Gun Violence is Just a Fact of Life, Like the Weather

I've noticed that there's not much -- or at least very little -- coverage of parents and activists who are badgering school board members about school shootings...other than demanding that teachers carry firearms.

Pro-gun rights lawmakers want to arm teachers, but there’s little evidence these programs work

The tragic mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last week renewed calls for stricter gun control legislation, after 19 children and two teachers were killed, and 17 others were injured in the attack. But conservatives and gun lobbyists argue the only way to solve the country’s epidemic of mass shootings is to put more guns in the hands of the public. Some have even called for arming teachers and school staff with firearms of their own.

...The idea of training teachers, whose primary job is to educate students on lessons like math and English, as an extra security defense against potential school shooters is not new and such training programs have existed for years in some form in many states.

There is also little evidence to suggest arming school staff actually makes schools safer. On the contrary, school safety advocates warn about the potential risks of encouraging teachers to carry guns at school — increasing the number of guns in schools, even if they were put in the hands of responsible educators, may increase the likelihood of gun-related harm. Studies have also shown a direct correlation between the presence of guns and increased gun violence.

Hmmm..."studies have also shown"...sounds like science to me!

Click here or on the image, to see the entire Tom Tomorrow post.

Where are all the people who threatened, bullied, spouted conspiracy theories, demanded the banning (and/or burning) of books, and screamed at school board members about masks, critical race theory (CRT), and transgender rights?

MASKS DON'T WORK?

The "masks don't work" theory of COVID-19: Masks don't protect children from the COVID virus, yet somehow they do prevent O2 and CO2 from getting in and out of their lungs. This prevents breathing and will cause permanent damage.

Why aren't they going to school board meetings demanding that ways be found to reduce school shootings?

The total number of students and school staff who died from lack of oxygen or too much carbon dioxide because they wore masks = 0.

(NOTE: The numbers of deaths quoted in the paragraph above and at other locations in this post are from a quick search of the internet and may not be 100% accurate.)

See also:

Fact check: Three children have not died from wearing masks in Germany
Mask Mythbusters: Common Questions about Kids & Face Masks

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Teaching American history apparently makes some children feel sad, angry, or upset. But isn't it appropriate to feel that way about various behaviors of the USA over it's life as a nation? Slavery? Jim Crow? Japanese-American incarcerations? Does this mean we shouldn't teach history? (NOTE: This is not a call to teach inappropriate content, or to teach content inappropriately to children based on their age and maturity. For example, we wouldn't (and shouldn't) use graphic images of violence, or descriptions of, the brutality of slavery with kindergartners.)

Should we not mention that ten of the first twelve presidents of the United States owned slaves?

Twelve U.S. presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives; of these, eight owned slaves while in office. Ten of the first twelve American presidents were slave owners, the only exceptions being John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, neither of whom approved of slavery.

Should we not teach that the Civil War was mostly about slavery, for example, Mississippi's Articles of secession included...

Mississippi: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth… These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

...and Georgia's...

Georgia: That reason was [the North's] fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.

What is Critical Race Theory and Why is Everyone Talking About it?

Republican lawmakers in more than 20 states have introduced or passed legislation that would directly target the principles underlying critical race theory by banning schools from teaching about structural racism. These efforts to demonize critical race theory are gaining traction more than a year into a national reckoning with racism, following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the ensuing protests.

Speaking at a conference held by the Faith and Freedom Coalition on June 18, former Vice President Mike Pence said that “critical race theory is racism.” Senator Ted Cruz, at the same gathering, compared the theory to the Ku Klux Klan saying the curriculum is “every bit as racist” as the white supremacist hate group. “Critical race theory,” the senator said, “says every white person is a racist.”

These campaigns are not just based on ignorance of how critical race theory developed and is now applied, but also represent an attempt to stoke a reactionary resistance, rather than a broader understanding.

(NOTE: Critical Race Theory is not "taught" in America's K-12 schools. American history, on the other hand, is.)

Total number of students and school staff who died because of learning or teaching American history = 0.

TRANS RIGHTS

Do Trans girls have an advantage when participating in girls' sports? Apparently not any more than some other girls, according to this article in Scientific American (There's that "science" again!)...

Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams

...It turns out that when transgender girls play on girls’ sports teams, cisgender girls can win. In fact, the vast majority of female athletes are cisgender, as are the vast majority of winners. There is no epidemic of transgender girls dominating female sports. Attempts to force transgender girls to play on the boys’ teams are unconscionable attacks on already marginalized transgender children, and they don’t address a real problem. They’re unscientific, and they would cause serious mental health damage to both cisgender and transgender youth.

Policies permitting transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity are not new. The Olympics have had trans-inclusive policies since 2004, but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify. California passed a law in 2013 that allows trans youth to compete on the team that matches their gender identity; there have been no issues. U SPORTS, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, has allowed transgender athletes to compete with the team that matches their identity for the past two years.

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys...

Total number of students and school staff who died because trans children played on sports teams = 0.

(On the other hand...A record number of transgender and gender nonconforming people in the US have been killed in 2020.)

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Nearly all of the school shooters since (and including) the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in November 2012 have used semi-automatic weapons -- either rifles or handguns. Have any of the people who wanted to ban the book Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story by Ruby Bridges, demanded that we ban semi-automatic weapons?

Have any of the people who argued against mask mandates in schools also argued for common sense gun laws?

Isn't there the least a bit of cognitive dissonance created by arguing against masks, CRT, or trans rights, and not doing the same about school shootings?

Total number of people who have died in US school shootings since November 2012 (including children, adults, and perpetrators) = 108.

AN OVERLAP?

Is there an overlap between people who complain to school boards about masks, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and trans children in sports, and those who identify as "pro-life."

Is there an overlap between people who complain to school boards about masks, Critical Race Theory, and trans children in sports, and those who want to arm teachers?

Opinion: Why won’t pro-lifers act against our deadly gun culture?

Are the people who called teachers "groomers" now calling for states to arm those same educators?

And they want to arm the teachers . . .

But for God’s sake then what makes the Republicans who have produced this situation think it is reasonable to expect a teacher to engage in a gunfight with the same murderer that the police are afraid of confronting ?

🤷🏽‍♂️🙏🏽🏫

In which I explain why this blog has been silent since October, 2021

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.

Scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

NEW YEAR'S DAY, 2022

I wasn't able to breathe and gasped for air. They moved me to the ambulance...wheeled me into the hospital...someone cut off my shirt (one of my favorite tee shirts!) and inserted an IV in my arm. I don't remember much else for the next few days.

On January 1, 2022, I went to the hospital, was diagnosed with COVID-19, and spent the next seven weeks in the hospital and in rehab. At first, I was on a ventilator -- which prompted the ER doctor to tell my spouse that she should call our kids and have them come home to say goodbye to their father. I spent about a week in the ICU, then time in the COVID-19 Unit, and then another three and a half weeks in rehab to rebuild my strength and regain some of the forty pounds I had lost (not a recommended weight loss plan!).

Drifting in and out of consciousness, I thought "if this is what dying is, it's not so bad. I should just let go." Of course, I had the benefit of pain-killers, sedatives, and paralytics so I didn't really know what was happening to me.

Later, in the ICU, I couldn't get out of bed. I was unable to move enough to get up. I was too weak to stand. I couldn't move from the bed to a chair. I couldn't lift my legs onto the bed. It was a helpless, and humbling experience.*

Thankfully, my body, modern medicine, and, according to the doctor, the COVID-19 vaccines, conspired to keep me alive until I could improve a bit. I decided that it was worth it to hang on so that I could experience more of life. Like the Dead Body That Claims It Isn't in the scene above, I'm getting better!

Unfortunately (or the way 2022 is going so far, perhaps "fortunately"), I was unable to keep up with the news and unable to update my blog for the first three months of 2022, but I'm getting better...so I'm back.

CATCHING UP ON THE NEWS

One of the reasons I got so sick from COVID-19 is because I'm immunocompromised and have "underlying conditions" which make me more susceptible to illness. I was vaccinated, wore a mask everywhere, avoided crowds and unvaccinated people, and stayed out of stores. It wasn't enough and the highly contagious variant got me (I assume it was Omicron since that was the variant that was going around at the time). There are millions of immunocompromised folks in the U.S. It's to keep us safe that you wear a mask and get vaccinated. Maybe this will help you understand...

COLLATERAL DAMAGE -- THE IMMUNOCOMPROMISED

Vulnerable to the Virus, High-Risk Americans Feel Pain as the U.S. Moves On

Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived this way since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives.

As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy.

See also: The Millions of People Stuck in Pandemic Limbo

EDUCATION NEWS

Now for some of the articles...on the topics...that filled education news while I was gone...

RACISM IN SCHOOL

History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools

One of the biggest educational/political uproars this year was, and is, Critical Race Theory. It's not being "taught" in our elementary and secondary schools, but it's premise, that racism is inherent in our lives and intersects with the law and society is proven by our history.

Racism is part of the U.S. Constitution. It didn't disappear with the Emancipation Proclamation, or with the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, or with various voting rights and civil rights legislation. It still sours and poisons our nation and by extension, our schools and our children.

In modern times, “New Racism” arose; concealed, more subtle, and much harder to detect, this New Racism operates deep under the radar. The Black Lives Matter Movement and the looming Trump administration have propelled the conversation of race and racial issues to the forefront of American consciousness. It is argued, however, that while these conversations are crucial, we are not recognizing the systemic racism that has been present in our educational system for decades. Racism is so deeply innate that it is believed that racism no longer exists in our country. But in our public schools, another story is being told.

In this New Racism, blame for underachieving students of color is shifted to their parents, who are portrayed as slacking or uninvolved with their children’s education. This shifts attention away from the policies and structures in action that put a student of color at a disadvantage.

See also: Racism In Education: what we know and where we go from here

CENSORSHIP

Book-banning law is another way to keep voters focused on culture-war distractions

If books can turn kids gay, why didn't the gay kids who read books about straight kids turn heterosexual?

The books can be burned, but the ideas will survive.

But Republican leaders in Florida are acting like books are turning children gay, socialist or whatever group they’re marginalizing or villainizing this week. The GOP-controlled Legislature passed a bill making it easier to ban books from school libraries.

In signing the measure into law last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis said "it’s going to help give parents a lot of confidence that they can send their kids to school and they’ll get an education but they’re not necessarily going to be indoctrinated into things that are very, very questionable.”

See also: The Top 10 Challenged and Banned Books of 2021


THIRD GRADE PUNISHMENT PLANS

The focus of this blog has often been directed at the misuse and overuse of standardized testing, and retention in grade. The two topics come together in laws passed by states that require schools to hold students back a grade if they don't pass the state's arbitrary third-grade standardized reading test.

The Harm Caused By the Third Grade Reading Ultimatum

There’s no research indicating we should be hurrying children to read early, which started with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), or earlier. Formal reading used to begin in first grade. But with NCLB, formal reading instruction has been pushed down to kindergarten. It has become the norm.

NCLB, however, was poorly conceived. Those who wrote NCLB chose third grade as a pivotal year. Yet, studies from years ago indicated NCLB failed to increase reading achievement in fourth grade (Dee & Jacob, 2011).

Supporters of this policy promised at the time, that by following punitive accountability measures all third graders would read at grade level by 2014! That did not occur (here are excuses why) and children, who are told not to have any excuses, have been paying the price ever since.

See also: Academic Freedom Isn't Free: Don’t Buy It: The Marketing Scam of MSM and the “Science of Reading”


TEACHER SHORTAGE

America’s Teachers Aren’t Burned Out. We Are Demoralized.

Where will tomorrow's teachers come from? Who will staff our schools?

Often in education we hear that teachers are burned out, but that isn’t quite accurate. As teacher demoralization expert Doris Santoro says, “burnout tells the wrong story about the kinds of pain educators are experiencing because it suggests that the problem lies within individual teachers themselves.” Those outside education assume that the teacher can’t hack it in the classroom. But in reality, teachers are forced to operate in systems that aren’t functioning properly, which makes teachers feel demoralized, discouraged and overwhelmed. According to Santoro, demoralization occurs because teachers “care deeply about students and the profession, and they realize that school policies and conditions make it impossible for them to do what is good, right and just.”

See also: Missing: Future Teachers in Colleges of Education


JACKIE ROBINSON

Finally, it's baseball season...and this season marks the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league, barrier-breaking debut. Racism was present when the country was founded. It was present after the failure of Reconstruction. It was present during the Jim Crow era which includes the 1947 integration of Major League baseball. It's present today (see RACISM IN SCHOOL, above).

April 15, 1947: Jackie Robinson’s major league debut

April 15, 1947: Jackie Robinson’s major league debut
This article was written by Lyle Spatz

Jackie Robinson’s major league debut was more than just the first step in righting an historical wrong. It was a crucial event in the history of the American civil rights movement, the importance of which went far beyond the insular world of baseball.

The Dodgers signed Robinson to a major league contract just five days before the start of the 1947 season. Baseball people, especially those in Brooklyn, were still digesting the previous day’s news of manager Leo Durocher’s one-year suspension (for conduct detrimental to baseball), when the story broke of Robinson’s promotion from the Montreal Royals. He would be the first black American to play in the major leagues since catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association back in 1884.

*[NOTE: Thank you to all the nurses, nurses aides, and medical techs who took care of me during the first few months of 2022. You don't get paid enough! Oh, and the doctors are appreciated, too.]

⚾️⚾️⚾️

2021 Medley #11 - Surprise, there's a teacher shortage

The teacher shortage continues,

COVID losses, PDK poll,

High-achieving schools, Evolution

TEACHER SHORTAGE? SURPRISE!

Four reasons why schools are facing crippling shortages

Chalkbeat, whose "supporters" include privatizers like the Walton Family, the Gates Foundation, and EdChoice, report here on the ongoing teacher shortage made worse by the pandemic. Their explanation focuses on the combination of low pay and the weak economy -- which are, indeed, part of the problem. I think that a more important set of reasons, however, are how teachers have been treated due to lack of respect by the public (and politicians...and the media), and the impact of privatization on public education. After you read this, check out the next article on the same topic.

The staffing shortage has become a defining feature of this school year. Non-teaching, often lower-paid roles seem to have been particularly hard to fill.

“It is affecting the whole climate of the schools,” said Sabine Phillips, whose middle school in Broward County, Florida has buses regularly arriving late and few substitute teachers. “It’s just hard to keep people in a positive mood.”

So what is going on here? There’s no one answer, according to a range of experts watching these shortages nationwide, but a constellation of potential explanations. Some are exacerbated versions of old problems: schools need people to choose challenging roles with relatively low pay. Other explanations are new, like federal money boosting demand for educators, the continued disruption to childcare, and COVID-related health concerns.

‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs in numbers

Quoted here is Steven Singer, blogger at Gadfly on the Wall Blog (and author of the next post as well). As an actual, current, real-life, teacher, he has a good handle on the reasons for the teacher shortage -- the pandemic, of course, is one, but also, he says, we need to remember low pay, low respect, low autonomy, and lack of a professional voice. All these are part of teaching in Indiana and the supermajority of privatizers in the state's General Assembly guarantees that it will stay that way. Chalkbeat, take note.

“They don’t give us numbers or report it but we see in our buildings how we’re all needed to sub for missing teachers. It’s way more than normal,” said Steven Singer, a middle school teacher in western Pennsylvania. “I, myself, was in and out of the hospital last week due to my Crohn’s disease. The stress of the pandemic is taking a toll on me and all of us. We’re just at a breaking point. This crisis for teachers didn’t start with Covid. We have low pay, low respect, low autonomy, and no one listens to us. Now we’re being forced to risk our lives and our health.”

At least 378 active teachers have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, along with hundreds of other school workers. Several surveys have shown teachers are more likely to leave the profession because of worsening stressand burnout during the pandemic, coupled with pre-existing issues such as a lack of resources and low pay.

COVID LOSSES

My Students Haven’t Lost Learning. They’ve Lost Social and Emotional Development

Teachers have been telling the public for years that there's more to education than "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic." There are things that go on in classrooms that are more important than test scores. The "loss" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is more than just content area loss, which can be made up. The loss is emotional...parents, relatives and friends lost to COVID-19. The loss is social isolation from being quarantined. Students have to learn to deal with those losses before so-called "learning loss."

According to the CDC, more than 140,000 children in the U.S. lost a primary or secondary caregiver such as a live-in grandparent or another family member to the virus.

Globally, that’s more than 1.5 million kids who have lost a parent, guardian or live-in relative to the pandemic, according to the Lancet.

No wonder kids are having trouble dealing with their emotions! Their support systems are shot!

My students are bright, caring, energetic and creative people. They have the same wants and needs as children always have. They just have fewer tools with which to meet them.

Administrators often focus on academic deficits.

They worry about learning loss and what the kids can’t do today versus students in the same grades before the pandemic. But I think this is a huge mistake.

My students are not suffering from a lack of academics. They’re suffering from a lack of social and emotional development.

PARENTS APPRECIATE THEIR LOCAL SCHOOLS

PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools
A supplement to Kappan magazine

Every time the PDK poll is released we learn that the majority of Americans (and even more public school parents) love their local schools...it's "those other schools" elsewhere in the country that are, apparently, terrible. This year is no different. Why is that? Could it be that we are being given poor quality information about schools in other places? Could it be that we know our own children's schools and appreciate the work that is done there?

Majorities of Americans give high marks to their community’s public schools and public school teachers for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic during the 2020-21 school year. Further, the public is broadly confident in schools’ preparedness to handle the challenges ahead in 2021-22. Teachers fare especially well in these assessments. About two-thirds of adults overall, and as many K-12 public school parents, give their community’s public school teachers an A or B grade for their pandemic response. Parents are almost as positive about their community’s public schools more generally, giving 63% A’s or B’s, though the positive rating slips to 54% among all Americans.

As is customarily the case, public schools nationally — as opposed to schools or teachers in one’s own community — fare less well, with about 4 in 10 adults overall, and parents in particular, giving them A or B grades for their pandemic response.

HIGH ACHIEVING SCHOOLS MAY BE TOXIC

The Toxic Consequences of Attending a High-Achieving School

Toxic high-achieving schools...

Students at high-achieving schools exhibit much higher rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse than those at lower achieving schools…

The harmful effects of attending a high-achieving school are long-lasting…

The toxic achievement pressure for HAS students comes from parents, teachers, peers, and ultimately from within the student.

US ACCEPTANCE OF EVOLUTION PASSES FIFTY PERCENT

Evolution now accepted by a majority of Americans

Science, not religion, ought to be the determining factor in what's taught in our public schools. But citizens of the US have always had a difficult time separating church and state, despite the protections of the First Amendment. Included among the topics attacked by the science-deniers is evolution. Education is the key. [Note: I added the link in the quote below]

Examining data over 35 years, the study consistently identified aspects of education — civic science literacy, taking college courses in science, and having a college degree — as the strongest factors leading to the acceptance of evolution.

“The more education you have, the more likely you are to accept evolution,” observed co-author Glenn Branch, deputy director of NCSE, adding, “The proportion of Americans with a college degree almost doubled between 1988 and 2018.”

The researchers analyzed a collection of biennial surveys from the National Science Board, several national surveys funded by units of the National Science Foundations, and a series focused on adult civic literacy funded by NASA. Beginning in 1985, these national samples of U.S. adults were asked to agree or disagree with this statement: “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”

The series of surveys showed that Americans were evenly divided on the question of evolution from 1985 to 2007. According to a 2005 study of the acceptance of evolution in 34 developed nations, led by Miller, only Turkey, at 27%, scored lower than the United States. But over the last decade, until 2019, the percentage of American adults who agreed with this statement increased from 40% to 54%.

🚌🚌🚌

What do vaccine and mask deniers do when they get sick?

Delightful. Medieval America always in intimate personal confidence of the Almighty. -- George Bernard Shaw

In 1909, the women, ages 16-23, who worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the Leiserson & Company went on strike.* They were fighting against...

• unsanitary working conditions
• fire hazards (which would later prove all too relevant)
• the endless fines for talking, laughing, singing, stitches being crooked, etc
• long working hours, often until 10 at night, with only 1 break for eating
• low wages (around $6 a week, men made $12 a week for the same work in 1907)
• the inappropriate behavior (aka, sexual) of their bosses.

When the women were told by one magistrate that their strike was against "God and Nature" George Bernard Shaw wrote the words at the top of this page.

More than a century later, the same mentality that assures some that they know exactly what God wants is, as Shaw wrote, still present here in the United States.

DEMONIC MASKS

Let's be clear at the outset, the people who are anti-mask-in-school are a minority. Those who are against school-children wearing masks because it's "demonic" are an even smaller minority, but it's those people who grab the headlines and the clicks...like the "nurse" who went viral with this...

"Remember we have authority in Christ Jesus," Melissa stated. "These are demonic entities, and all the school boards of all the United States of America, and all of us Christians will be sticking together to take them out, or the police officers that kick us out for our First Amendment right."

Melissa went on to say that she's been a registered nurse for 13 years and that "masks just don't work."

...Melissa then went on to reiterate that the school board was full of "demonic entities," which led school board officials to cut her mic off for a final time.

Where might she, and others like her, be getting this information? Could be from politicians...

Former Missouri gubernatorial candidate Saundra McDowell recently suggested that mask wearing is part of a "demonic ritual" to take away "God-given rights."

It could be from religious leaders...

“I don’t need to be a jerk for Jesus, but ... I’m not going to kowtow down to a wicked godless culture,” Mr Locke said...

The pastor has previously claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris is a “jezebel demon” and that the Biden administration is in charge of “child-trafficking tunnels” underneath Washington, DC.

FACTS SHOULD, BUT OFTEN DON'T, MATTER

More and more children are getting COVID since school started this academic year. Yet the extreme (and minority) right-wing science-deniers continue to fight against vaccines and masks.

This is despite the fact that masks...

The report found in part that masks effectively prevented COVID-19 transmission even without physical distancing in schools and on buses.

...work.

...studies show that even in situations where these other measures aren't being used, masking makes a big difference in keeping the virus from spreading. That was one conclusion of the ABC Science Collaborative, a major research initiative involving nearly 1 million students from 100 school districts and 14 charter school in North Carolina. It found that universal masking policies helped keep transmission rates of the coronavirus within schools to under 1% last fall and spring.

...and so do vaccines.

...studies that have looked at how COVID-19 vaccines work in real-world conditions (vaccine effectiveness studies) have shown that these vaccines are working well.

WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE?

You need to choose who you're going to believe.

Lack of Trusted Authority is Why Covid-19 is Kicking Our Butts

The US has only 4% of the world population but nearly a quarter of all Covid cases.

That’s not a coincidence.

In large part, it’s because we don’t know how to combat the virus because we don’t know who to trust.

And the resulting credibility vacuum has enabled unscrupulous politicians, agents of chaos and other charlatans to position themselves as experts.

I don't know the self-proclaimed nurse, Melissa, quoted above.

I do know that Dr. Anthony Fauci has an M.D. from Cornell Medical College (N.Y.C.) and more than fifty years of experience in the field of medicine, and specifically, immunology and infectious diseases. I also know that the Centers for Disease Control, when not being manipulated by politicians, is staffed by professionals in their respective fields.

I'll trust the experts rather than those who call down demons from supernatural myths we should have left behind centuries ago.

I'll Trust Science

I admit it. I loved teaching science to young children during my years as an elementary classroom teacher. I loved teaching science because I understand the scientific method and I trust it to provide us with answers and then corrections to answers that we might have gotten wrong. It's important for students, and all of us, to learn that science changes when we get new information.

When I was a child there were nine planets. Now there are eight planets, a collection of dwarf-planets, and tens of thousands of minor planets all orbiting the sun.

When I was a child, early computers took up hundreds of square feet of warehouse space and ran on vacuum tubes. Now we wear much more powerful computers on our wrists, or carry them in our pockets.

I'll Trust Modern Medicine

I trust modern medicine. I never got smallpox or polio because I was born at a time when vaccines for those diseases were available. Because of modern surgical techniques, I can walk on my right heel that shattered when I fell down some steps. I can breathe even with allergies, lung disease, and an immune deficiency because of advances in medicine.

What do vaccine and mask deniers do when they get sick, with COVID-19 or any other illness? What do you think they do?

Susan B. Anthony explained it well in 1896, when she said,

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.

Protect unvaccinated kids in school. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated.

*Triangle Shirtwaist Factory women strike, win better wages and hours, New York, 1909

⚗️🔭🔬

Blogoversary #15 - Ignorance, Allied With Power, is a Ferocious Enemy

Today marks the fifteenth blogoversary of this blog. When I began it on September 14, 2006, I was in my late 50s, teaching Reading Recovery in a small public school in northeast Indiana (which has since closed), the US was at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, there had just been a mass shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, and George W. Bush was the US President.

In September of 2006, Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake released their second albums and Elton John released his 29th; naturalist Steve Irwin and former Texas governor Ann Richards died; the Cubs finished last in the National League Central (a year later they would finish first); and Star Trek celebrated 40 years of television and movies (premier Sept 8, 1966).

Public education in the US was deep into the mess of No Child Left Behind. Testing defined everything taught in America's public schools. In Indiana, we hadn't started spending millions of dollars of tax money on vouchers and charter schools. Hoosier teachers still had seniority rights, the right to due process before getting fired, and collective bargaining for things like prep time and class size.

My blog's focus was on 1) the overuse and misuse of standardized testing, 2) the overwhelming intrusion of politics and politicians into public education, 3) my students, and small, occasional forays into music and baseball. I was reading education authors like Richard Allington, Gerald Bracey, Susan Ohanian, and Alfie Kohn.

I taught part-time for a few years, and then retired in 2010, taught a semester at a community college, volunteered in three different elementary schools after retirement, and joined with others to advocate for public education. Since retirement, and in no particular order, I moved to a new house; made a few trips to the hospital; fought and beat cancer (so far); voted in seven elections; watched the Cubs win the World Series (Bucket List item #1); signed up for Social Security and Medicare; welcomed two more grandchildren, a grandchild-in-law, and a great-grandchild into my life; made new friendships and said good-bye to some old friends and family members; drove Route 66 from California to Illinois; celebrated a fifty-first wedding anniversary; reached half-a-gross years in age, and written 1423 blog posts (this one is #1424).

Here are some quotes about life and education that I've gathered the last year.

EDUCATION

“Three years ago, we started to learn how to run from armed intruders. Last year we learned how to pack bullet wounds. This year, we’re trying to figure out how to bring back learning in a pandemic.” -- St. Louis psychology teacher Amanda Kaupp


"We live in a country where the state legislature must mandate play but congress doesn't need to approve a war." -- Tweet by Fred Klonsky


"Public education isn't important because it serves the public, it is important because it creates the public." -- [Attributed to] Neil Postman, former chairman, Department of Culture and Communication, New York University


“I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed." -- Beverly Cleary, 1916-2021

APHORISMS

"Don’t be afraid of walking away from a mistake just because you took a long time making it." -- Unknown


"The moment you’re in now is the moment that matters." — Don Lemon in This is the Fire.


"Silence in the face of evil, is itself, evil...Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." -- Misattributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer


"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant." -- Maximilien Robespierre


"Don't be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn't do what you do, or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today." -- Quoted by Maya Angelou (quote reproduced in James L. Conyers, Andrew P. Smallwood, Malcolm X: A Historical Reader, Carolina Academic Press, 2008, p. 181 and Elaine Slivinski Lisandrelli, Maya Angelou: More than a poet, Enslow Publishers, 1996, p. 90)


“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ― Misattributed to C. S. Lewis

POLITICS, RACISM, AMERICAN HISTORY, AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT

“You can’t teach American history without talking about race, it’s impossible. If you do that, what are you really teaching your students?” -— Rodney D. Pierce


“Assertions that CRT is being taught in America’s elementary and high schools is ludicrous–as I have been complaining pretty much forever, schools aren’t even teaching the most basic concepts required for civic literacy, let alone a theory that requires a familiarity not just with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but with significant elements of America’s legal structures.” — Sheila Kennedy


[Frederick] Douglass announced that the abolition of war and peace he envisioned, would never “be completed until the black men of the south and the black men of the north shall have been admitted fully and completely into the body politic of America.” — Race and Reunion by David W. Blight.


“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” -- James Baldwin


"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America." -- Molly Ivins, great American newspaperwoman


"This country once led the global effort to eradicate deadly diseases for the benefit of all.
"It's a sad testament of our decline as a nation and the selfishness of who we've become as a people that we no longer lead the way in something as easy to do as getting a vaccine." -- Jim Wright


"We must all live together and work together no matter what race or nationality. If you have an opportunity to accomplish something that will make things better for someone coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." -- Roberto Clemente


"We either overcome our innate tribalism and learn to live amicably together, or this experiment we call America is over." -- Sheila Kennedy

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2021 Medley #10 - I'm Back Edition

New York Times and Disclosures,

First Responders, COVID-19, and why I missed a month of blogging,

Textbooks in Voucher Schools,

Keep out of my air-space,

Know your rights

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leonie Haimson: Columnists at NY Times Report on Gates Projects While Benefitting from Gates’ $$$

I yesterday's post, It’s not as though we don’t know what works, I discussed an editorial in the New York Times about standardized testing and the low test scores achieved during the current (and ongoing) pandemic.

This morning, Diane Ravitch posted twice on her own blog about the New York Times and the financial conflicts of interests with some of their journalists. In the first she lets us know of the close ties between writers and both the Gates Foundation and the Aspen Institute. Readers of my blog know of Bill Gates and his foundation's close ties to privatization. The Aspen Institute is also among the cheerleaders of privatization.

The second post, quoted below, reiterates the conflicts of interest, but also includes important information for news-reading/watching public school advocates about the Gates Foundation. This doesn't mean that every Gates Foundation-funded organization will be pro-charter and anti-public schools. I have personally been assured by members of the Chalkbeat staff that they are not influenced by their donors. On the other hand, I still read their posts with the understanding that they get funding from not only Gates, but the Walton Family Foundation, EdChoice, and other privatizers.

In the quote below, Schwab refers to Tim Schwab, a writer for The Nation.

The Gates Foundation provides millions of dollars to many journalistic enterprises, which Schwab argued in an earlier 2020 piece helps to explain the kid glove treatment the Foundation has received over the last twenty years. The media outlets that get funding from Gates and regularly cover his education projects and investments include Chalkbeat, Hechinger Report, The 74, and Education Post, as well as K12 school reporting by NPR, Seattle Times, and others. The Foundation also helps to fund the Education Writers Association, which frequently features speakers friendly to various policies favored by Gates.

IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO FIRST RESPONDERS GO UNVACCINATED AND UNMASKED?

Cops must get vaccinated. Full stop.

I noticed this post on Fred Klonsky's blog and it reminded me that, depending on where you live, "all city workers" -- who are the subject of the Chicago Mayor's vaccine mandate -- doesn't mean all first responders. At the same time I'll explain why this blog went quiet for a month without any warning.

Late last spring I began to feel sick -- suffice it to say that I needed minor surgery (which for someone my age means major recuperation time). I was taken to the nearby hospital by ambulance. (The following is a retelling of my spouse's story since I can't remember) When the two EMTs walked into our house they were unmasked. One began to work on me, and the other was peppered with questions from my panicky spouse: "Why aren't you wearing masks?" "Are you vaccinated?" The EMT who was not tending to me put on his mask and answered that yes, he was vaccinated and vaguely reassured her. The man tending to what we assumed at the time was an emergency never answered the question, but he did don his mask.

I will assume that all the EMTs in my house (several more arrived later, masked) had recently been tested for COVID-19, but I don't know that for sure. I am immune-compromised with several health issues, and I was and still am, susceptible to COVID-19, or any virus for that matter. Furthermore, it's easy to see just by looking at me that I'm old enough to be seriously ill if I contracted the virus.

Masks and vaccinations should be required for all first responders...anyone who might have emergency contact with members of the community.

What could possibly be a reason that vaccination and proper medical procedure (masks, for example) should not be required for first responders, whether in a practice, or at a treatment facility or at an emergency scene, whether working with patients or sitting at the front desk, or driving the emergency truck? Other than the fact that I live in Republican, anti-science, Indiana.

Maybe Illinois isn't that different.

[Chicago's] Mayor Lightfoot issued the order yesterday that all city workers must be vaccinated.

The response by Fraternal Order Of Police president John Catanzara was predictable.

“We’re in America g-----n it. We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period. This ain’t Nazi f---ing Germany (where they say) ‘Step into the f---ing showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’ What the f---?”

The language of this Trump loving fascist comparing vaccination mandates to gassing Jews by the Nazis has nothing to with mandating or union bargaining.

WHAT'S IN YOUR TEXTBOOK?

Vouchers And Disinformation

Here in Indiana, and in many other private-school-voucher-allowing states, kids are learning that humans lived with dinosaurs and that slaves were immigrants...using public funds.

The textbooks reviewed by the Guardian are used in thousands of private religious schools–schools that receive tens of thousands of dollars in public funding every year. They downplay descriptions of slavery and ignore its structural consequences. The report notes that the books “frame Native Americans as lesser and blame the Black Lives Matter movement for sowing racial discord.”

As Americans fight over wildly distorted descriptions of Critical Race Theory–a manufactured culture war “wedge issue” employed by parents fighting against more inclusive and accurate history instruction- -the article correctly points out that there has been virtually no attention paid to the curricula of private schools accepting vouchers.

...The U.S. Constitution gives parents the right to choose a religious education for their children. It does not impose an obligation on taxpayers to fund that choice, and we continue to do so at our peril.

KEEP OUT OF MY AIR-SPACE

Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins

A famous quote, or groups of quotes, which in today's world might read...

"Your liberty to not go unvaccinated and not wear a mask thereby possibly spreading COVID ends where my air-space begins."

John B. Finch, the great constitutional amendment advocate, was wont to settle this point by a single illustration. He said, “I stand alone upon a platform. I am a tall man with long arms which I may use at my pleasure. I may even double my fist and gesticulate at my own sweet will. But if another shall step upon the platform, and in the exercise of my personal liberty I bring my fist against his face, I very soon find that my personal liberty ends where that man’s nose begins.”

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Know Your Rights! A Tale Of Two Prayer Policies, One Forced And One Free

Americans United for Separation of Church and State have issued information about the rights of students, teachers, and parents in public schools. This post and the next are some examples of what they stand for.

I was glad to be free of compulsory prayer and school-sponsored religion. And even though I knew little about the law back then, I had an instinctive understanding that it was simply wrong for public school teachers and staff, who are agents of the state, to sponsor or pressure anyone to take part in religious activity.

Yet I also knew that our school was no “religion-free zone.” One of my favorite classes was an elective I took about World Religions. The approach was strictly objective, and there was no proselytizing. This was the first time I had been exposed to the doctrines of non-Christian faiths. It was an eye-opener.

Know Your Rights! How A Fourth Grader’s Request Sparked A Classroom Lesson On Tolerance

But when the Pledge ended, the students instead started asking questions – first, to Michael, about his decision to sit, his faith and why he couldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. And then they started asking me questions too: about the Pledge, why we do it, and what it means. After talking for 20 or 30 minutes, all of us – my students, Michael and I – had a greater understanding of what the Pledge was, why we said it and what it meant to each of us.

Dissent, in the form of religious difference or non-religion, can be scary. It can feel uncomfortable or disorderly. But that day in a class of fourth-graders, I saw how creating space for those with non-majoritarian beliefs doesn’t just protect those believers (or non-believers). It also presents us all with an opportunity to reflect on and gain a greater understanding of our own views and traditions. In other words, the rights of dissenters protect all of us. And I’m proud to work at Americans United, where through our Know Your Rights campaign and other vehicles, we protect those rights every day.

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It’s not as though we don’t know what works

One of the most distressing aspects of the Covid pandemic has been seeing governors and state education officials abdicate responsibility for managing the worst disruption of public schooling in modern history and leaving the heavy lifting to the localities. Virtually every school in the nation closed in March 2020, replacing face-to-face schooling with thrown-together online education or programs that used a disruptive scheduling process to combine the two. Only a small portion of the student body returned to fully opened schools the following fall. The resulting learning setbacks range from grave for all groups of students to catastrophic for poor children.

From the start, elected officials seemed more concerned about reopening bars and restaurants than safely reopening schools that hold the futures of more than 50 million children in their hands. Failed leadership continues to be painfully evident as the states enter yet another pandemic school year without enforcing common-sense public health policies that would make a much-needed return to in-person schooling as safe as possible. These policy failures are compounding at a time when the highly infectious Delta variant is surging and the coronavirus seems likely to become a permanent feature of life.

The New York Times editorial from last week, The School Kids Are Not Alright, quoted above, decried the "learning loss" of American students during the pandemic. A closer reading, however, should remind anyone that the "learning loss" is, was, and always has been a feature of inequality -- racism and poverty.

Just like standardized tests BP (Before the Pandemic) those kids who were poor and/or who attended schools filled with low-income students (mostly children of color), scored lower on standardized tests than their wealthier, and mostly white, peers. The current assessments of students show significant differences between those who have access to the internet and those who don't -- between those who can afford to have at least one parent stay home and help them with school work, and those who cant -- between those who live at or near the poverty line, and those who don't.

Which parents found it easier to stay home with their children during the school lockdowns? Which parents have (or had) low-wage jobs that we now know are "essential?" Which students had access to the internet for online instruction? Which students often had to share one smartphone among the members of their entire family to get their lessons?

Are current test scores a "scalding rebuke of those who have minimized the impact of the school shutdowns" as the editorial says, or are they simply more of the same. And btw, who among those who wanted to shut down schools to keep families safe has minimized the impact of the pandemic? No one wanted to close schools...least of all educators, but a global pandemic sometimes means that we have to do things that we don't want to do.

The editors wrote, "Perhaps the most grotesque of these minimizing arguments holds that concerns about learning loss are being manufactured by educational testing companies with dollar signs in their eyes."

Grotesque?

Is that why the NYT Editorial Board, in looking for sources about "learning loss," started with N.W.E.A. -- a testing company? "NWEA is the company that generated a lot of buzz with their covid-learning loss “research.” NWEA sells standardized math and English testing." Grotesque? I don't think so.

As if that wasn't enough, they also checked with the "educational experts" at McKinsey & Co...because financial consultants always know the best things to do for public education, right? The McKinsey report stated that "the pandemic has widened existing opportunity and achievement gaps and made high schoolers more likely to drop out."

Raise your hand if you're an educator who could have guessed that would happen! Raise your other hand if you're an educator who knew that the pandemic would hit children living in poverty harder than those who never went to bed hungry.

The problem with school achievement has always been poverty. And the problem with poverty is that it's built on racism (Read The Sum of Us, and The Color of Law to get started). It's true that the pandemic made things worse, but that's because during economic declines those at the bottom always suffer most.

Kids who live in poverty, just like their parents, suffered (and still are) more during the pandemic because our economy is a plutocracy made for the rich to get richer. Don't blame teachers, administrators, and school boards for closing schools. The schools closed because we didn't want children to die...or bring home COVID-19 to their parents and grandparents for them to die.

I'm seriously tired of the politicians, pundits (looking at you, NYT Editorial Board), and policy-makers telling teachers and public schools to single-handedly solve the problems of racism and poverty by increasing test scores. Public schools and public school teachers are not the only ones who have anything to contribute to growing our society!

Linda Darling-Hammond had this to say nearly a decade ago.

Why is Congress redlining our schools?

It’s not as though we don’t know what works. We could implement the policies that have reduced the achievement gap and transformed learning outcomes for students in high-achieving nations where government policies largely prevent childhood poverty by guaranteeing housing, healthcare and basic income security. These same strategies were substantially successful in our own nation through the programs and policies of the war on poverty and the Great Society, which dramatically reduced poverty, increased employment, rebuilt depressed communities, invested in preschool and K-12 education in cities and poor rural areas, desegregated schools, funded financial aid for college and invested in teacher training programs that ended teacher shortages. In the 1970s teaching in urban communities was made desirable by the higher-than-average salaries, large scholarships and forgivable loans that subsidized teacher preparation, and by the exciting curriculum and program innovations that federal funding supported in many city school districts.

These efforts led to big improvements in achievement and attainment from the ’60s through the ’80s. The black-white reading gap shrank by two-thirds for 17-year-olds, black high school and college graduation rates more than doubled, and, in 1975, rates of college attendance among whites, blacks and Latinos reached parity for the first and only time before or since.

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2021 Medley #6 - We Slide into Superstition and Darkness

Mask misinformation, Climate change misinformation, Vaccine misinformation, Legislative ignorance

MASK MISINFORMATION

N.J. school nurse fails science, experts say, in comments about face masks.

Sadly, this nurse at the center of this article has failed to keep up with the science she (should have) learned in nursing school.

One of the arguments Nurse Pein gives for being against masks is that it causes damage to the mental health of children. More first-graders are suffering from anxiety and depression, she claims. She blames the masks but fails science in at least two ways.

Science lesson #1

First, her conclusion is based on a small sample size, just one school. Any good scientist will tell you that a large enough sample size is necessary before concluding that a hypothesis is correct. Small samples increase the margin of error and reduce the confidence level. Are the first-graders in her school representative of all the first-graders in the state...the country...the world? Obviously not. Perhaps there's something happening in her community that is causing stress among the population of young children -- something like a pandemic, for example. Blaming it on the masks alone is just plain ignorant.

Science lesson #2

Failure number two -- correlation does not imply causation. Nurse Pein blames the masks for the distress of the children in her school, but did she explore anything else that might be causing the problems? Are all the children who wear masks to school feeling anxious or depressed? Perhaps her attendance area has a large number of COVID cases and the students are worried about their family members or classmates. Perhaps the children have heard adults spout misinformation about the dangers of wearing masks! Whatever the cause, the conclusion that the masks are causing the negative feelings of the children is a conclusion without a basis.

Finally, it must be noted that she hasn't kept up with the changes to the science of the pandemic as we learn more about the virus. Early on we were told that masks weren't effective against the virus and were needed for medical professionals. However, as we have learned more about how the virus is spread the science has changed. We've learned more. We know more than we did in February and March of 2020. Now we know that masks are effective in preventing the spread of the virus. Similarly, we now know that children are more susceptible to coronavirus variants than they were a year ago (Northeast Indiana readers, see also here).

Science is not an unchanging truth. Science conclusions can and do change when we learn more.

Other objections Pein has for mask-wearing are debunked in the article.

After refusing to wear a mask herself, Erin Pein said she was suspended from her job in the Stafford Township school district.

Now her supporters are planning a rally and her cause has become an issue in the upcoming Republican primary for Hirsh Singh, who arranged and posted a widely shared video interview with her and argues that no one should be forced to wear masks — calling it “a matter of personal freedom.”

But epidemiologists say such claims are little more than “inflammatory rhetoric” and at odds with the science that has repeatedly shown that face masks are highly effective in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, they said as new variants of the virus develop, the wearing of masks has become more important than ever.

CLIMATE CHANGE MISINFORMATION

Making the Grade? How State Public School Science Standards Address Climate Change

Are you surprised that Indiana didn't get an F in its state standards addressing climate change? The fact that there's some hope raised the grade to a D.

The state standards for science in Indiana, according to the report by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, don't even acknowledge that the changing climate is a problem. Students graduating from K-12 schools in Indiana will hear pundits on TV raging about the dangers of climate change and will assume that it's not a problem we need to worry about. Graduates from Indiana will be unlikely to contribute to advances in climate science and other related fields. The right-wing myth that climate change is a hoax will continue to find a home in Indiana.

Indiana
Overall grade: D

Indiana earned a D, just barely escaping and overall failing grade. The state's approach to the reality and severity of climate change as well as the human responsibility for causing it is abysmal. One reviewer: "I must say [the standards do] not meet the needs of Indiana students in the process of learning their foundational understanding of the world they are inheriting and the promising careers and opportunities available to them; this is a disservice to them." Saving the state from an F were somewhat better -- but still poor -- marks for addressing the possibility of solutions to the problem, which is odd since the standards failed to make clear that the problem exists. One reviewer summed up thus: "These standards do a relatively poor job in meeting the four rubrics. They do not have a coherent learning progression or explicit information. Interestingly, there is a good deal of focus on science and engineering solution-oriented perspectives, and this is why I scored the 'there's hope' section higher. This...focus could be very effective if it was used to address and ideate climate adaptation and mitigation solutions." Not surprisingly, the state got failing grades for preparing students for studying climate change in higher education and for responsible participation in civic deliberation on the issue.

VACCINE MISINFORMATION

Why mRNA vaccines can’t change your genome: a lesson from Elmer Elevator
My last blog post, Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket, focused on science literacy, and the lack of it in American culture. I suggested that teachers connect to organizations to help bring science literacy to their students. One of those groups was the National Center for Science Education. In this post, Executive Director of NCSE, Ann Reid, debunks the conspiracy that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter a person's DNA. Hint: You should read the book My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, a 1949 Newbery Honor Book. Hint #1: mRNA vaccines won't alter your DNA.

Over the course of Elmer’s adventure, he uses each of these objects. For example, the toothbrush and toothpaste serve to distract a hostile rhinoceros that threatens to drown Elmer in the pool he weeps in because his horn (the book says “tusk,” but rhino horns aren’t teeth) has grown grey and ugly. Only the jackknife, which Elmer eventually uses to saw through the ropes holding the dragon, makes any sense in advance. But every object is used, and every one is essential; without each and every one of them, Elmer would never have reached and rescued the baby dragon.

All right, I can hear you saying: “What in the Sam Hill does this have to do with mRNA vaccines?”

Well, this. For an mRNA vaccine to alter your DNA, it would have to overcome a series of challenges, each of which requires specialized cellular components that would have to be in the right place at the right time. Just like Elmer Elevator, the mRNA can’t just show up in your cell and expect to get past all the wild animals between it and the baby dragon, as it were.

SCIENCE IGNORANCE CAN BE HARMFUL TO YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOL

A state legislator is howling indoctrination because my 7th graders are learning the ocean is polluted

A North Carolina representative wants to make sure that students aren't taught about climate change which he says is "indoctrination."

This is what happens when science is misunderstood, misrepresented, and then politicized.

What also scares me about this bill is that it would require teachers to spend an insane amount of time every day posting lesson plans online.

A member of the North Carolina House of Representatives held up my teaching as an example of harmful indoctrination of children this week as state legislators met to discuss a new bill which would require teachers to post their lesson plans online for public review.

The K-12 Education Committee approved HB 755, also known as “An Act to Ensure Academic Transparency.” It passed the House by a vote of 66-50 and now moves on to the Senate.

The legislation mandates that all lesson plans, including information about any supporting instructional materials as well as procedures for how an in-person review of lesson materials may be requested, be “prominently displayed” on school websites.

Iredell County Republican Representative Jeffrey McNeely gave the bill two enthusiastic thumbs up, pointing to my teaching as an example of the hidden indoctrination that will be exposed if the bill is passed into law

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan's 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World, is prescient in its description of the world 26 years into its future -- superstition, lack of critical thinking, the inability to question, the inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood...

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

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