A bunch of interesting entries in this week’s Carnival.
Enjoy.
New Carnival of Education is up.
A bunch of interesting entries in this week’s Carnival.
Enjoy.
A View From the Schoolhouse
In a story you’ve probably already heard about, The voters in Dover, PA sent a message yesterday by voting out their entire school board in favor of a pro-evolution slate. From the article:
The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.
"I think voters were tired of the trial, they were tired of intelligent design, they were tired of everything that this school board brought about," said Bernadette Reinking, who was among the winners.
The election will not alter the facts on which the judge must decide the case. But if the intelligent design policy is defeated in court, the new school board could refuse to pursue an appeal. It could also withdraw the policy, a step that many challengers said they intended to take.
"We are all for it being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class," said Judy McIlvaine, a member of the winning slate. "It is not a science."
I don’t have much to add, except this. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian Right gained their initial political power by running in school board elections all over this country. School board elections tend to be off-year elections where voter turnout is very low, so their candidates were able to win with little to no opposition, sometimes winning with less than 10% of the eligible vote. If people don’t want to see the Intelligent Design debate continue, then they need to vote more often than once every four years. Even the off-year elections count… sometimes more than we realize.
This coming Friday, we are having our first quasi-official curriculum summit. We’re bringing ten people together to talk about what we want to do with our science curriculum at SLA. The people range from old Beacon colleagues to Franklin Institute science educators to someone from the Philadelphia Writing Project to a district person or two to our consultant on the project and, well, me. With the possible exception of yours truly, it’s a powerhouse group of people, and for many of the people at the table, this is a continuation of a running ten-year conversation about education that I’ve been having with them.
I’m finding it frustrating to figure out what I want all these really brilliant people to do when they are all in the same room. I’ve got some general ground-rules. One, I want us to more completely define our science capstone idea, and two, I want to have the debate over scope and sequence of our course offerings. Lofty goals, indeed. I’m just not exactly sure a) how to best structure the afternoon to really get to those ideas, and b) what should our work product look like. To the second point, I know what I would like to walk out with… a more firmly concrete document detailing the science capstone course, including skills needed by the kids, structure of the final product and structure of the course process… and a scope and sequence to our science curriculum where we can map both content and skills onto those classes. Now, how to best use the brainpower of these ten people to get there… there’s the rub.
The attendees will be getting a document via email tomorrow (today) that includes a short write up about Understanding By Design, a PDF of the National Science Education Standards, and a link to Reid Schwebach’s Science Seminar Pages as background documents. With that as a shared base for comparison, I think we’ll be able to do good work, if I can come up with the structure that makes sense.
What follows are the brainstorming questions/goals that I want to weave into the day. As always, I welcome any thoughts people might have:
What do I want to come of Fridays summit?
Hey, no one will ever accuse us of not being ambitious.