body’s decisions. As the state goes through the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting the standards for its textbooks, the faction is using its clout to infuse them with ultraconservative ideals. Among other things, they aim to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy, bring global-warming denial into science class, and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement.





Battles over textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas, where bitter skirmishes regularly erupt over everything from sex education to phonics and new math. But never before has the board’s right wing wielded so much power over the writing of the state’s standards. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”





Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.





Up until the 1950s, textbooks painted American history as a steady string of triumphs, but the upheavals of the 1960s shook up old hierarchies, and beginning in the latter part of the decade, textbook publishers scrambled to rewrite their books to make more space for women and minorities. They also began delving more deeply into thorny issues, like slavery and American interventionism. As they did, a new image of America began to take shape that was not only more varied, but also far gloomier than the old one. Author Frances FitzGerald has called this chain of events “the most dramatic rewriting of history ever to take place.”





This shift spurred a fierce backlash from social conservatives, and some began hunting for ways to fight back. In the 1960s, Norma and Mel Gabler, a homemaker and an oil-company clerk, discovered that Texas had a little-known citizen-review process that allowed the public to weigh in on textbook content. From their kitchen table in the tiny town of Hawkins, the couple launched a crusade to purge textbooks of what they saw as a liberal, secular, pro-evolution bias. When textbook adoptions rolled around, the Gablers would descend on school board meetings with long lists of proposed changes—at one point their aggregate “scroll of shame” was fifty-four feet long. They also began stirring up other social conservatives, and eventually came to wield breathtaking influence. By the 1980s, the board was demanding that publishers make hundreds of the Gablers’ changes each cycle. These ranged from rewriting entire passages to simple fixes, such as pulling the New Deal from a timeline of significant historical events (the Gablers thought it smacked of socialism) and describing the Reagan administration’s 1983 military intervention in Grenada as a “rescue” rather than an “invasion.”





To avoid tangling with the Gablers and other citizen activists, many publishers started self-censoring or allowing the couple to weigh in on textbooks in advance. In 1984, the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way analyzed new biology textbooks presented for adoption in Texas and found that, even before the school board weighed in, three made no mention of evolution. At least two of them were later adopted in other states. This was not unusual: while publishers occasionally produced Texas editions, in most cases changes made to accommodate the state appeared in textbooks around the country—a fact that remains true to this day.





The Texas legislature finally intervened in 1995, after a particularly heated skirmish over health textbooks—among other things, the board demanded that publishers pull illustrations of techniques for breast self-examination and swap a photo of a briefcase-toting woman for one of a mother baking a cake. The adoption process was overhauled so that instead of being able to rewrite books willy-nilly, the school board worked with the Texas Education Agency, the state’s department of education, to develop a set of standards. Any book that conformed and got the facts right had to be accepted, which diluted the influence of citizen activists.





Around this time, social conservatives decided to target seats on the school board itself. In 1994 the Texas Republican Party, which had just been taken over by the religious right, enlisted Robert Offutt, a conservative board member who was instrumental in overhauling the health textbooks, to recruit like-minded candidates to run against the board’s moderate incumbents. At the same time, conservative donors began pouring tens of thousands of dollars into local school board races. Among them were Wal-Mart heir John Walton and James Leininger, a hospital-bed tycoon whose largess has been instrumental in allowing religious conservatives to take charge of the machinery of Texas politics. Conservative groups, like the Christian Coalition and the Eagle Forum, also jumped into the fray and began mobilizing voters.





Part of the newcomers’ strategy was bringing bare-knuckle politics into what had been low-key local races. In the run-up to the 1994 election, Leininger’s political action committee, Texans for Governmental Integrity, sent out glossy flyers suggesting that one Democratic incumbent—a retired Methodist schoolteacher and grandmother of five—was a pawn of the “radical homosexual lobby” who wanted to push steroids and alcohol on children and advocated in-class demonstrations on “how to masturbate and how to get an abortion!” The histrionics worked, and the group quickly picked off a handful of Democrats. The emboldened bloc then set its sights on Republicans who refused to vote in lockstep. “Either you’d hippity-hop, or they would throw whatever they could at you,” says Cynthia A. Thornton, a conservative Republican and former board member, who refers to the bloc as “the radicals.”





It took more than a decade of fits and starts, but the strategy eventually paid off. After the 2006 election, Republicans claimed ten of fifteen board seats. Seven were held by the ultra-conservatives, and one by a close ally, giving them an effective majority. Among the new cadre were some fiery ideologues; in her self-published book, Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond rails against public education, which she dubs “tyrannical” and a “tool of perversion,” and says sending kids to public school is like “throwing them into the enemy’s flames.” (More recently, she has accused Barack Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer and suggested he wants America to be attacked so he can declare martial law.) Then in 2007 Governor Rick Perry appointed Don McLeroy, a suburban dentist and longstanding bloc member, as board chairman. This passing of the gavel gave the faction unprecedented power just as the board was gearing up for the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting standards for every subject.





McLeroy has flexed his muscle particularly brazenly in the struggle over social studies standards. When the process began last January, the Texas Education Agency assembled a team to tackle each grade. In the case of eleventh-grade U.S. history, the group was made up of classroom teachers and history professors—that is, until McLeroy added a man named Bill Ames. Ames—a volunteer with the ultra- conservative Eagle Forum and Minuteman militia member who occasionally publishes angry screeds accusing “illegal immigrant aliens” of infesting America with diseases or blasting the “environmentalist agenda to destroy America”—pushed to infuse the standards with his right-wing views and even managed to add a line requiring books to give space to conservative icons, “such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority,” without any liberal counterweight. But for the most part, the teachers on the team refused to go along. So Ames put in a call to McLeroy, who demanded to see draft standards for every grade and then handed them over to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank founded by his benefactor, James Leininger. The group combed through the papers and compiled a list of seemingly damning omissions. Among other things, its analysts claimed that the writing teams had stripped out key historical figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Pat Hardy, a Republican board member who has sat in on some of the writing-team meetings, insists this isn’t true. “No one was trying to remove George Washington!” she says. “That group took very preliminary, unfinished documents and drew all kinds of wrongheaded conclusions.”





Nevertheless, the allegations drummed up public outrage, and in April the board voted to stop the writing teams’ work and bring in a panel of experts to guide the process going forward—“expert,” in this case, meaning any person on whom two board members could agree. In keeping with the makeup of the board, three of the six people appointed were right-wing ideologues, among them Peter Marshall, a Massachusetts-based preacher who has argued that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were God’s punishment for tolerating gays, and David Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party. Both men are self-styled historians with no relevant academic training—Barton’s only credential is a bachelor’s degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University—who argue that the wall of separation between church and state is a myth.





When the duo testified before the board in September, Barton, a lanky man with a silver pompadour, brought along several glass display cases stuffed with rare documents that illustrate America’s Christian heritage, among them a battered leather Bible that was printed by the Congress of the Confederation in 1782, a scrap of yellowing paper with a biblical poem scrawled by John Quincy Adams, and a stack of rusty printing plates for McGuffey Readers, popular late-1800s school books with a strong Christian bent. When he took to the podium that afternoon, Barton flashed a PowerPoint slide showing thick metal chains. “I really like the analogy of a chain—that we have all these chains that run through American history,” he explained in his rapid-fire twang. But, he added, in the draft social studies standards, the governmental history chain was riddled with gaps. “We don’t mention 1638, the first written constitution in America … the predecessor to the U.S. Constitution,” he noted as a hot pink “1638” popped up on the screen. By this he meant the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which called for a government based on the “Rule of the Word of God.” Barton proceeded to rattle off roughly a dozen other documents that pointed up the theocratic leaning of early American society, as the years appeared in orange or pink along the length of the chain.





Barton’s goal is to pack textbooks with early American documents that blend government and religion, and paint them as building blocks of our Constitution. In so doing, he aims to blur the fact that the Constitution itself cements a wall of separation between church and state. But his agenda does not stop there. He and the other conservative experts also want to scrub U.S. history of its inconvenient blemishes—if they get their way, textbooks will paint slavery as a relic of British colonialism that America struggled to cast off from day one and refer to our economic system as “ethical capitalism.” They also aim to redeem Communist hunter Joseph McCarthy, a project McLeroy endorses. As he put it in a memo to one of the writing teams, “Read the latest on McCarthy—He was basically vindicated.”





On the global front, Barton and company want textbooks to play up clashes with Islamic cultures, particularly where Muslims were the aggressors, and to paint them as part of an ongoing battle between the West ("western extremists" perhaps-Molly ) and Muslim extremists. Barton argues, for instance, that the Barbary wars, a string of skirmishes over piracy that pitted America against Ottoman vassal states in the 1800s, were the “original war against Islamic Terrorism.” What’s more, the group aims to give history a pro-Republican slant—the most obvious example being their push to swap the term “democratic” for “republican” when describing our system of government. Barton, who was hired by the GOP to do outreach to black churches in the run-up to the 2004 election, has argued elsewhere that African Americans owe their civil rights almost entirely to Republicans and that, given the “atrocious” treatment blacks have gotten at the hands of Democrats, “it might be much more appropriate that … demands for reparations were made to the Democrat Party rather than to the federal government.” He is trying to shoehorn this view into textbooks, partly by shifting the focus of black history away from the civil rights era to the post-Reconstruction period, when blacks were friendlier with Republicans.





Barton and Peter Marshall initially tried to purge the standards of key figures of the civil rights era, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall, though they were forced to back down amid a deafening public uproar. They have since resorted to a more subtle tack; while they concede that people like Martin Luther King Jr. deserve a place in history, they argue that they shouldn’t be given credit for advancing the rights of minorities. As Barton put it, “Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society.” Ergo, any rights people of color have were handed to them by whites—in his view, mostly white Republican men.





While the writing teams have so far made only modest concessions to the ideologue experts, the board has final say over the documents’ contents, and the ultraconservative bloc has made it clear that it wants its experts’ views to get prominent play—a situation the real experts find deeply unsettling. While in Texas, I paid a visit to James Kracht, a soft-spoken professor with a halo of fine white hair, who is a dean at Texas A&M University’s school of education. Kracht oversaw the writing of Texas’s social studies standards in the 1990s and is among the experts tapped by the board’s moderates this time around. I asked him how he thought the process was going. “I have to be careful what I say,” he replied, looking vaguely sheepish. “But when the door is closed and I’m by myself, I yell and scream and pound on the wall.”





There has already been plenty of screaming and wall pounding in the battles over standards for other subjects. In late 2007, the English language arts writing teams, made up mostly of teachers and curriculum planners, turned in the drafts they had been laboring over for more than two years. The ultraconservatives argued that they were too light on basics like grammar and too heavy on reading comprehension and critical thinking. “This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook,” grumbled David Bradley, an insurance salesman with no college degree, who often acts as the faction’s enforcer. At the bloc’s urging, the board threw out the teams’ work and hired an outside consultant to craft new standards from scratch, but the faction still wasn’t satisfied; when the new drafts came in, one adherent dismissed them as “unreadable” and “mangled.” In the end, they took matters into their own hands. The night before the final vote in May 2008, two members of the bloc, Gail Lowe and Barbara Cargill, met secretly and cobbled together yet another version. The documents were then slipped under their allies’ hotel-room doors, and the bloc forced through a vote the following morning before the other board members even had a chance to read them. Bradley argued that the whole ordeal was necessary because the writing teams had clung to their own ideas rather than deferring to the board. “I don’t think this will happen again, because they got spanked,” he added.





A similar scenario played out during the battle over science standards, which reached a crescendo in early 2009. Despite the overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change exists, the group rammed through a last-minute amendment requiring students to “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming.” This, in essence, mandates the teaching of climate-change denial. What’s more, they scrubbed the standards of any reference to the fact that the universe is roughly fourteen billion years old, because this timeline conflicts with biblical accounts of creation.





McLeroy and company had also hoped to require science textbooks to address the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, including evolution. Scientists see the phrase, which was first slipped into Texas curriculum standards in the 1980s, as a back door for bringing creationism into science class. But as soon as news broke that the board was considering reviving it, letters began pouring in from scientists around the country, and science professors began turning out en masse to school board hearings. During public testimony, one biologist arrived at the podium in a Victorian-era gown, complete with a flouncy pink bustle, to remind her audience that in the 1800s religious fundamentalists rejected the germ theory of disease; it has since gained near-universal acceptance. All this fuss made the bloc’s allies skittish, and when the matter finally went to the floor last March, it failed by a single vote.





But the struggle did not end there. McLeroy piped up and chided his fellow board members, saying, “Somebody’s gotta stand up to [these] experts!” He and his allies then turned around and put forward a string of amendments that had much the same effect as the “strengths and weaknesses” language. Among other things, they require students to evaluate various explanations for gaps in the fossil record and weigh whether natural selection alone can account for the complexity of cells. This mirrors the core arguments of the intelligent design movement: that life is too complex to be the result of unguided evolution, and that the fossil evidence for evolution between species is flimsy. The amendments passed by a wide margin, something McLeroy counts as a coup. “Whoo-eey!” he told me. “We won the Grand Slam, and the Super Bowl, and the World Cup! Our science standards are light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution!” Scientists are not so enthusiastic. My last night in Texas, I met David Hillis, a MacArthur Award–winning evolutionary biologist who advised the board on the science standards, at a soul-food restaurant in Austin. “Clearly, some board members just wanted something they could point to so they could reject science books that don’t give a nod to creationism,” he said, stabbing his okra with a fork. “If they are able to use those standards to reject science textbooks, they have won and science has lost.”





Even in deeply conservative Texas, the bloc’s breathtaking hubris—coupled with allegations of vote swapping (see “Money and Power on the Texas State Board of Education”)—have spurred a backlash. In May, the Texas state legislature refused to confirm McLeroy as board chair (Governor Perry replaced him with another bloc member), and, for the first time since he took office in 1998, he is facing a primary fight. His challenger, Thomas Ratliff, a lobbyist and legislative consultant whose father was the state’s lieutenant governor, argues that under McLeroy’s leadership the board has become a “liability” to the Republican Party. Two other members of the ultraconservative bloc are also mired in heated primary battles.





But to date few bloc members have been ousted in primaries, and even if moderates manage to peel off a few seats, by that time it will probably be too late. In mid-January, the board will meet to hammer out the last details of the standards for social studies, the only remaining subject, and the final vote will be held in March, around the same time the first primary ballots are counted. This means that no matter what happens at the ballot box, the next generation of textbooks will likely bear the fingerprints of the board’s ultraconservatives—which is just fine with McLeroy. “Remember Superman?” he asked me, as we sat sipping ice water in his dining room. “The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way? Well, that fight is still going on. There are people out there who want to replace truth with political correctness. Instead of the American way they want multiculturalism. We plan to fight back—and, when it comes to textbooks, we have the power to do it. Sometimes it boggles my mind the kind of power we have.”

AMERICAN POLITICS:

KEEP TEXAS SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS TRUTHFUL:

Sometimes the shear strangeness of American politics leads this little Canuck to a jaw-dropping moment. One of these occurred when I read the following appeal from the United Farm Workers. The 'culture wars' of the USA seem interminable, and one of the strangest aspects of these, from a Canadian point of view, is the determination of the American right wing to keep the facts of history away from children. no doubt there are those in my own country who would dearly love to emulate such nonsense, but the simple fact is that they rarely dare to make their designs public. One wonders who the right wingers in Texas think should replace Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall in the history books. Robert E. Lee perhaps ? George Wallace ? Oh, I know...Anal Roberts. Ah well, here's the story.

APAPAPAPAPAPAPAP

Tell Texas not to remove Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall from school books:
There is an education war going on in Texas that you need to know about and get involved with. The TX State Board of Education is currently preparing to adopt new social studies curriculum standards. These standards have major national implications as Texas is such a major purchaser of textbooks and their state’s required curriculum drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.

Please read the following and then take action and forward this to as many friends as possible.

The TX State Board of Education has hired 6 "experts" to determine what will be in the books their schools use. Some of these "experts" are arguing that the state’s social studies and history textbooks are giving "too much attention" to some of the most prominent civil rights leaders in US History, namely Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall.

David Barton, one of these "experts," claimed Cesar Chavez "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others." Another of these "experts" evangelical minister Peter Marshall said, "To have Cesar Chavez listed next to Ben Franklin"--as in the current standards--"is ludicrous." He went on to say Chávez is not a role model who "ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

The same "expert" wants to eliminate Thurgood Marshall, a prominent Civil Rights leader who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of an important historical figure to be presented to Texas students.

Board members and their appointees have complained about an "over representation of minorities" in the current social studies standards. This is ironic in light of the changing demographics of our country. Sadly, Latino and African-American children have the highest drop-out rates in the country. It’s essential to ensure schools are providing students with role models and historical figures whose experiences reflect their own.

We must be concerned when the contributions of Cesar Chávez, Thurgood Marshall and other individuals who have contributed so much to the landscape of American democracy are cast aside and ridiculed. We should welcome the inclusion of all Americans who have helped to make this nation great.

It is horrific to discover that the TX State Board of Education has allowed these panelists to use our children's social studies curriculum as a platform for their political agendas. Please take action today to stop this travesty from going forward. Send your e-mail to the Chair of the Texas Board of Education Gail Lowe (R).

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THE LETTER:

Please go to THIS LINK to send the following letter to the Texas State board of Education.

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I'm shocked and dismayed to discover that the TX State Board of Education is choosing to allow biased "expert" panelists to use their children's social studies curriculum as a platform for their political agendas.

Board members and their "experts" have complained about an "over representation of minorities" in the current social studies standards. This is ironic in light of the changing demographics of our country. Sadly, Latino and African-American children have the highest drop-out rates in the country. It is essential to ensure schools are providing students with role models and historical figures whose experiences reflect their own.

Some of these "experts" said that the state's textbooks are giving "too much attention" to some of the most prominent civil rights leaders in US History, namely Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall.

One of these "experts" claimed Cesar Chavez "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others." Another, evangelical minister Peter Marshall said, "To have Cesar Chavez listed next to Ben Franklin"( who, ironically enough.to my knowledge was a "deist" and therefore not a "Christian" in the holy roller sense-Molly)--as in the current standards--"is ludicrous." He went on to say Chavez is not a role model who "ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

Cesar Chavez is widely acknowledged to be a national hero. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, his face appeared on a U.S. Postage stamp, and his birthday is an official holiday in 8 states. To suggest that his life story does not merit being taught to Texas students, in a state whose population is 36% Latino, is ridiculous and offensive.

A member of this biased "expert" panel also wants to eliminate Thurgood Marshall, a prominent Civil Rights leader who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation. He wrote that the Marshall is "not a strong enough example" of an important historical figure to be presented to Texas students.

This is absurd. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American in history to sit on the Supreme Court, is also a man whose life story is an important one for students to learn and be inspired by.
We must be concerned when the contributions of individuals who have given so much to the landscape of American democracy are cast aside.

Don't be known as the state that took Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall and other significant figures out of the history books. Live up to your responsibility--and the mixed demographics of your state--by having the books that teach your children represent the diversified population of your state and this nation.

RESOURCES FOR WORK AND LIFE:

ONLINE EDUCATION FROM THE IUF:

The IUF is an international union federation that covers food, farm and hotel workers worldwide. As part of their services they provide a wealth of information on various topics that affect both workers and consumers. Here are a few of the resources they provide:

INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR STRONG REGULATION OF NANOTECHNOLOGY:

The IUF along with 44 national and international public health and policy, environmental and trade union organizations have launched a call for strong, comprehensive regulatory oversight at all levels of nanotechnology and its products. A wide range of products containing engineered nanoparticles are already commercially available, and more are scheduled for commercial release as corporations invest massively in the technology, despite the well documented risks to human health and the environment. There is no way to measure the presence of nanoparticles in the workplace, let alone test for exposure. The technology, says the coalition, poses specific risks with specific regulatory oversight. The coalition presents 8 fundamental principles that they believe should be observed for the necessary oversight of this technology. To access the introduction to this report, 'Principles for the Oversight of Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials' click HERE.

BIRD FLU AND YOU:

H5N1 OUTBREAK IN INDIA HIGHLIGHTS PERSISTENCE OF GLOBAL THREAT:

The H5N1 virus, popularly known as "avian flu" or "bird flu" is a persistent lurking threat that could yet break out into a worldwide pandemic. The first people likely to be affected by such a pandemic are agricultural and food workers, and the IUF has prepared a position paper on this issue under the heading of workplace safety. This paper, 'Avian Influenza (H5N1) and Agricultural and Food Workers:Rights,Risks, Public Policy Issues' can be seen by clicking HERE and following the links.

"LEVERAGED BUYOUTS" AND HOW THEY AFFECT YOU:

THE HARSH WORLD OF LEVERAGED BUYOUTS HAS SUDDENLY GOTTEN HARSHER:

Leveraged buyout is a term whereby easy credit is used to buy public companies in what are called "private equity" deals whereby quick profits are made via fast financial transactions that create no new productive forces and often damage the object of the takeover. Why should anybody care about this unless they are a stockholder ? Because the pressure on the credit market and the results of the takeovers mean increased cost cutting-hence layoffs, speedups,etc.- that affects the work life of the workers employed by target companies. Also the drain on credit produced by these takeovers is a contributing factor to such things as the "subprime mortgage debacle" in the USA. The IUF has produced a primer for those who want to learn more about this matter and how it may affect them. To see the introduction and access 'A Worker's Guide to Private Equity Buyouts' click HERE.

Finally, on a somewhat different note:

WHERE TO SPEND YOUR VACATION:

THE GLOBAL HOTEL MONITOR:

Most of us consider little more than cost and convenience when choosing a hotel when we go on vacation. There is, however, another factor to consider-how does the hotel treat its employees. A hotel that is stingy with its workforce will probably be stingy with its guests as well. Also, nobody likes the simple injustice. The Global Hotel Monitor is a website that gives the consumer alerts as to which hotels worldwide have either actual or potential labour disputes at a given time. Best to check this site before booking a vacation. You don't want to contribute to anti-union management, and you don't want to be unpleasantly surprised by getting out of a taxi in front of a picket line. Contribute to global justice and do yourself a good turn at the same time. Sounds good.

BABY EINSTEIN: "EDUCATION" AS BRAIN DAMAGE:

OR 'THE MOUSE LOSES THIS ROUND':

In 1997 the Baby Einstein Company was founded by Julie Aigner-Clark of Denver Colorado. It was a typical home startup business in which she and her husband Bill clark invested $18,000 to produce the first VHS/DVD entitled 'Baby Einstein'. It was later remarketed under the name of 'Language Nursery'. This original production featured a number of toys and visuals illustrated by a mix of stories, music, numbers and words in several languages.

The video grew, and by 1998 it was a million dollar franchise. By the year 2000 it was grossing $10 million a year. Fads are indeed wonderful things. Aigner-Clark sold 20% of the shares in her company in February, 2000 to Artisan Entertainment and the rest to the Walt Disney Company in November 2001 for an undisclosed large amount. The manic mouse took the idea to new heights, spawning such titles as 'Baby MacDonald' (about agriculture), 'Baby Bach Musical Adventures', 'Baby da Vinci From Head to Toe', 'Baby Monet Discovering the Seasons','Baby Mozart Digital Board Book','Baby Galileo','Baby Beethoven's Symphony of Fun', and 'Baby Newton World of Shapes'. You name it they got it. The website of the line which, of course, connects to the 'Disney Shopping Site' lists no less than 24 unique DVDs, three packages of same and 11 CDs for sale. The line is available in 7 different languages in 12 different countries. It also now includes books, 'discovery cards', toys, puppets, party supplies, baby clothes and bibs. One has to wonder how much of this line is manufactured in China, one of the countries where Baby Einstein is marketed. The Mouse under its 'Disney Channel' mask created an animated television series called Baby Einsteins in 2005.

The Baby Einstein line under the tutelage of the Mouse went from success to success. After selling out to the Mouse Aigner-Clark remained active as a "consultant" and visible spokeswoman for the series. The height of publicity came on January 23, 2007 when US President George Bush mentioned the company during his State of the Union address. He also acknowledged Aiger-Clark whose was invited to sit in the gallery at the time. This led to a little bad publicity for the President as the media dug up the fact that Aiger-Clark's husband William E. Clark had donated $5,150 to the RNC and Bush in 2004. For sheer pettiness this deserves an Academy Award as this may stand as the cheapest mass advertising ever purchased on the sly from a head of state in the western world. It sounds more on the line of what you'd be able to buy from the President of a tiny Pacific Ocean island nation with a population of 25,000 people. But from the head of the greatest empire the world has ever known ???

Storm clouds, however, were beginning to gather on the happy cartoon horizons for both the Mouse and Baby Einstein. In may of 2006 the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood filed a lawsuit and launched a complaint with the US Federal Communications Commission against not just Baby Einstein but also other makers of videos for very young children. They alleged false advertising citing the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children under 2 years of age should watch NO television; that's NONE, ZERO. A survey also cited found that only six percent of parents were aware of this recommendation while fully 49 percent were under the misapprehension that "educational" videos were important in the intellectual development of young children. Now, the two things that amaze Molly about this survey is 1)that as much as six percent were aware of this recommendation(somebody is doing their job right,whether it be parents or doctors) and 2)that almost half of the population lacks the common sense to know that it's obvious that plunking kids in front of a TV- whatever the show may be,"educational" or otherwise- is bad news and only to be resorted to in extremis. You really don't have to be aware of a medical recommendation to recognize the obvious.

This lawsuit and complaint was chugging its merry way along at the usual glacial speed of such things as the profits accumulated when an unexpected bombshell landed in the front yard of the Mouse. Last August Drs Frederick Zimmerman, Dimitri Christakis and Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington published a study on language development in children under two years of age in the online Journal of Pediatrics. Entitled 'Associations between Media viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years' the study came to the conclusion that viewing of such "educational" videos by children aged 8 to 16 months was associated with significantly lower scores on standard language development tests. In 'toddlers' from ages 17 to 24 months where neural connections had escaped a critical period where they were susceptible to damage the videos had neither a positive nor negative effect. The senior author of the study, Dr. Zimmerman, couched his conclusions in cautious terms saying, "It is possible that heavy viewing of baby DVDs/videos has a deleterious effect on early language development". Another author of the paper, Dr. Christakis, was, however, less restrained. He has been widely quoted as saying, "I would rather babies watch American Idol than these videos". He may be right if you think about it.

The University of Washington sent out a press release about the study which was picked up by much of the mass media. The release quoted Dr. Zimmerman as saying, "There is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos and there is some suggestion of harm. We don't know for sure that baby DVDs and videos are harmful but the best policy is safety first. Parents should limit their exposure as much as possible.". The press release also quoted Dr. Christakis who said, "The evidence is mounting that they are of no value and may in fact be harmful. Given what we now know, I believe that the onus is on the manufacturers to prove their claims that watching these programs can positively impact children's cognitive development.".

The Mouse came out swinging. Despite the fact that the Mouse quite deliberately covers its legal tracks with fine print stating that the line, "is not designed to make babies smarter" (see Nature 448 pp848-849, August 23,2007 -online at www.nature.com/nature if you are a subscriber) the Mouse immediately sent a demand letter to the administration of the University of Washington telling them to retract the claims made in their press release. To their credit the university backed down not one inch. The University President Mark A. Emmert fired back saying that the University stands behind its researchers and that their press release accurately described the paper's conclusions and the doctors' commentary. The Mouse persists in its attempt to silence this research as can be see on their website cited above.

Molly finds this case rather interesting. There have been multitudinous other cases where corporate entities have attempted to silence scientific research. Sometimes they succeed. sometimes they fail. Sometimes they shoot themselves in the foot big time as they promote a minor technical dispute such as the effectiveness of a certain drug as compared to others into a mass media event which destroys their brand names. This case is probably in the "fail" category as all the damage was done by the results of the study which merely reinforced the common sense proposition that these videos can do no good- a proposition tacitly admitted by the Mouse in the fine print even as they try to create the illusion that the videos are educational by attaching famous names in science and the arts to them. As an interesting aside the Mouse's royalties to the estate of Albert Einstein have helped to elevate that estate to the top four in earning for "dead celebrities" as reported by Forbes , a position usually held by dead musicians. One wonders what the ghost of old Albert, the lifelong socialist, would thing of this turn of events.

As said above this item has been picked up and repeated many times in the mass media. References to the original paper, the University of Washington press release and the reply by the Mouse are available above. For further information see the following:

*New Scientist 'Educational DVDs slow infant learning' http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12437-educational-dvds-slow-infant-learning.html

*Time Magazine 'Want a Brainier baby? Loading up on tapes,games and videos may not be a smart move' http://ilabs.washington.edu/news/TIME_BrainierBaby_Jan_06.pdf

It should also be noted that the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has an online letter writing campaign to the Mouse, the Disney Corporation, demanding that they show the proof that their products actually benefit children. Go over to that website to read more and put more pressure on the Mouse.

WHEN TELLING THE TRUTH IS AN OFFENSE:

Molly has recently come upon an interesting item on the Saskatchewan blog Shagya's Blog about a high school student in Wayota, Saskatchewan, who was suspended from school for the simple fact of countering the propaganda doled out by the teachers in the school about marijuana. Molly has heard reports about this on the radio and being as she was unlucky enough to grow up in Saskatchewan eventually intended to blog about this herself. But Shagya has said it all. The student involved is an honours student who has now gone to China to study there (no..he's not Chinese; he's just smart). The social control as opposed to education function of the school system could not be more plainly expressed than it is here. No place for intelligence in school. Go to Shagya's blog for the full story. Brings back bad memories of Molly's own ancient high school experiences with the Jesuits. Some of those black coated bastards could punch real good.

Practical Anarchism:
There's an interesting article in the July 29th edition of 'Freedom'. Freedom is a biweekly produced in London England, and has claim to being the oldest anarchist periodical in the world as it was founded by Kropotkin and friends in the 1880s. The article, by Martyn Everett, is entitled 'Practical Anarchism', and it describes the work of the 'University of the Third Age' in Great Britain.
The 'U3A' is basically a network for self education for people over 45. The network was set up in the early 1980s and now has 574 local groups. Membership as of Feb., 2006 stood at 153,000 people. This network differs from formal education in that there is no process of marking; there are no 'certificates' granted; and the roles of "teacher and pupil" are not rigidly set. There is no faculty in this University. Often classes have no teacher whatsoever, and teachers in one class pass on to become students in another. There are no formal "campuses". Classes often meet in private homes.
The author shows how this sort of structure is exactly the sort of thing described by Kropotkin in his writings on anarchist society. he goes on to argue that experience in such non-hierarchical groups might be generalized by the participants into other forms of social organization such as "credit unions, housing co-ops and communal allotments". My own prejudices would argue that one should add a lot of other items to this list.
It should be noted that there has always been an undercurrent of this sort of meliorist thinking in the anarchist tradition. The most thorough going modern exponent has been Colin Ward, but much of Mutualism and Syndicalism has understood that the creation of everyday alternatives in a piecemeal fashion is "direct action" in the true and proper sense. In the USA Paul Goodman was very much in this tradition. In fact it would be as hard to find any deus ex-machina of 'revolution' in Goodman's works as it would in Ward's writings.
Two things should be noted about this whole matter. One is the insufficient understanding of what the term "direct action" actually means. In its original syndicalist formulation it meant action on the job that directly changed the working conditions without resort to any sort of "petitioning" of the bosses, either passively and legally through grievance procedures or even in a militant fashion through the most determined or even violent of strike action. The concept of sabotage would only qualify as "direct action" if its immediate effect was the desired result- such a slowdown of the work process. Direct action also had the connotation of not relying on politicians to gain desired reforms but directly struggling for them at the workplace. Given the reality of union organizing this meant that 95 to 99% of this direct action struggle was not the flashy actions of strikes but rather the day to day building of links of solidarity. It was as useless to vote for politicians- to petition them by ballots- as it was to except to influence them by riots- to petition by bricks and bullets. The syndicalists, whether of the European "anarcho" variety or the "non-political" North American variety embodied in the IWW or the OBU understood very plainly that their militant actions were usually just skirmishes and holding actions unless they demonstrated the effectiveness of the building of links of solidarity- the real work of direct action which would make true victory possible.
The second thing to note is that the direct action of building such alternative ways of acting and often using them to further one's ends either in conflict with rulers or by ignoring them is what should truly be meant by a "revolution of everyday life". These are actions that affect one's prospects and desires, and those of one's peers far more than what passes for the self declared heirs of "the revolution of everyday life" and what they propose, assuming they propose anything.
In most countries outside of North America there has been a revival of this "practical anarchism", whether it be in the new syndicalism or in community based struggle. There is a certain imperial strain in the anarchism of the USA that is very much opposed to this concept of practical anarchism and wishes to impose its own vision of impractical anarchism where practicality becomes sly hints about better ways to carry out petty vandalism. This imperial anarchism reduces the everyday concept of changing one's life to a memorization of turgid dogma and competition as to who can appear the most militant.
The idea of "direct action" being action tailored to directly achieve a goal is totally lost in this dreamworld. Ordinary people actually care about achieving something, at least now and then. Imperial Anarchism finds the whole concept irrelevant. Consistent 100% defeat in the set piece operas of demonstrations around this or that international conference of the ruling class simply don't register in this mindset. You can't notice that police who deploy perhaps 1% of the lethal force of which they are capable always and every time win in that they control the streets at the end of the day even if they hold well back from "maximum force". You can't notice this if you don't care because winning is actually unimportant and the spectacle of opposition is everything. To the exclusion of the building the ties of everyday living that true anarchism actually consists of.
Direct action and the revolution of everyday life are two great concepts of practical anarchism. But they can never be applied until there is a clear understanding of what they mean.