Banning Books: Most Americans Say NO!

It may not be obvious to some but I am a big fan of books (my most recent book review) and I am really not a big fan of banning books (here, here, and here). It is for these reasons I like to stay up on how people view the banning of books from public libraries. That is why I was glad to see this poll by Harris today that says most Americans do not support the banning of books in any way.

Banning or censoring books has been debated for years. A new Harris Poll shows, however, that a majority of Americans think no books should be banned completely (56%) while fewer than one in five say there are books which should be banned (18%); a quarter are not at all sure (26%). The older and less educated people are, the more likely they are to say that there are some books which should be banned completely. Opinions on banning books are linked to political philosophy: almost three quarters of Liberals (73%) say no books should be banned, compared to six in ten Moderates (60%) but only two in five Conservatives (41%) who say no books should be banned.

This is a really positive trend in my opinion. I don't feel that we should be banning access to any books from our children or even other adults our ability to access and share facts and opinions is what allows us to understand each other and our pasts. The most interesting trend is the way people view religious and, in the case of evolution, science works.

While few Americans think that there are books which should be banned completely, opinions differ on books that should be available to children in school libraries. Strong majorities say that children should be able to get The Holy Bible (83%) and books that discuss evolution (76%) from school libraries. Majorities also say so for other religious texts such as the Torah or Talmud (59%) and the Koran (57%), but approximately a quarter say these texts should not be available (24% and 28%, respectively) to children in school libraries.

A lot of this deals with people wanting their own specific religion to be viewed but not others but I was surprised that fewer people feel evolution books should be banned than feel the Torah should be. Look if you are going to have religious texts you should probably have them all so the state schools do not appear to be supporting one religion over another. Another thing is all of these books have had major influences on western civilization, both good and bad, and they should be available for students to understand why people who believe a certain thing believe it.

I was happy to see that only 16% of the people surveyed thought we should be banning books that discuss evolution. I don't know enough about the people to say for sure why they thought that way but at the very least it looks positive and looks like we are headed in the right direction and even if they feel that way for the wrong reasons at least getting students hands on real science could potentially lead to a better understanding of the science by the general public. Anyway let me end on one final note.

Banning books is bad, mkay! (it has been in my head since I started sorry)

Creationism and Evolution in Public Schools

The Secular Student Society at Texas Tech (yes the website is out of date come on now guys) [prior post about them] is hosting an event that has been the focus of many posts on this blog, Creationism and Evolution in Public Schools. This event will be a talk by Dr. Michael Dini a professor of Biology, more specifically Biology Education, at Texas Tech University and will start on Monday April 11 at 8:00 pm in Holden Hall Room 150. This should be an interesting event because Texas has in the past been openly hostile to evolution and Lubbock is one of the more conservative cities in the country. I will be there and if this is a topic that interests you at all you should be there as well you are more than welcome.

THE END OF ACSI V. STEARNS

So I was catching up on some of my unread e-mails and while reading the NCSE's weekly e-mail, from 2 weeks ago, keeping up to date on the Creation vs Evolution debate (sign up here) and came across the article with the same title as mine. For those of you who don't know what this case is about here is an update (from the NCSE's webpage on the case).

On August 25, 2005, the Association of Christian Schools International, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California, and six students at the school filed a lawsuit against the University of California. The plaintiffs objected to the UC policy of rejecting certain high school biology classes from Christian schools as "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community;" they claimed that this policy violated applicants' rights to "freedom of speech, freedom from viewpoint discrimination, freedom of religion and association, freedom from arbitrary discretion, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from hostility toward religion."

On August 8, 2006, Judge S. James Otero dismissed the claims against individual UC officials, but allowed the claims against the university system as a whole to proceed. On March 28, 2008, Judge Otero ruled in favor of UC's motion for partial summary judgment, which established that the university system's admissions policies were constitutional; on August 8 of that year, he further ruled that these policies were properly and constitutionally applied in the case of the applicants in question.

The Supreme Court is not going to hear the case (see their order here) so that means that the case will stand as it was last called. This is a victory for science education and should make it harder for creationists to be able to insist that their science education is the same as true science education.

And so it continues

So PZ kind of mentions this article briefly in one of his posts today, and that story is crazy in itself, but I figured I would say something quickly about it especially after having blogged about this very issue a couple of days ago.

So what else is there to say about this article? Well it shows what banning books can do to you. You start with just books then you get to authors then you finally mess up ban the wrong author and you say whoops but don't do anything about it. So why did they ban this author's children books?

In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

Ok so you banned him because of an misunderstanding...Whoops! But wait why should we ban books that are, "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system?" Shouldn't these be the types of books that we encourage students to read? Why shouldn't we know what communism was actually about or why not consult a first hand source to see how Hitler rose to power? I am not arguing that these are good ideas just that the best way to prevent things like them from happening again you have to be able to understand what they were trying to do. Although this does mean that you will have to think critically and we all know how you feel about that don't we David Bradley...I think it was something like, "This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook," yeah that's it. But wait it gets better:

Hardy said she was trusting the research of another board member, Terri Leo, R-Spring, when she made her motion and comments about Martin's writing. Leo had sent her an e-mail alerting her to Bill Martin Jr.'s listing on the Borders .com Web site as the author of Ethical Marxism. Leo's note also said she hadn't read the book.

"She said that that was what he wrote, and I said: ' ... It's a good enough reason for me to get rid of someone,' " said Hardy, who has complained vehemently about the volume of names being added to the curriculum standards.

Neither one has read the book how do you know what it says. Leo later in the article says that she didn't recommend there be a motion put forth it was more of a oh here is something interesting e-mail. So now the author of children's stories was placed on the banned authors list.

There is something called common sense use it. You should not be putting a book with explicit sexual reference in an elementary library. But why shouldn't a similar type of book be in a high school library? I mean by the time most children get to high school they know about safe sex etc...wait no this is Texas we teach abstinence only. The Texas Board of Education is not only making the state of Texas fall behind in education but they are dragging the rest of the country down with them. None of you are experts in any of these subjects, most of you are from the far religious right, listen to the experts they know what they are talking about and yes I know this goes against the "American way" of questioning authority but what you are doing is rejecting facts in place of your personal religious beliefs. If you are a voter in the state of Texas make sure that when you get the chance vote for people who use logic and reason, this includes the governor's race this spring and fall make sure you know how they feel on supporting science and reason.

Update: Sorry apparently I forgot to spell check when I published this earlier

Textbooks and politics

I am a Yankee through and through it makes it a little weird at times living in West Texas, to be honest I feel really out of place a lot of times. But if many of those living here in Texas had it their way they would control everything. The main people doing this are very much the religious right. What may come as a supprise to many is how much control Texas has over the textbooks that students around the country use. This is because when their standards are written the state itself chooses the books. Texas is the 2nd most populated state in U.S. and with all of the schools using the same books this is a huge number of books. This means that many publishers write their books to the Texas state standards and don't rewrite them for another state or school district. With this background information I figured I would pass along this article I came upon a couple of days ago showing the history of the far right's take over of textbook standards here in Texas that have been causing a stir amongst educators from over the entire U.S. This is an interesting read and shows why so many of those in higher education here in Texas are so vocal about going against what the board says. Things like this in particular:

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.

It is things like this along with the state standards for science and the potential ones for history that only show the US as being right in all of their decisions and founded as a christian country. Both of these are wrong ideas. The U.S. has made mistakes in foreign policy along with domestic policy. Showing these wrongs and teaching why they are wrong is what makes us a better country and better people in general. And there have been enough people that have pointed out why we are not a Christian country that I don't feel I even need to address the idea of seperation of church and state.

Anyway I def suggest that you check out the article it is important that we all know what we are up against both here in Texas and throughout the rest of the country.

Why argue against people who believe the earth is 6000 years old?

So people might be wondering why do I care about informing people what the science actually says. Well today I was clicking through xkcd and came across this:



Yeah the fact that anyone can become a member of our representative democracy and/or they vote is pretty much the main reason.

And it gets worse

So I know it has been a few days since my last post life has once again gotten in the way. So we all know about Louisiana's decision to allow the use of creationist material in the classroom passed their state school board earlier this year. Well a couple of weeks ago it got even worse.

http://lasciencecoalition.org/docs/LCFS_release_BESE_complaint_policy_9.28.09.pdf

That's right while they still will allow the Department of Education to review the material the local school boards do not have to listen to them should they disagree. Well considering they will probably be the ones to put the material in the classroom in the first place why should they care what that the state's experts say?

The state of science education in the state of Louisiana is down right horrible right now. And unfortunately unlike the people of Kansas who when they saw the problem elected their school board members out of office the next year I do not feel that this has been publicised enough for it to matter to most people in the State of Louisiana. This is a state that needs science and needs to listen to scientists more and they continue to ignore them. In my opinion the boycott by science organizations not coming to Louisiana is not enough people need to spread to word to others in the state and get the BESE board removed next election cycle. The only other way that I feel this will get changed is through a lawsuit. It worked in Dover and would set a clear precedent that this is the exact same thing.

[I apologize for my grammar to anyone with a respect to the English language out there I was having trouble putting my emotions into words]

This may be a bit excessive

So a few months ago I read a story about 2 school administrators getting in trouble for saying prayer at a school event and today there was a follow-up released on CNN.com saying that these two men might actually get sentenced to jail for this. Story can be found here.

So it turns out that not only is it illegal to say a prayer in public schools because it violates that whole separation of church and state thing but there is also this:

Both parties approved the consent decree put in place January 9 under which district and school officials are 'permanently prohibited from promoting, advancing, endorsing, participating in or causing prayers during or in conjunction with school events,' the ACLU said.

Lay was a party in the initial lawsuit, and his attorney was among those approving the consent decree, according to the organization. In addition, the court required that all district employees receive a copy.

Whoops I guess they forgot about that consent decree when they did this:

But on January 28, 'Lay asked Freeman to offer a prayer of blessing during a school-day luncheon for the dedication of a new field house at Pace High School,' according to court documents.

'Freeman complied with the request and offered the prayer at the event. It appears this was a school-sponsored event attended by students, faculty and community members.'

Now you ask my friends and I can assure you they will tell you I have a bad memory but it really did seem like this consent decree was shoved down their throats.

Their attorney seems to think that just because the audience was adults it was OK to do this:

Attorneys from Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal group helping defend Lay and Freeman, have said that attendees included booster club members and other adults who helped the field house project -- all 'consenting adults.'

Well sure they were but that doesn't mean that they wanted to have your religion forced on them. What if some of the parents were atheists or even Hindus, or any of the many other possible religions?

Look I am OK if you want to pray to yourself before, during, or after a public event but it cannot be sponsored by people who work for the state at a state run institution during a state run event.

Now you might be wondering why I titled this what I did. Well as much as I am for separation of church and state as the next guy I feel that putting them in jail for it would be a little too strong. Now I know what they would be put in jail for is actually not saying the prayer but is actually for contempt. But this is probably their first time in trouble with the law, they have already lost their jobs, I am assuming, and will probably have a hard time finding another teaching job again after this the least that the state could do is end it there. It would, however, be interesting to see how the prison population would react to these two men being put in jail that when asked what for they say, "We said a prayer."

Creationist Materials

Now I know most of the rest of the country isn't having the same problems as Louisiana but I figured I would pass this along since I have a feeling these creationists will try to get these into other school classrooms around the US. So for your reading enjoyment: http://lasciencecoalition.org/2009/07/26/louisiana-stealth-creationist-materials/#more-1504

Your WTF moment for today

So I actually came across this last night while cruising conservapedia but I was tired and didn't feel like commenting on it this this morning:

The average public school student spends more than "104 hours and 24 minutes per month watching television." [18] While public school students are boosting the advertising revenue for The Daily Show, homeschoolers are learning!

OK so that might seem legit and all but I want you to go to the link don't worry I'll wait........
So you done? Alright did you what I am trying to point out? No where in the article did it say that home schooled teens are less likely to watch TV or do anything else. Yes that's right conservapedia drew their own conclusions, ones which could be completely right and ones which could be completely wrong. I don't know so I am not going to draw any but I just figured I would point this out so we could have a nice WTF moment.

Randomness

I know I haven't posted in a while but as I said earlier I would probably be busy over the next few weeks and I have. This time is actually rare for at least another week so don't expect the posts to be rolling out anytime soon but anyway onto the post. This post is going to be pretty random I came across some things on conservapedia I want to address but it should still be a pretty short post.

The first one is this:

Homeschooling has
increased 74% from 1999 and 36% from 2003, according to a report recently
released by the U.S. Department of Education last month. Reasons cited include
"to provide religious or moral instruction" (36%), "concern about school
environment" (21%), and "dissatisfaction with academic instruction" (17%).

I do not like that people are shying away from schooling in general but I will agree there are areas in this country that need a serious overhaul in the education systme so that is a good enough reason to pull people out. I really don't have any problem with people being homeschooled for the most part but it was with the first reason that most people are homescooled, "to provide religious or moral instruction." While I have no problem with people believing in God it needs to be a clear destinction between what is faith and what is actually known and trying to teach both religion and science/history at home blurs the line but I guess that is why people do that because they don't think that science is right. The article they are talking about is: http://www.hslda.org/docs/link.asp?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ledger-enquirer.com%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F742241.html&

Next:

Another tragedy from unattended video game playing as a
11-year-old Mississippi boy accidentally
killed his 9-year-old brother with a shotgun blast Tuesday as the two
struggled over the gun after arguing about a video game, authorities said. "The
younger brother allegedly got mad because he got beat at some video games and
got the gun," Marshall County Sheriff Kenny Dickerson said. [28]

No this is not a tragedy from unattedned video game playing it is a tragedy caused by piss poor parenting. I have no people owning guns but if you are you need to teach your kids what they are used for and you also need to make sure that they are scured exceptionally well especially if you have children.

And finally:

The killer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,
James von Brunn, was a white supremacist and also an evolutionary racist. James von
Brunn wrote that "Only the strong survive. Cross breeding whites with species on
the evolutionary scale diminishes the white gene-pool while increasing the
number of physiologically, psychologically, and behaviorally deprived
mongrels."[15] The evolutionist Charles Darwin was also an evolutionary racist. The shooter, James von Brunn, also
appears to have had close ties to neo-Nazis and his ex-wife said his
anti-semitism and racist hate "ate him alive like a cancer". [16][17] Adolf Hitler was also a
rabid evolutionary racist.[18][19]

This, the shooting, is a tragedy but what they are trying to do here is just sick. Racists use evolution to suit their views the same way that conservapedia is using this shooting to suit their's. Evolution does not support killing those of other "races" from your own. As a scientific theory evolution only states that this is what happens in nature what we do to ourselves is not what nature is doing to us. Nature did not act upon that gun a crazy person did that is what it comes down to. I am sure that this guy "believed" in gravity as well so should we say that all people who believe in gravity are racist? All of these arguments have been addressed much better than I can do it and will be many more times but I just wanted to point out what was going on.

As always leave any feedback you want.