{"id":1489,"date":"2015-07-10T23:49:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T04:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2015-07-10T23:49:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T04:49:14","slug":"the-source-of-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/07\/10\/the-source-of-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"The Source of Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent tussle over the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the meaning of that tragic era, as noted by Virally Suppressed @ The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, reminds me of a greater, ongoing conundrum in American education.\u00a0 First, a couple of definitions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Information<\/em> will be defined as logical assertions<\/em> divorced from their true or false value;<\/li>\n
  2. True and false values are determined by the best understanding of reality.\u00a0 (Note that given the connections of government to public schools, and the ban on the favoring of one religion over another in the US Constitution, it would be disingenuous to claim that any given religious text has priority in the understanding of reality.\u00a0 Science has, as its primary mission, the study of reality; given its many successes, and in accordance with American meritocracy, it is accorded the priority for understanding reality.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These let us admit that textbooks are full of information without implicitly endorsing the individual components of that information as being true or false.<\/p>\n

    So the conundrum is simply this: who gets to fill these textbooks with information?\u00a0 How can we certain that the textbooks contain true<\/em> information?\u00a0 American primary education is typically controlled by local school boards, which are responsible for the selection of the textbooks to be used in the classes.\u00a0 They may also be responsible for meeting standards set by the State and, in some cases, standards set by the court system following lawsuits by various agencies and individuals.<\/p>\n

    At this juncture, it’s useful to remind the reader that the system of creating textbooks is hardly cost-free, neither in terms of intellectual effort, or creation of the tangible product; creation must be followed by a cross-check, and in cases where information is not, or cannot be, rigorously presented and analyzed, opinions will inevitably intrude into the process.\u00a0 The fact of cost skews any “market” that may exist, as does the question of how true any given textbook might be, possible discount deals offered by publishers, and other rigors of the marketplace.<\/p>\n

    Thus, these textbooks are actually supplied by a limited number of publishers.\u00a0 Decades ago, I recall reading reports concerning the attempted capture of textbook publishers in Texas, the leader by virtue of the size of the state market, by anti-evolutionary theory forces, and the conflict apparently continues, as a 2003 report from the National Center for Science Education<\/cite><\/strong> indicates.\u00a0 Entitled “Evolution: Still Deep in the Heart of Textbooks<\/em><\/a>,” it notes,<\/p>\n

    As the adoption process for biology textbooks began in early 2003, the ranks of those vocally opposed to evolution education swelled. For decades, Mel and Norma Gabler\u2019s Educational Research Analysts \u2014 \u201ca conservative Christian organization that reviews public school textbooks submitted for adoption in Texas\u201d which places \u201cscientific flaws in arguments for evolution\u201d at the top of its list of concerns (http:\/\/members.aol.com\/TxtbkRevws\/about.htm<\/a>) \u2014 has urged the Texas Board of Education to minimize evolution and even to include creationism in the textbooks adopted for use in the state (see, for example, RNCSE<\/cite> 1999 Jan\/Feb; 19 [1]: 10). In 2003, the Gablers were joined by a host of homegrown creationists as well as by the Discovery Institute, the institutional home of \u201cintelligent design\u201d, in seeking to undermine the treatment of evolution in the biology textbooks under consideration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    While evolutionary theory faces no serious disputes within the scientific community, it clearly has its opponents external to the community, and they are not shy in attempting to capture the publishing step of education.\u00a0 Problems of this sort are not limited to inconvenient science, either.\u00a0 In the somewhat less rigorous area of history, an article from The Washington Post<\/strong><\/em>, entitled “Americans believe false things about the Civil War because even our textbooks bow to the apologists<\/a>,” covers the problem of the Civil War:<\/p>\n

    So thoroughly did this mythology take hold that our textbooks still stand history on its head and say secession was for, rather than against, states\u2019 rights. Publishers mystify secession because they don\u2019t want to offend Southern school districts and thereby lose sales. Consider this passage from \u201cThe American Journey<\/a>,\u201d probably the largest textbook ever foisted on middle school students and perhaps the best-selling U.S. history textbook:<\/p>\n

    The South Secedes<\/p>\n

    Lincoln and the Republicans had promised not to disturb slavery where it already existed. Nevertheless, many people in the South mistrusted the party, fearing that the Republican government would not protect Southern rights and liberties. On December 20, 1860, the South\u2019s long-standing threat to leave the Union became a reality when South Carolina held a special convention and voted to secede.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The section reads as if slavery was not the reason for secession. Instead, the rationale is completely vague: White Southerners feared for their \u201crights and liberties.\u201d On the next page, the authors are more precise: White Southerners claimed that since \u201cthe national government\u201d had been derelict \u201d \u2014 by refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and by denying the Southern states equal rights in the territories \u2014 the states were justified in leaving the Union.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The article points out the seceding states each declared their motivation for leaving the Union was to preserve slavery, but the history books obscure this fact with, instead, concerns about state rights.<\/p>\n

    Given the costs of producing textbooks, and the limited offerings necessarily available, how do we ensure true, full facts<\/em> are contained in these books?<\/p>\n

    Some might advocate a governmental approach, i.e., all facts in this textbook are government-approved<\/em>.\u00a0 This almost makes sense for primary schools, as nearly all information in such schools should be of a basic nature, and not controversial – which is not to say they are all, in actuality, true<\/em>, but they are generally accepted as true.\u00a0 The nature of the human condition requires all knowledge to be contingent, and we should be aware of this.<\/p>\n

    However, by assigning to a political institution this decision, the entire question of what belongs in textbooks, and what are true facts, becomes an exercise in politics.\u00a0 For even the most casual observer of the American political process at the State and Federal levels, we know that will result in the committees in charge becoming coveted positions, subject to the most violent of political passions and conflicts.\u00a0 If the questions is assigned to a bureaucracy, then either decisions will happen at the speed of a glacier, or just a few individuals will become responsible, and the possibility they will be untrained in the specialties in question, or maintain positions outside the mainstream with regard to those subjects, will be substantially non-zero.<\/p>\n

    Texas uses a State Board of Education, as explained<\/a> by the New York Review of Books:<\/p>\n

    … and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The vulnerability of this system to manipulation by individuals holding opinions at wide variance with the current perceptions of reality should be obvious.\u00a0 As Texas and Texas publishers have undue influence over the industry of educational materials, they are certainly the most important of all States in their manner of selecting textbooks.\u00a0 The article goes on to cover the many eccentricities involved in this most important of processes.<\/p>\n

    Do I cover all important issues here?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Open Source textbooks may be the answer – or they may become part of the problem.\u00a0 Here is a link<\/a> to a Utah project, which is interesting but dismaying in that it compares test score results of kids using open source vs kids using traditional textbooks; I should prefer an analysis of the content of the books and how relevant scholars evaluate the books.<\/p>\n

    To my engineering mind, there does not appear to be that useful solution which we can implement and forget, just continual battle with those who so violently disagree with established knowledge models that they will do anything to interject their views into the mainstream.\u00a0 I hope someone smarter than I comes along with a better solution.<\/p>\n

    (h\/t Hunter @<\/a> The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The recent tussle over the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the meaning of that tragic era, as noted by Virally Suppressed @ The Daily Kos, reminds me of a greater, ongoing conundrum in American education.\u00a0 First, a couple of definitions: Information will be defined as logical assertions divorced from their \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}