Citizens Committee Gearing Up Again
The MCPS Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development, which is evaluating the new Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum, and which I am a member of, last met in April. Four meetings were cancelled while the school district worked with their lawyers, and then they had not planned to meet during the summer, so nothing else has happened.
Yesterday the district sent out word that the committee will begin meeting again soon. No firm schedule has been set, but the next meeting will probably be at the end of August.
A note to the committee from MCPS said in part:
All-righty then, that's good news. They're still on schedule. I support their decision to work closely with their lawyers, to sew up any loopholes they might discover, and I'm really glad to hear that the time they took did not set the project back. We already know what some of the arguments are going to be, and it's lots better to shut 'em down before they get started.
There's a simple way for the school system to decide what to include. The rule is: respect and value education. Civilized countries have educational standards, and you can ascend through the system -- high school, Bachelors degree, Masters degree, Doctorate and attainment to the international community of scholars. These highly educated people, who have gone all the way to the end of the process, have both broader and deeper knowledge about their particular topic than the rest of us have. They know the theory, the methods, the history, the nuances of the debates, in a way that you don't just walk in off the street with. They have reached the ultimate of the educational process and now embody the best of human knowledge.
If you're deciding, use this simple rule: teach what educated people believe.
This seems like a no-brainer, dontcha think? Educators should respect and value education. When you've got two organizations, say one with about 1,000 members who can join for fifty dollars without meeting any standards (NARTH), and another with 150,000 members, almost all with doctorates and all held to the highest ethical and professional criteria (the American Psychological Association), and they both issue statements on a topic that you want to include in your curriculum -- please, listen to the educated group.
It's easy: just teach what educated people, experts in their field who know the research intimately, believe. It will give our students the best possible education, and it will stand up in court.
Yesterday the district sent out word that the committee will begin meeting again soon. No firm schedule has been set, but the next meeting will probably be at the end of August.
A note to the committee from MCPS said in part:
School system staff is on schedule to bring the initial recommendations on revised curriculum and materials to the committee in the last week of August in time for the first committee meeting. The first meeting would include the introduction of the committee's review of the revised Grade 10 condom usage curriculum and video, followed by the revised Grade 8 and Grade 10 curriculum and materials on sexual orientation in subsequent meetings.
All-righty then, that's good news. They're still on schedule. I support their decision to work closely with their lawyers, to sew up any loopholes they might discover, and I'm really glad to hear that the time they took did not set the project back. We already know what some of the arguments are going to be, and it's lots better to shut 'em down before they get started.
There's a simple way for the school system to decide what to include. The rule is: respect and value education. Civilized countries have educational standards, and you can ascend through the system -- high school, Bachelors degree, Masters degree, Doctorate and attainment to the international community of scholars. These highly educated people, who have gone all the way to the end of the process, have both broader and deeper knowledge about their particular topic than the rest of us have. They know the theory, the methods, the history, the nuances of the debates, in a way that you don't just walk in off the street with. They have reached the ultimate of the educational process and now embody the best of human knowledge.
If you're deciding, use this simple rule: teach what educated people believe.
This seems like a no-brainer, dontcha think? Educators should respect and value education. When you've got two organizations, say one with about 1,000 members who can join for fifty dollars without meeting any standards (NARTH), and another with 150,000 members, almost all with doctorates and all held to the highest ethical and professional criteria (the American Psychological Association), and they both issue statements on a topic that you want to include in your curriculum -- please, listen to the educated group.
It's easy: just teach what educated people, experts in their field who know the research intimately, believe. It will give our students the best possible education, and it will stand up in court.
posted by JimK at 9:01 AM
26 Comments:
"it will stand up in court."
HA ha haa! Ho HO! Hee Hee HEE! Oh, man, me eyes are watering after that one!
FYI, researchers Edward Wegman of George Mason University, David Scott of Rice University and Yasmin Said of Johns Hopkins University released a report today showing that the "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures in the second millenium AD, which is used by idiotic Al Gore in the movie, "Inconvenient Truth", to demonstrate that temperatures today are far above the norms, is a statistical sham. Actually, temperatures rose in the early millenium, fell mid-millenium and rose again late millenium but are nowhere near the heights of early 2nd millenium so we probably have some additional heating to endure in this natural, historical cycle. The automobile gained popularity in the mid twentieth century.
Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the "hockey stick" graph was ever done.
Hmmm...I wonder if a largely ineffective and unsuccessful field like psychology has it's own "insular coterie". It could explain why nothing seems to work in psychology, other than drugging patients into a stupor. Would explain some other things too.
Anon, I know Dr. Wegman, and have used his software for my own data analysis before. He specializes in analysis of high-dimensional spaces, and I have great respect for his work.
You however are trying to take some rightwing article about hockysticks, without having any idea what Wegman has done, and draw some kind of conclusion from it.
From what you say, he is drawing a conclusion from the clique pattern in a social network, showing probably that it doesn't fit the expected power law. That would be interesting in itself, but hardly proves anything. I have seen similar analyses that tried to draw donclusions, for instance from the fact that the sizes of Communist-era Russian cities do not fit the expected Zipf distribution. You wouldn't take those conclusions to the bank, let's say.
Science is dialectical. It works by a community dialog process and is not monolithic. For every theory there is another theory that tries to explain more of the variance in a more parsimonious way.
Simply put, this kind of comment, as if one paper by a statistics professor proves that Bush's war against the earth is justified, is disrespectful to the people who are trying to do a serious job of understanding the earth and its dynamical systems.
JimK
Well, his analysis of the global temperatures stands despite your opinion about his theory as to why others haven't criticized the faulty "hockey stick" analysis heretofore. If you know him, why don't you ask him to share a brief thought here on whether the media is accurately presenting his report?
"as if one paper by a statistics professor proves"
The "hockey stick" btw was from one paper from a researcher named Michael Mann in 1999. Everyone since simply repeats his data as fact.
It's similar to all the associations that say homosexuality is not a mental illness. None of them have done any seperate evaluation. They simply repeat the APA's unfounded conclusion.
Anon, even the article you quoted said he couldn't be reached.
As far as I can tell, this doesn't have anything to do with social network analysis, but with his interpretation of how principal components should be used. You probably already know some the issues having to do with correlated principal components and how to deal with them in factor analysis, rotating etc. ii it's a fundamental issue for the debate on the inheritance of IQ, as well. Not topic for the weak-hearted.
I found a very light treatment of a talk he gave on the topic, and that's about all, so we're not in a position to dicuss whether he's right or wrong. But the kind of topic is one that won't have a clear back-or-white answer, just like it hasn't in the debate over whether there's a general factor underlying intelligence. (I think Gould's Mismeasure of Man has the best discussion of this issue.)
The question is whether principal components are correlated, and that aint for you and me to answer.
As for your idiotic comments about people repeating the APA's conclusions, that might be true on the Internet, or among your group of friends. It is not true in the universities, and again, I resent your ignorant disrespect for learning.
JimK
"As for your idiotic comments about people repeating the APA's conclusions, that might be true on the Internet, or among your group of friends. It is not true in the universities, and again, I resent your ignorant disrespect for learning."
Actually, I was referring to all the other associations who've released these kind of idiotic politically motivated statements. The researchers at universities are always careful to be precise in their conclusions and so they don't make these outlanish assertions.
Anon ... who do you think belongs to the APA?
Nearly all the peer-reviewed journals in psychology are published by the APA. Their conference is the big research get-together. Nearly all of its members have doctorates, and a great number hold positions in the universities. That's what it is. That's why they're qualified to issue a position statement.
JimK
JIMK-said “It's easy: just teach what educated people, experts in their field who know the research intimately, believe.”
I think we tried that, and look what it got us.
Nott and Gliddon's Indigenous races of the earth (1857) used misleading imagery to suggest that "Negroes" ranked between whites and chimpanzees. Note the different angles at which the "white" and "negro" skulls are positioned.
Regular publications on race and other claimed differences between people of different geographical locations began at least as early as the 18th century. It was especially during the end of the 19th century, though, when publications specifically ranking different groups of people became extremely popular. Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855) was one of the milestones in the new racist discourse, along with Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology" and Herder, who applied "race" to nationalist theory to develop militant ethnic nationalism. They posited the historical existence of "national races" such as German and French, branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such as the "Aryan race", and believed political boundaries should mirror these supposed racial ones.
The famous German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer also possessed a distinctly hierarchical racial concept of history, attributing civilizational primacy, on naturalistic grounds, to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous North:
"The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmins, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization.” (Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Volume II, Section 92)
garbage in garbage out!
Cool thing, Anon, knowledge evolves. You're familiar with Popper's philosophy of science, right? The fact is, we're never certain that any belief is true, and it is always possible that a better belief will be found. There will always be unknowns, and as long as we retain our respect for education we will always be adding unknowns to the knowns.
Educated people hold the best beliefs existing in our society at any time. That's the reason for the institution, and it's the best and simplest guideline we have.
Trust me, an academic likes nothing better than to prove another academic wrong, so if there's a flaw in a theory or in some data analysis, some other scholar's gonna try to exploit it and get those publications and that grant money for himself!
JimK
Nuts
Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry on "scientific racism" that contains the caption and text Anon lifted without attribution to give us the comment above in case anyone's interested in what's happened in this area since the 19th century philosophers Anon mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
I'd suggest Anon find a better role model for writing than that leggy blond plagiarist.
Jim writes,
There's a simple way for the school system to decide what to include. The rule is: respect and value education.
Sounds good to me...
Civilized countries have educational standards, and you can ascend through the system -- high school, Bachelors degree, Masters degree, Doctorate and attainment to the international community of scholars.
I'll try to keep that in mind as I think about the word "civilized" and "Peter Singer" at the same time. Thanks.
Another thought...I remember reading in my alumni magazine that a former professor of mine had died (he was 45 years old). It caused me to recall one of the last conversations I had with him. I was in his office to ask a question, and with the question answered lingered to chat a little. After a while he stopped me to ask if I was going on to graduate school. I let out a polite, self-depracating laugh and indicated that I would not be going on to grad school (for a host of personal reasons). His reply to that was a comment that I will never forget, "oh, that is too bad; all of the people I know who did not go on to graduate school became dull and uninteresting people".
Wow.
Well, once I had recovered my senses from the chutzpah of such a comment, I made it clear that I had intellectual interests that I intended to pursue on my own, and without the tyranny of hundreds of pages to read, quizes, tests, exams and papers to write. You know, learning about something for the love of it alone.
Oh, and this was a professor that seem to think highly of Martin Heidegger...imagine that. Needless to say, I did what I needed to do to get the grade, but I never again considered anything he had to say with more than a literal grain of salt (and to think of it now, that would be generous!).
These highly educated people, who have gone all the way to the end of the process, have both broader and deeper knowledge about their particular topic than the rest of us have.
Wow, now this sounds (dare I say it?...ok, I will) worshipful in a way that borders on idolatrous. And while the higher one goes in academic ranking, the deeper the knowledge they attain, my understanding is that it is not broader but rather narrower.
They know the theory, the methods, the history, the nuances of the debates, in a way that you don't just walk in off the street with. They have reached the ultimate of the educational process and now embody the best of human knowledge.
The "best of human knowledge"? I have often told my two daughters that given only the choice of having them be "dumb as a rock" and good, OR have them turn out to be a "rocket scientist" and bad, I'd choose the former in a heartbeat. And personally, given the choice between knowledge OR wisdom, I'd choose the latter every time.
I am not automatically distrustful of those that are highly educated, I am simply realistic in my assumption that not all highly educated people are either wise, or good.
If you're deciding, use this simple rule: teach what educated people believe.
Did you actually use the word "believe"? Keep in mind that belief and knowledge are NOT the same thing.
Last weekend the Mrs. and I went to Denver for a night and a day of fun and frolic. Right before going to sleep, the Mrs. pulled out the Gideon Bible and read from the Book of Proverbs. What she read struck me as a particularly wise passage. I realize this will be a disappointment to many in this forum, but I would rather believe a bunch of Hebrew myths than to "know" what many intellectuals believe.
This seems like a no-brainer, dontcha think?
In a single word answer? Ok: no.
Educators should respect and value education. When you've got two organizations, say one with about 1,000 members who can join for fifty dollars without meeting any standards (NARTH), and another with 150,000 members, almost all with doctorates and all held to the highest ethical and professional criteria (the American Psychological Association), and they both issue statements on a topic that you want to include in your curriculum -- please, listen to the educated group.
Wow, that sounds like a classic
Argumentum ad numerum...yeah, even if there is evidence to suggest that a professional organization changed a finding in response to political pressure.
It's easy: just teach what educated people, experts in their field who know the research intimately, believe. It will give our students the best possible education, and it will stand up in court.
I know this will chap your bottom, but I do have a news flash: parents, as the taxpayers have the final say (not to mention that they are the parents, not the experts). Now parents would do well to consider carefully what educated people have learned, but they should not abdicate their role as parents to teach their children and to monitor closely what they are taught.
Orin, there is of course a distinction between belief and knowledge, which is intended in my comments. The raw knowledge that some scholars have is typically not of much use to anyone -- we want to be able to draw conclusions from that knowledge, maybe a recommendation or some guidelines for behavior. These experts have the knowledge and can provide those recommendations. We aren't strictly asking them for the quantititave results of a particular study, we want to know what it means.
As for your professor, I can only think he was talking about his own experience of people who stopped their education short. I have always been amazed by the intelligent and interesting people "out there" who have not had the education or the opportunities, the undeveloped raw talent that exists in America. Plenty of good brains, too bad we haven't figured out how to include more of them in the evolution of knowledge. (Maybe it's because we make it so dumb that they lose interest.)
And as for your "taxpayers have the final say," that statement probably does summarize the crux of the problem. We have people in our county who think of education as a commodity like any other. A school to them is like any business that provides a product to the consumer, and the measure of its success is something like customer satisfaction, it's like something you get to vote on. That is entirely the wrong model. A school that works that way ends up teaching the average of beliefs held by the community -- remember, people like to hear what they already know. This kind of student-as-consumer education would be the result if charter schools became the norm, and it is the goal of groups like the CRC. The fact is, there is knowledge that is beyond the community norm, on every subject. There are challenging questions, difficult, subtle facts, and complex, nuanced theories to fit them together; education should push people beyond what they know, not pander to them. You tailor the lesson to the age of the students, but you prepare them for the fine knowledge that awaits them if they choose to go on, you make it consistent with the best that exists. Values, sure, keep those in the family -- I get as irritated as anybody by the mamby-pamby platitudes my kids have brought home from their teachers. Of course, this would all be different if we paid teachers something, so we'd have better qualified people in the job ... but, another day for that.
We have a problem in our society with elites, we like to think everybody's the same. The fact is, Barry Bonds hits the ball farther and you or I can, Johnny Depp is better looking, and there are people in the universities who know a whole lot more about any topic than us.
JimK
Bill Gates and Stephen Spielberg never finished there undergraduate degrees Henry Ford did not go to college nor did Thomas Edison. I do not disrespect education or people who make it their life’s goal. But I think that. Often times in the academics arena you see profecers in a ring lips to buts whispering all great minds think alike. And that is the problem. Some profecers need to go out into the real world and expand their minds instead of living in their IV towers. And I don’t like the Idea of using school children for social experimentation.
Anon,
Would you mind using a spell-checker, please?
Anon, I sorta woulda figured you wouldn't be impressed by a bunch of IV profecers. But this is a pretty simple point. When you're selecting material for an educational course, and you have to choose between two approaches to a topic, a straightforward rule of thumb would be to choose what educated people choose.
If you were deciding how to fix your car, you'd ask a mechanic. When you're sick, you go to a doctor. When you're putting together an education, go to educated people.
We won't dwell on what it would be like if Henry Ford chose what was going to be taught in the schools.
JimK
Anonymous writes,
And I don’t like the Idea of using school children for social experimentation.
Defects in spelling notwithstanding, Anonymous has performed a service by summing up in a single sentence the downside to placing too much trust in "the experts". The other defect in this approach is that it fails to take into consideration that "experts" also have social and political prejudices.
Jim writes,
But this is a pretty simple point. When you're selecting material for an educational course, and you have to choose between two approaches to a topic, a straightforward rule of thumb would be to choose what educated people choose.
Wow, that almost sounds like a toothpaste commercial (you know, more dentists prefer X over Y toothpaste)...
So Jim, which expert do I "thank" for the "new math" I was taught in elementary school that left both my parents and I completely confused? Reminds me of the musical treatment that one time UC Santa Cruz math prof and comedic songwriter Tom Lehrer did on "new math",
Hooray for new math,
New-hoo-hoo-math,
It won't do you a bit of good to review math.
It's so simple,
So very simple,
That only a child can do it!
Oh, if it were only true...still, a funny song in retrospect. Still, my favorite Lehrer song remains, "So Long, Mom (A Song For World War III)" with the following chorus,
So long, mom,
I'm off to drop the bomb,
So don't wait up for me.
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter
You can see me
On your TV.
and that ends,
Remember, mommy,
I'm off to get a commie,
So send me a salami
And try to smile somehow.
I'll look for you when the war is over,
An hour and a half from now!
Please don't be surprised when not everyone bows down in worshipful reverence at the altar of the educated class. And no...this is not an ode or homage to ignorance (especially coming from someone that spends every spare moment possible learning more about the world around me), rather a clear eye about the limitations of knowledge (as well as the possibilities).
The anon discussing the Wegman research last commented on 5:35 Friday evening. After looking at this weekend's activity, it's hard to believe some of this weekend anon commenting wasn't actually created by TTFers. But anything's possible.
Orin
Since Americans consistently rank near the bottom in math performance among developed countries, that is an especially good example of why you don't want course content to be something the community votes on. Ordinary people think of math as something to figure out whether it's better to buy your beans three for a dollar or twenty-five cents a can. Real mathematicians understand math as a global system for reasoning about the world. You may think it's a waste of time to learn to reason about the world, but our failure to do so is an important reason that America is so quickly becoming irrelevant in the global areana.
JimK
JimK obviously you would go to an infecous disease specialist to learn about an infectious disease, instead of a eye doctor, with an identity disorder. And that’s what you should have done, and that’s what we did.
"You may think it's a waste of time to learn to reason about the world, but our failure to do so is an important reason that America is so quickly becoming irrelevant in the global areana."
Stupid comment. Firstly, Americans understand the world better than vice versa. Secondly, we are the largest funder of groups like IMF and World Bank, we hold veto power on the UN security council, we have the world's largest and most efficient economy, the world's most powerful military and on and on and on.
"Anon ... who do you think belongs to the APA?
Nearly all the peer-reviewed journals in psychology are published by the APA. Their conference is the big research get-together. Nearly all of its members have doctorates, and a great number hold positions in the universities. That's what it is. That's why they're qualified to issue a position statement."
Back to this. Jim is simply living in a dream world about these associations. Please remember that long ago on this blog we discovered that when APA made this statement, the majority of its members disagreed with it.
Any group with that many members will tend to develop polotical systems. It's inevitable and, honestly, it's no more likely that the best scientific minds hold power in these association than it is that the best legal mind in America runs the ABA.
Trends in thought gain a life of their own. Jim's idea that rival scientists will want to competitively scrutinize one another may have some applicability in non-controversial areas. But in certain areas, an almost religious orthodoxy forms where individuals become afraid to challenge the status quo. They fear being ostracized for breaking the faith.
It's easy: just teach what educated people, experts in their field who know the research intimately, believe. It will give our students the best possible education, and it will stand up in court.
Oh that makes sense. Have the 'majority eduational opinion' dictate what is 'best'. Right. That's why women were told in the 50s that formula was 'best'. And that phonics was bad, whole language was good (let's see -- that was in the 50s, 70s and 90s).
The problem is that the 'educated' keep changing their minds as to what is best... and in the case of "Family Life" the "family" either does not care or does not help in the process of educating a child about sex. Meanwhile, STDs are on the increase. So much for 'good' education...
Don't tell me what is best for my kid. Please let me decide that. And I won't tell you how to educate yours on matters of sexuality either.
Anon- Wyatt- are you also posting as the illiterate anon? Pretty funny, you insulting TTFers.
"Anon- Wyatt- are you also posting as the illiterate anon? Pretty funny, you insulting TTFers."
You seem to have other anons than the one you always call "Wyatt". I sometimes think it just the latest TTF game but I could be wrong.
I'm not pointing it out anymore. I'm just posting as H.A. now.
H.A.
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