NEWSCURRICULA & METHODS

In response to pressure from parents, educators and grassroots advocates, Scholastic Inc. will drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce classroom material, the company announced last week.

The publisher had been under fire since May, when it was forced to stop distributing a fourth-grade curriculum called “The United States of Energy” that had been paid for by the coal industry and distributed to classrooms across the country. Boston nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood had called on Scholastic to drop the curriculum, and after achieving success, expanded its campaign -- in concert with online social action platform Change.org -- to lobby for sweeping reforms to Scholastic’s controversial “InSchool Marketing” division.

Louisiana high school student Zack Kopplin has one goal: to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. Quite the opposite of its name, the bill, passed in 2008, gives public school teachers the ability to teach creationism in their science classes.

Even beyond issues of separation of church and state, Kopplin, a senior, understands the practical impact of the bill on his fellow students.

"When Louisiana students apply to college, people won't know if that student was taught creationism in their science classes," says Kopplin. "Maybe they'll think they don't have the science background to get into college."

Today, Kopplin and his supporters will march on the state capitol in Baton Rouge, demanding that the law be repealed and that accurate, research-based science education be the only curriculum taught in Louisiana classrooms. He's enlisted the help of state senator Karen Carter Peterson, and started a petition on Change.org to rally Louisiana supporters.

Lost in the debate about education reform is the undeniable fact that the public education system in the United States is one of the most violent in the world.

Despite overblown media reports about school shootings and daily exaggerations about youth crime, it is not the students who are perpetrating the majority of this violence. We’re talking about violence initiated by the teachers and administrators that we trust to safeguard our children’s education. Teaching is one of the most admirable professions -- which is why it’s a shame that this profession is muddied by one of America’s darker and more insidious legal practices – corporal punishment.

Of the 20 states that legally employ corporal punishment, Texas hits the most students every year -- nearly 50,000 during the 2005-2006 school year, according to the latest available statistics. In fact, administrators and teachers in Texas legally hit more students every year than the rest of Europe combined. That could change, though, if a bill to end corporal punishment at Texas schools passes this year.

Last month, we wrote that anti-evolution publisher Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) was trying to slip creationist rhetoric into Texas school text books, pushing forward "intelligent design" as a scientific theory.

But thanks to activism by the Texas Freedom Network, FTE has announced it's pulling back from efforts to get its creationist text books into the hands of Texas school children. By sending e-mails to the state's school board, Change.org members joined the TFN in demanding quality science education materials for Texas schoolchildren.

In 2005, a federal judge ruled that FTE's "intelligent design" science textbook Of Pandas And People could not be taught in public schools because it violated the Constitution. But in 2009, the Texas state school board put forward creationist-friendly science standards, giving FTE another chance to put forth their religious educational materials. Texas Freedom Network says FTE's decision to withdraw their curriculum materials "is very good news for supporters of sound science education and students in Texas public schools," and "a huge disappointment for evolution deniers."

Update as of Feb. 4, 2011: Success! Thanks to activism by the Texas Freedom Network, FTE has announced it's pulling back from efforts to get its creationist text books into the hands of Texas school children. Read more here.

Could rogue pandas be targeting Texas science education textbooks?

It sure looks that way, with the Texas Freedom Network reporting that the anti-evolution publisher Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) will be submitting their own special brand of curriculum material to the Texas State Board of Education later this year.

FTE is best-known for their 'intelligent design' science textbook Of Pandas And People, which a federal judge ruled in 2005 could not be taught in public schools because it violated the Constitution. That landmark Dover, Pennsylvania case found that 'intelligent design' is a religious belief, not a scientific theory, and that the book's publishers had replaced the word 'creationism' with 'intelligent design' in an attempt to cover up their attempts at proselytizing.

“Getting their materials in public schools has long been a top priority for creationists, and it’s clear that they intend to make Texas their flagship. Teaching inaccurate information rejected by the scientific community would be a huge disservice to Texas kids and a major setback for science education everywhere,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group that tracks the religious right's activity in the state.

It's up to advocates, scientists, students and Change.org members to tell the board that Pandas - or anything like it - is unacceptable when it comes to teaching science in Texas. (Sign our petition here.)

If Mark Twain were alive today, he would likely tell Dr. Alan Gribben to back off his books.

Gribben, a Twain scholar working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish the latest edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is planning to release these editions with some notable changes: Twain’s use of the N-word will be changed to “slave,” the use of “injun” will be changed to “Indian,” and “half-breed” will be changed to “half-blood.”

In a recent NPR interview, Gribben argued that the repeated use of such offensive terms makes readers uncomfortable and, he says, deters potential readers from engaging with Twain’s books.

Gribben notes that the offensive language has caused Twain’s literature to be banned from most public education reading lists.

Now while Gribben certainly deserves credit for asking the right questions whereby precipitating a conversation that should have happened a long time ago, he has unfortunately come up with the wrong answer. He's overlooking (or perhaps dismissing) an important follow-up question: Why would readers be uncomfortable by such language?

This one's for you, Tyler Clementi. Bullying survivors, anti-bullying advocates and activists in New Jersey are celebrating today: Governor Chris Christie just signed the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights into law.

The law, which has been heralded by activists as the strongest anti-bullying law in the country, passed by a whopping 30 to 0 in the State Senate and 72 to 1 in the Assembly. It comes months after the tragic death of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi, a victim of anti-gay bullying who became the face of this symbolic bill.

"The legislation is the first in America to set firm statewide deadlines for incidents of bullying to be reported, investigated and resolved," New Jersey LGBT advocacy group Garden State Equality said today in a statement. The group tirelessly advocated for this law. Among the many voices calling for this new, stronger legislation were the 833 Change.org members who signed our petition to Gov. Christie, urging him to sign the bill.

Stuck at a school where she saw Latino students and teachers being treated like second-class citizens, Angelica Peñaran begged her mom to let her enroll at Tucson High School.

She'd heard about a class there on Latino literature, and a program where she'd learn about her own history from those who'd lived it. That Ethnic Studies program at Tucson High, she says, changed her life. "These classes do promote a sense of family," she said at a student panel on the program last month. "I consider my teachers like my tíos and tías." (Uncles and aunts.)

Peñaran, now a senior at Tucson High, plans to study history and anthropology at the University of Arizona. But while she's still a student, she's fighting, along with other organizers, teachers and Chicano leaders, to save Tucson's Mexican-American studies program. The program's currently being held hostage by the state's new Attorney General Tom Horne, who took office on Monday. He's given the district 60 days to dump the program, or lose millions in school funding.

As society has become more accepting of LGBT people, we've seen the number of positive gay role models flourish. Openly gay TV characters, talk show hosts, politicians, writers and celebrities are becoming more and more common. But some Californian LGBT advocates want to extend the reach of those positive role models even further - into the classroom. They've introduced legislation that would require California schools to teach about the history and contributions of LGBT people in society.

Why? Well, not only would the history of California in particular be rather incomplete without mention of the LGBT contributions, but positive LGBT role models in classroom materials go a long way towards reducing bullying in schools. In schools where the majority of students say they've learned about LGBT people in their curriculum, about 11 percent of students report being bullied. But in schools where students say they haven't been educated about the LGBT community, the rate of bullying is 24 percent, according to California's Preventing School Harassment Survey.

The legislation - the FAIR Education act - was introduced by state senator Mark Leno, with support from Equality California and the GSA Network. It already has more than a dozen co-sponsors. Leno says most California textbooks don't have any mention of the LGBT community.

"We can't simultaneously tell youth that it's OK to be yourself and live an honest, open life when we aren't even teaching students about historical LGBT figures or the LGBT equal rights movement," says Leno.

Seattle school board members unanimously agreed: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World would stay on their district's reading lists, despite protests from a parent that the book was culturally insensitive.

Lisa Sense-Wilson wanted the book banned because she said the book's depiction of "savages" upset her daughter and gave her classmates negative imagery about Native Americans.

"They left having an image of Indian people as being criminals," said Sense-Wilson. "That we're to be feared. That we're scary. That we hold these ceremonies that are animalistic and brutal and violent."

Huxley's Brave New World revolves around a futuristic "utopia" where a few of the characters take a vacation to a "savage reservation," to see people who resemble a Native American tribe that still does "beastly" things - mainly, read books and have families. Sense-Wilson said the students in her daughter's class weren't able to grasp the fact that the "savages" in Huxley's book are actually portrayed as heroes in a way - strange outcasts from a "perfect" society that has many disturbing problems.

Seattle school board members voted 7-0 to retain Brave New World, agreeing with Sense-Wilson that portraying Native Americans as savages is wrong, but that the problem was the way it was taught - not the book itself.

"I don't believe that censorship is the right answer," said Steve Sundquist, vice president of the school board. "If a teacher wants to teach this text, clearly I want it done in a culturally sensitive and appropriate way."