Driving etiquette

Now that the summer driving season is upon us, and I am going to be on the highway today, here are some musings on driving.

Driving means never being able to say you’re sorry

We need a non-verbal sign for drivers to say “I’m sorry.” There have been times when I have inadvertently done something stupid or discourteous while driving, such as changing lanes without giving enough room and thus cutting someone off or accidentally blowing the horn or not stopping early enough at a stop sign or light and thus creating some doubt in the minds of other drivers as to whether I intended to stop. At such times, I have wanted to tell the other driver that I was sorry for unsettling them, but there is no universally recognized gesture to do so.
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Madman theory: Bush and god

Recently trial balloons have been floated by the administration that they are seeking to carry out an attack on Iran, even to the extent of using nuclear ‘bunker buster’ bombs. Seymour Hersh reports in The New Yorker that: “One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.”

This revelation naturally prompts the question “Are they insane?” And that prompts the further question “Does the administration want people to think that Bush is insane as a means of achieving some goals?” Now it is true that the Pentagon develops contingency plans for all kinds of bizarre scenarios (even involving invading Canada) but Hersh’s article seems to indicate that these contingency plans are operational which implies a greater likelihood of being actually implemented.

Faking insanity, or at least recklessness, to achieve certain ends has a long history, both in fact and fiction. Hamlet did it. President Nixon, frustrated by the indomitable attitude of the Vietnamese forces opposing the US tried the same tactic, hoping that it would cause the North Vietnamese to negotiate terms more palatable to the US because of fears that he would do something stupid and extreme, such as use a nuclear weapon. (See here for a review of the use of ‘madman theory’ to achieve political ends.) Nixon also liked to talk about his religion but in his case it was to refer to his own Quaker background, to exploit that religious groups’ reputation for strong ethical behavior, at a time when his own ethics were under severe scrutiny.

Bush does have one advantage over Nixon in making his madman theory more plausible in that he has put the word out earlier that god had chosen him to be president. In 2003, a news report says that “Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close friend who talks with Bush every day.” Bush’s claims to close links with god have been reported periodically.

More recently, it was revealed that god is so chummy with Bush that he even calls him by his first name. (I mean that god calls Bush by his first name, of course, not the other way around. Bush has probably given god a nickname like he gives everyone else.) During these chats god tells him what to do. In a BBC program, Nabil Shaath who met with Bush as part of a delegation is quoted as saying:

President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, “George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq. . .” And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.’

What are we to make of something that reads like Tuesdays with God? Those of us who are atheists would say that Bush is either lying about his tete-a-tetes with the almighty to pander to his extremist religious base or suffers from the same kind of delusions that cause some people to see the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast, neither of which is reassuring for those of us who seek a more down-to-earth basis for actions by political leaders, especially those who have the power to cause tremendous damage.

Of course, all of our actions are influenced by our beliefs and values, and for religious people their religious beliefs are bound to be influential in the principles that guide their decision making. That is not the question here. The question is whether even religious people are reassured when Bush says that he took some concrete action because god specifically directed him to do so.

Somehow, even if I were still religious, I would still be uneasy about political leaders claiming to be acting under direct instructions from god because we know that schizophrenics also sometimes think they hear such voices. People who claim to have their actions explicitly directed by god are usually considered to be delusional and at worst insane.

But I am curious as to what religious people think of Bush’s claims to have this kind of hotline to god. Are they pleased? Or, despite their own religious beliefs, are they uneasy? It would be interesting to survey religious people with this question: “If Bush says god told him to attack Iran, would that be sufficient justification for you to support such an action?”

The basic question for religious people, even if they do not think Bush is lying, is how they judge whether the voices Bush claims to hear are really from the deity or due to some chemical imbalance in his brain.

Dover’s dominoes-7: The Ohio domino falls

(This is the final installment of the series, which got pre-empted by more topical items. Sorry! See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6.)

The domino effect of the Dover verdict was seen soon after in Ohio where on February 14, 2006 the Ohio State Board of Education reversed itself and threw out the benchmarks in the state’s science standards that called for the critical analysis of evolution and the lessons plans that had been based on them. This happened even though the Ohio policy did not explicitly mention intelligent design. However, the move was clearly influenced by the ripples from the Dover trial and it is instructive to see why.

What Ohio had done in 2002 was to include a benchmark in its 9th grade biology standards in the section that dealt with biological evolution that said “Describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” They added additional language that said (in parentheses) “The intent of this benchmark does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design.”

The pro-IDC OBE members also inserted people into the lesson plan writing team who drafted a lesson plan called Critical Analysis of Evolution that essentially recycled IDC ideas, again without explicitly mentioning intelligent design.

But on February 14, 2006, the Ohio Board of Education voted 11-4 to reverse itself and eliminate both the benchmark and its associated lesson plan. Why did they do so since, as some pro-IDC people on the Board said, they should have nothing to fear from the Dover decision since they had carefully avoided requiring the teaching of IDC?

Again, Judge Jones’ ruling indicates why. In his ruling, he said that what determines whether a law passes constitutional muster is how an informed observer would interpret the law. He said (Kitzmiller, p. 15):

The test consists of the reviewing court determining what message a challenged governmental policy or enactment conveys to a reasonable, objective observer who knows the policy’s language, origins, and legislative history, as well as the history of the community and the broader social and historical context in which the policy arose.

In the case of challenges to evolutionary theory, he looked at precedent and especially (p. 48) at:

a factor that weighed heavily in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the balanced-treatment law in Edwards, specifically that “[o]ut of many possible science subjects taught in the public schools, the legislature chose to affect the teaching of the one scientific theory that historically has been opposed by certain religious sects.”

He went on (p. 57):

In singling out the one scientific theory that has historically been opposed by certain religious sects, the Board sent the message that it “believes there is some problem peculiar to evolution,” and “[i]n light of the historical opposition to evolution by Christian fundamentalists and creationists[,] . . . the informed, reasonable observer would infer the School Board’s problem with evolution to be that evolution does not acknowledge a creator.”

Notice that the standard used for judging is what an ‘informed, reasonable observer’ would infer from the action. IDC advocates tend to implement their strategy by carefully choosing words and sentences so that it meets the letter of the law and thus hope it will pass constitutional scrutiny. But what Judge Jones says is that it is not merely how the law is worded but also how a particular kind of observer, who is assumed to be much more knowledgeable about the issues than your average person in the street, would interpret the intent of the law:

The test consists of the reviewing court determining what message a challenged governmental policy or enactment conveys to a reasonable, objective observer who knows the policy’s language, origins, and legislative history, as well as the history of the community and the broader social and historical context in which the policy arose. (emphasis added)

And this is the most damaging part of the verdict to the ID case. Their strategy has always been to single out evolutionary theory in science for special scrutiny in order to undermine its credibility. They have never called for ‘teaching the controversy’ in all the other areas of science. Judge Jones said that since an ‘informed, reasonable observer’ would know that Christians have had long-standing objections to evolutionary theory on religious grounds, singling it out for special treatment is tantamount to endorsing a religious viewpoint.

In a further telling statement that has direct implications for the Discovery Institute’s ‘teach the controversy’ strategy, he said (p. 89):

ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM [Intelligent Design Movement] is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

There is no way to see the Dover ruling as anything but a devastating blow to the whole stealth strategy promoted by the Discovery Institute. After all, their strategy had precisely been to single out evolutionary theory for special treatment. They have resolutely opposed any attempt to call for ‘critical analysis’ and ‘teaching the controversy’ in all areas of science.

What will they do in response? It is hard to say. My guess is that they will put all their efforts into supporting the policy adopted by the Kansas school board, which was done according to their preferences, unlike the ham-handed efforts of the people of Dover, El Tejon, and Kirk Cameron’s friend and the banana. (I had not known who Kirk Cameron was before this. I have been informed that he used to be a TV sitcom actor before he saw the light.)

The next domino is the science standards adopted by Kansas’s Board of Education. I have not looked too closely at what the school board decided there, so will defer commenting on it until I do so. But it is likely to end up in the courts too.

POST SCRIPT: More on The Israel Lobby article

A few days ago, I wrote about the stir created by the Mearsheimer and Walt article on The Israel Lobby and the petition started by Juan Cole to defend them against charges of anti-Semitism.

In the May 15, 2006 issue of The Nation, Philip Weiss has a good analysis titled Ferment Over ‘The Israel Lobby’ on the personalities of the authors and the other people involved, what went on behind the scenes of the article prior to and after its publication, and why it had the effect it did.

Stephen Colbert crashes the party

Some of you may have heard of Stephen Colbert’s speech at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner on Saturday, April 29, 2006. This is the annual occasion where the President and other members of his administration and the journalists who cover them plus assorted celebrities get together for an evening of schmoozing, eating, and drinking.

(See here for a report on the dinner. You can see Colbert’s full speech here or here. Or, if you prefer, you can read the transcript.)
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About SAGES -3: The difficult task of changing education

It is a natural human trait to confuse ‘is’ with ‘ought,’ to think that what currently exists is also how things should be, especially with long-standing practices. The same is true with teaching methods. Once a way of teaching reaches a venerable stage, it is hard to conceive that things could be any different.

This post will be largely excerpts of an excellent article titled Making the Case by David A. Garvin from the September-October 2003, Volume 106, Number 1 issue of Harvard Magazine (p. 56), showing how hard it is to change the way we teach. It gives as an example the way that legal education changed to what it is today, what is now called the case method. Although this has become the ‘standard’ way law colleges operate, initial efforts to introduce this method faced enormous resistance from students and faculty and alumni. This is because all of us tend to be most comfortable with doing what we have always done and fear that change will be for the worse.

The article suggests that to succeed, the changes must be based on a deep understanding of education and require support and commitment over the long haul.

Christopher Columbus Langdell, the pioneer of the case method, attended Harvard Law School from 1851 to 1854 – twice the usual term of study. He spent his extra time as a research assistant and librarian, holed up in the school’s library reading legal decisions and developing an encyclopedic knowledge of court cases. Langdell’s career as a trial lawyer was undistinguished; his primary skill was researching and writing briefs. In 1870, Harvard president Charles William Eliot appointed Langdell, who had impressed him during a chance meeting when they were both students, as professor and then dean of the law school. Langdell immediately set about developing the case method.

At the time, law was taught by the Dwight Method, a combination of lecture, recitation, and drill named after a professor at Columbia. Students prepared for class by reading “treatises,” dense textbooks that interpreted the law and summarized the best thinking in the field. They were then tested – orally and in front of their peers – on their level of memorization and recall. Much of the real learning came later, during apprenticeships and on-the-job instruction.

Langdell’s approach was completely different. In his course on contracts, he insisted that students read only original sources – cases – and draw their own conclusions. To assist them, he assembled a set of cases and published them, with only a brief two-page introduction.

Langdell’s approach was much influenced by the then-prevailing inductive empiricism. He believed that lawyers, like scientists, worked with a deep understanding of a few core theories or principles; that understanding, in turn, was best developed via induction from a review of those appellate court decisions in which the principles first took tangible form. State laws might vary, but as long as lawyers understood the principles on which they were based, they should be able to practice anywhere. In Langdell’s words: “To have a mastery of these [principles or doctrines] as to be able to apply them with consistent facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skein of human affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer….”

This view of the law shifted the locus of learning from law offices to the library. Craft skills and hands-on experience were far less important than a mastery of principles – the basis for deep, theoretical understanding
. . .
This view of the law also required a new approach to pedagogy. Inducing general principles from a small selection of cases was a challenging task, and students were unlikely to succeed without help. To guide them, Langdell developed through trial and error what is now called the Socratic method: an interrogatory style in which instructors question students closely about the facts of the case, the points at issue, judicial reasoning, underlying doctrines and principles, and comparisons with other cases. Students prepare for class knowing that they will have to do more than simply parrot back material they have memorized from lectures or textbooks; they will have to present their own interpretations and analysis, and face detailed follow-up questions from the instructor.

Langdell’s innovations initially met with enormous resistance. Many students were outraged. During the first three years of his administration, as word spread of Harvard’s new approach to legal education, enrollment at the school dropped from 165 to 117 students, leading Boston University to start a law school of its own. Alumni were in open revolt.

With Eliot’s backing, Langdell endured, remaining dean until 1895. By that time, the case method was firmly established at Harvard and six other law schools. Only in the late 1890s and early 1900s, as Chicago, Columbia, Yale, and other elite law schools warmed to the case method – and as Louis Brandeis and other successful Langdell students began to speak glowingly of their law-school experiences – did it diffuse more widely. By 1920, the case method had become the dominant form of legal education. It remains so today.

What we see being tried in SAGES has interesting parallels with what Langdell was trying to achieve. The idea is for students, rather than being the recipients of the distilled wisdom of experts and teachers and told directly what they should know, to study something in depth and to inductively argue their way to an understanding of basic but general principles. The Socratic format of the instructor interrogating students is not used in SAGES, replaced by the somewhat more gentle method of having peer discussions mediated by the instructor.

Taking a long view of past educational changes enables us to keep a sense of proportion. The way we teach now may seem natural and even the only way but usually when we look back it was deliberately introduced, often over considerable opposition, because of some developments in understanding of the nature of learning. As time goes by and our understanding of the learning process changes and deepens, it is natural to re-examine the way we teach as well.

I believe that SAGES takes advantage of what we understand now to be important new insights into learning. But we need to give it a chance to take root. Abandoning it at the first sign of difficulty is absurd because all innovations invariably run into difficulty at the beginning as everyone struggles to adapt to the new ways.

POST SCRIPT: ‘Mission Accomplished’ by the numbers

As usual, I am tardy in my recognition of anniversaries. But here is a sobering reminder of what has transpired since the infamous photo-op three years ago yesterday on the aircraft carrier.

About SAGES -2: Implementation issues

When I talk about the SAGES program (see here for a description of the program and how it came about) to faculty at other universities they are impressed that Case put into place something so ambitious. They immediately see how the program addresses the very same problems that all universities face but few attempt to tackle as comprehensively as we have sought to do.

Of course, the very ambitiousness of the program meant that there would be challenges in implementation. Some of the challenges are institutional and resource-related. Creating more small classes meant requiring more faculty to teach them, more classrooms (especially those suitable for seminar-style interactions), more writing support, and so on. This necessarily imposed some strain on the system.
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About SAGES -1: The genesis of the program

As might be expected, some people at Case are all of atwitter about the snide op-ed in a newspaper supposedly called the New York Times by someone supposedly called Stephen Budiansky. (Note to novice writers hoping to develop their snide skills: Putting words like ‘supposedly’ in front of an easily discernible fact is a weak attempt at sarcasm, by insinuating that something is sneaky when no cause for suspicion exists. Like the way Budiansky says “SAGES (this supposedly stands for Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship)” when he has to know this for a fact since he says he has been reading the SAGES website.)

But my point here is not to point out the shallowness of Budiansky’s article and make fun of it, although it is a good example of the kind of writing that uses selective quotes and data to support a questionable thesis, and uses a snippy tone to hide its lack of meaningful content. My purpose here is to articulate why I think SAGES has been the best educational idea that I have been associated with in all my years in education in many different institutions. It is clear to me that many people, even those at Case, have not quite understood what went into it and why it is such an important innovation, and this essay seeks to explain it.

I have been involved with SAGES from its inception in the summer of 2002 when I was appointed to the task force by then College of Arts and Sciences Dean Sam Savin, to investigate how to improve the college’s general education requirements (GER). American colleges have these kinds of requirements in order to ensure that students have breadth of knowledge, outside their chosen majors. Case’s GER were fairly standard in that they required students to select a distribution of courses from a menu classified under different headings, such as Global and Cultural Diversity.

While better than nothing, the task force felt that these kinds of requirements did not have any cohesive rationale, and result in students just picking courses so that they can check off the appropriate boxes. The task force wondered how we could make the distribution requirements more meaningful and part of a coherent educational philosophy. In the process of studying this question, we learned of other problems that were long standing but just lurking beneath our consciousness. Almost all these problems are endemic to many universities, not just Case.

One of these was that students entering Case tended to come in with a sense of identity that was identified with a specific program rather that the school as a whole. They saw themselves primarily as engineering students or nursing students or arts students and so on, rather than as Case students. This fragmented identity was aided by the fact that in the first year they had no common experience that transcended these disciplinary boundaries. So we wondered what we could do to help create a sense of oneness among the student body, a sense of overall belonging.

Another problem we identified was that it was quite possible, even likely, for a first year student to spend the entire year in large lecture classes where they were largely passive recipients of lectures. This could result in students feeling quite anonymous and alone, and since this was also their first year away from home, it was not felt to be a good introduction to college life, let along for the emotional and intellectual health of the student. Furthermore, we know that first impressions can be very formative. When college students spend their first year passively listening in class, we feared that this might become their understanding of their role in the university, and that it would become harder to transform them into the active engagement mode that was necessary when they got into the smaller upper division classes in their majors.

Another problem was that students at Case did not seem to fully appreciate the knowledge creation role that is peculiar to the research function of universities. While they had chosen to attend a research university, many did not seem to know what exactly constituted research, how it was done, and its value.

Another thing that surprised us was when even some seniors told us that there was not a single faculty member they had encountered during their years at Case whom they felt that they knew well, in the sense that if they walked into that faculty member’s office that he or she would know the student’s name and something about them. We felt that this was a serious deficiency, because faculty-student interactions in and out of the class should play an important role in a student’s college experience. We felt that it was a serious indictment of the culture of the university that a student could spend four years here and not know even one faculty member well.

Another very serious problem that was identified was that many students were graduating with poor writing and presentation skills. The existing writing requirement was being met by a stand-alone English course that students took in their first year. Students in general (not just at Case) tend to dislike these stand-alone ‘skills’ courses and one can understand why. They are not related to any of the ‘academic’ courses and are thus considered inferior, merely an extra hoop to be jumped through. The writing exercises are necessarily de-contextualized since they are not organically related to any course of study. Students tend to treat such courses as irritants, which makes the teaching of such courses unpleasant as well. But what was worse was that it is clear that a one-shot writing course cannot produce the kinds of improvement in writing skills that are desired.

Furthermore, some tentative internal research seemed to suggest that the one quality that universities seek above all to develop in their students, the level of ‘critical thinking’ (however that vague term is defined), was not only not being enhanced by the four years spent here, there were alarming hints that it was actually decreasing.

And finally the quality of first year advising that the students received was highly variable. While some advisors were conscientious about their role and tried hard to get to know their students, others hardly ever met them, except for the minute or two it took to sign their course registration slips. Even the conscientious advisors found it hard to get to know students on the basis of a very few brief meetings. This was unsatisfactory because in addition to helping students select courses, the advisor is also the first mentor a student has and should be able to help the student navigate through the university and develop a broader and deeper perspective on education and learning and life. This was unlikely to happen unless the student and advisor got to know each other better.

Out of all these concerns, SAGES was born, and it sought to address all these concerns, by providing a comprehensive and cohesive framework that, one way or another, addressed all the above issues.

The task force decided on a small-class seminar format early on because we saw that this would enable students to engage more, speak and write more, get more feedback from the instructor and fellow students, and thus develop crucially important speaking, writing and critical thinking skills.

Since good writing develops only with a lot of practice of writing and revising, we decided that one writing-intensive seminar was not enough. Furthermore, students need to like and value what they are writing if they are going to persevere in improving their writing. In order to achieve this it was felt that the writing should be embedded in courses that dealt with meaningful content that the students had some choice in selecting. So we decided that students should take a sequence of four writing intensive seminars consisting of a common First Seminar in their first semester, and a sequence of three thematic seminars, one in each subsequent semester, thus covering the first two years of college.

The need for a common experience for all students was met by having the First Seminar be based on a common theme (which we chose to be on The Life of the Mind), with at least some readings and out-of-class programs experienced in common by all first year students. The idea was that this would provide students with intellectual fodder to talk about amongst themselves in their dorms and dining halls and other social settings, irrespective of what majors they were considering or who they happened to be sitting next to. The common book reading program for incoming students was initiated independently of SAGES but fitted naturally into this framework. The First Seminar was also was designed to get students familiar with academic ways of thinking, provide an introduction to what a research university does and why, and provide opportunities for them to access the rich variety of cultural resources that surround the university.

The decision that the First Seminar instructor also serve as the first year advisor was suggested so that the advisor and student would get to know each other well over the course of that first semester and thus enable the kind of stronger relationship that makes mentoring more meaningful

The University Seminars that followed the First Seminar were grouped under three categories (the Natural World, the Social World, and the Symbolic World) and students were required to select one from each category for the next three semesters. Each of these areas of knowledge has a different culture, investigate different types of questions, use different rules for evidence and how to use that evidence in arriving at conclusions, have different ways of constructing knowledge, and develop different modes of thinking and expression. These seminars would be designed around topics selected by the instructor and designed to help students understand better the way that practitioners in those worlds view knowledge.

By taking one from each group based on their own interests, it was hoped that students would learn how to navigate the different academic waters that they encounter while at college. Taken together, we hoped they would complement each other and provide students with a global perspective on the nature of academic discourse.

In order to prevent the risk of content overload that eventually engulfs many university courses, it was decided that the University Seminars would have no pre-requisites and also could not serve as pre-requisites for other courses, thus freeing instructors from the oft-complained problem of feeling burdened to ‘cover’ a fixed body of material and thus cutting off student participation. Now they were free to explore any question to any depth they wished.

For example, in my own SAGES course The Evolution of Scientific Ideas (part of the Natural World sequence) we explore the following major questions: What is science and can we distinguish it from non-science? What is the process that causes new scientific theories to replace the old? In the process of investigating these questions, I hope that students get a better understanding of how scientists see the world and interact with it. And I do not feel pressure to cover any specific scientific revolution. I can freely change things from year to year depending on the interests of the students.

A senior capstone experience was added to provide students with an opportunity to have a culminating activity and work on a project of their own choosing that would enable them to showcase the investigative, critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills developed over their years at Case.

Next in this series: Implementation issues

POST SCRIPT: Talk on Monday about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo

On Monday, May 1 at 4:00pm in Strosacker Auditorium, Janis Karpinski, who was a Brigadier General and commanding officer of the Abu Ghraib prison when the prisoner torture and abuse scandal erupted and who feels that she was made a scapegoat for that atrocity and demoted, and James Yee who was U.S. Army Muslim Chaplin at Guantanamo, was arrested for spying and later cleared, will both be speaking.

It should be interesting to hear their sides of the story.

The talk is free and open to the public. More details can be found here.

Dover’s dominoes-6: Religion in schools

(See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.)

Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly and other hysterical people allege, there is no ‘war on Christianity’ or ‘war on Christians’ in the US. To say so is to just be silly and to disqualify yourself from being taken seriously. Nor is there is a blanket ban on teaching about god and religion in public schools. The latter assertion is based on a common misunderstanding about the US constitution and it is worth exploring. The relevant question is how you teach about god and religion and for what purposes. (Usual disclaimer whenever I am discussing the implications of rulings by the courts: I am not a lawyer but would love to play one on TV.)

The issue of whether religious beliefs can be taught in public schools is governed by the establishment clause of the First Amendment (which I have discussed before here) which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

A key interpretation of this clause was provided in 1947 by Justice Hugo Black in the case of Everson v. Board of Education (330 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1947) where he wrote: “The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

This was further clarified in Epperson vs. Arkansas 393 US 97 (1968) which said that the “First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” (Kitzmiller, p. 91)

This was further clarified in 1971 in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman (403 U.S. 602, 612-613 (1971)) which said that to pass constitutional muster, a law must pass all three of the following tests:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose;

Second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion;

Finally, the statute must not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.”

In the Dover case, both sides agreed that only the first two prongs were relevant to that issue. The first prong of the Lemon test explains why IDC proponents are so anxious to have their beliefs accepted as part of science. If that can be achieved, then they can meet the first prong, since the teaching of science in a science class clearly has a secular purpose. Hence Judge Jones’ conclusion that IDC is not science must be seen as a serious blow to their ambitions.

Judge Jones also invoked another US Supreme Court precedent (County of Allegheny v. ACLU (1989)) which said that “School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible because it sends the ancillary message to members of the audience who are nonadherents ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.'”

This is another reason why a secular public sphere is to be preferred. (See here for an earlier discussion of this issue.) If you have a public sphere (in schools or elsewhere) in which one particular religious view is favored or endorsed, then it sends a message that others who are not of this particular religious persuasion are not full members. The Allegheny case resulted in the following ‘endorsement test’ that could be applied to any laws. It says that there is a “prohibition against government endorsement of religion” and that it “preclude[s] government from conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.” (Kitzmiller, p. 15)

As Judge Jones pointed out (p. 46) all these precedents imply that “[T]he Establishment Clause forbids not just the explicit teaching of religion, but any governmental action that endorses or has the primary purpose or effect of advancing religion.”

There would be no problem under these guidelines (as I read the law) about a philosophy course that examined, in a neutral way, the religious beliefs of people. There would be no problem in discussing in a history or social studies course the role that Christianity played in the American political process or the role that Islam played in the development of the middle east. In fact, it would be hard to keep religion out and teach those topics in a meaningful way.

A problem only arises if you use a course to promote religion in general or a specific religious point of view. Now we see more clearly why the El Tejon policies were problematic. It is not how a course is labeled (whether science or philosophy) that is at issue, it is how the course is taught. The El Tejon course was explicitly advocating a particular religious point of view, that of young Earth creationism. And the people at the Discovery Institute (rightly I think) saw that this would be easily ruled unconstitutional. And since the course dragged in IDC ideas as well, a negative ruling on this case would be interpreted as meaning that IDC ideas should not be allowed even in philosophy classes, which would be a huge public relations setback for them.

This is why they must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when the El Tejon school board decided to cancel the course.

Next in this series: Another domino falls in Ohio

POST SCRIPT: First amendment freedoms and the Simpsons

A survey of 1,000 Americans has found that just one in 1,000 people could name all five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (religion, speech, press, assembly, petition the Government for redress of grievances.) while 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson characters.

I am shocked by this result. The Simpsons have been on TV for 17 years. Surely more than 22% should be able to name all five characters?

Bush, language, and ideas

The professor of English came into the classroom and gave the assembled students an essay and asked them to critique it. The students went at it with gusto, gleefully pointing out the many grammatical errors, the poor choice of words, the terrible syntax, the non sequiturs, the poor construction of the argument, the awkward metaphors, the lack of attributions and citations, and so on. They were unanimous in concluding that it was an extremely poor piece of writing.

When they were done, the professor quietly told them that he was the author of the piece. The students were stunned into embarrassed silence by this revelation. They sank even further into their seats as the professor said that he had worked long and hard over many days at writing it.

The professor finally said: “The reason it took me so long to write this was that it was really difficult for me to incorporate into it all the errors that you pointed out. What amazes me is that all of you seem to so easily write this way all the time!” [Read more…]

Dover’s dominoes-5: A Dover domino falls in California

(See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.)

The first domino to fall as a result of the Dover verdict was in California where a teacher had decided to create a new optional philosophy class that would promote IDC ideas. This decision was interesting because the people behind it had seemed to draw the lesson from the Dover ruling that while it was problematic to teach IDC ideas in science classes, that it was acceptable to teach it in philosophy courses. As the LA Times reports (link to original article no longer working):

At a special meeting of the El Tejon Unified School District on Jan. 1 [2006], at which the board approved the new course, “Philosophy of Design,” school Supt. John W. Wight said that he had consulted the school district’s attorneys and that they “had told him that as long as the course was called ‘philosophy,’ ” it could pass legal muster, according to the lawsuit.

[Read more…]