Blurts

What is appropriate in teaching history has become controversial and now that I have spent some time listening to politicians discuss the matter confusing. This resource from FutureEd addresses the controversy regarding the teaching of concepts such as racism and sexism as part of the history of the U.S.. The FutureEd resource is helpful in framing the issue, but I think for those interested it is of great value to examine the laws proposed in different states.

I spend my formative years in Iowa and because the bills on these matters from Iowa appear on the FutureEd list I spent some time with one of the Iowa bills.

Iowa legislation – the following wording is taken from the bill, but based on the video of the discussion is vague. You should watch the video (linked from the presentation of the bill) because the back and forth between Democrats and Republicans appear to say you can teach these things, but not in a way according to the Republican speaker that involves scapegoating. The concept of scapegoating is really the key to understanding exactly what is being demanded.

f. Prohibit the use of curriculum that teaches the topics of sexism, slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in sexism, racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination.

Scapegoating is defined in the following way

^Race or sex scapegoating” means assigning fault, blame,
or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex
because of their race or sex, or claiming that, consciously or
unconsciously, and by virtue of persons’ race or sex, members
of any race are inherently racist or are inherently inclined to
oppress others, or that members of a sex are inherently sexist
or inclined to oppress others.

So you are a history teacher, what does it mean that you can teach that racism and sexism are historical facts, but you cannot assign fault or blame? The reality of these practices should argue that the practices are evil and happened (or happen) and were the result of human behavior. As a consequence, I would find it difficult not to attribute blame or fault to the individuals perpetrating such behavior. For example, slavery was primarily a practice of white citizens of the United States. At the time slavery was widely practiced in this country there clearly was a racial dimension to the practice. It is true that this does not imply that whites at a different time in history practice slavery.

The Iowa bill clearly is less demanding at least according to the FutureEd description of bills considered in other states.

How Google prioritizes search results has always been a mystery with the lack of clarity defended as necessary corporate secrecy. I liked the original notion of page rank because as an academic I understand the logic of citation frequency as a metric of importance. Here is a recent effort by Google to explain the signals it uses to rank search results. What is missing and of great importance is how these signals are weighted.

I have started to receive a lot of comment spam. You don’t see the spam because I have comments setup to require moderation. It has taken me some time to determine why the spam just started. I have been using the free Akismet plugin to block spam and it worked great. However, Akismet decided this blog was a commercial venture because of the ads and decided I had to pay for their commercial service. I use ads more out of curiosity than anything else and the cost for one month of the Akismet service would cost more than this site generates in ad revenue in a year. I have turned off comments as a solution.