What is at stake here is not only whether this Creationist program will confer graduate degrees sanctioned by the State of Texas, but whether Texas will be interpreting its approval criteria in such a way that Texas accreditation can no longer serve as a basis for Science Teacher credentials, or for the NCLB requirement for a teacher in every classroom who is “Highly Qualified” in the specific subject they are teaching.
Category Archives: signed
Curriculum Consciousness and Brown v. Board of Education
January 15, 2008 – 12:10 am
Earlier posts here have considered how curriculum is understood as involving more than just the kind of “course of study” for which the word “curriculum” is often used. The consequences of this broader understanding can be seen in the testimony of Dr. Hugh W. Speer, chairman of the Department of Education at the University of Kansas City, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Children of Jihad
December 30, 2007 – 8:47 pm
I’m listening now to a fascinating presentation by a book author who has spent substantial time with young people in the Middle East. The book is:
Cohen, Jared. Children of Jihad a Young American’s Travels among the Youth of the Middle East. New York: Gotham Books, 2007.
Information about the book, including library holdings in local areas, [...]
Texas forebodings: textbooks and science standards
November 17, 2007 – 12:49 pm
Although the specific textbooks involved this time were in elementary mathematics, the broader concern here is that, if the Board is allowed to get away with rejecting textbooks without and explanation, they could use that practice to censor textbooks for ideological reasons in controversial areas such as teaching about evolution in biology.
@ issue: “Intelligent Design” in Social Studies
October 13, 2007 – 7:57 pm
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has announce that the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) statement on Intelligent Design in social studies will appear in the third edition of NCSE’s Voices for Evolution. Bloggers and media on the Christian Right are taking notice.
E.O. Wilson on BookTV (& “methodological naturalism”)
August 3, 2007 – 12:20 pm
E.O. Wilson will be featured in a 3-hour interview program on CSpan-2 in the US Sunday August 5 Here is a question that I’ve sent by email. I don’t expect they’ll use it, but I’d be interested in responses from others as well. Since this blog concerns curriculum, the question here is not whether ID is true or not, but whether it belongs in science classes.
Colbert WØRD: “Heated Debate”
May 16, 2007 – 12:21 pm
Stephen Colbert says: “College students should be unformed lumps of clay fixed in the kiln of unchallenged thoughts.”
Click here, or on the image below, for the Colbert video at the Comedy Central website. (The image was originally linked to the Cavuto interview on YouTube; but apparently FOX has had that YouTube video removed.)
As reported by [...]
“Teaching Geography” Bill
April 27, 2007 – 4:57 pm
The recently submitted “Teaching Geography is Fundamental Act” is featured in a number of Florida papers this week (I don’t know if it’s a syndication pattern, or why not other states). Here’s from the Orlando Sentinel.
Considering Florida, I wonder if they’ll pass a law delaring (as they did with history: see here and here) that [...]
Kenneth Burke, identity / identification, Activity Theory
February 14, 2007 – 2:03 pm
While I’m at it with Kenneth Burke, here’s another favorite passage , on “identification,” illustrated with a provocative, if not downright disturbing, classroom scenario.
Included in the two pages linked above, Burke writes:
Kenneth Burke on the unending conversation
February 14, 2007 – 11:00 am
In The Philosophy of Literary Form (three pages linked here), Kenneth Burke writes
In equating “dramatic” with “dialectic,” we automatically have also our perspective for the analysis of history, which is a “dramatic” process, involving dialectical oppositions. (p. 109)
We might consider how this also applies to the analysis of curriculum. Burke writes:
Kansas science standards vote Feb 13, 2007
February 7, 2007 – 9:16 am
UPDATE Wednesday Feb 14, 2007: for the action taken by KSBE, see
http://curricublog.org/2007/02/14/kansas-science-decided/
UPDATE Sunday Feb 11, 2007: See this article in today’s LJWorld.com for background on the vote that is expected Tuesday.
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According to their agenda, the Kansas State Board of Education is scheduled to “Act on Kansas Science Education Standards” at 4:00 Tuesday afternoon on Feb. [...]
Curriculum & the post-(cognitivist) synthesis
January 28, 2007 – 10:39 pm
If “cognitivism” is an ideology that represents learning and understanding as matters that can be understood, in a reductive way, as being, in their essence, just matters of “cognition,” it does not follow that advancing beyond cognitivism would mean taking up a newer ideology of “postcognitivism.”
“Conceptions of Curriculum”
January 25, 2007 – 3:38 pm
A short pdf document (just over one page) on “What is Curriculum” can be found on the website of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board (PMETB) in London. It begins by noting:
As with most things in education, there is no agreed definition of ‘curriculum’, although it is generally agreed that ‘curriculum’ is not the [...]
Cato: CHOICE would prevent curriculum conflicts
January 24, 2007 – 2:10 pm
The Cato Institute has release a report titled Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict by Neal McClusky, which makes the case for school choice as a preventive solution for avoiding conflict over public school curriculum.
“lesson study” & teachers’ unions
January 6, 2007 – 8:42 pm
Mike is asking about the role of teachers’ unions in education reforms … Another relevant source of examples, it seems to me, would be the role of unions in districts where “lesson study” has been implemented. Any real “lesson study” effort requires real time and other resources. In union-organized school districts, it seems to me commitment and support from both the District and the Union would be absolutely necessary.
evolution=atheism=religion=unconstitutional?
August 31, 2006 – 4:24 pm
Ed Brayton on Dispatches from the Culture Wars has done a great job critiquing both the legal reasoning and the general logic and use of quotations and authorities deployed in an argument that teaching about evolution in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment.
Ed’s critique meticulously picks apart particular flaws in the logic [...]
