Bee’s post is eloquent! There is/was not a video in the post, but she named the song, and gives great background on the artist and the song. I checked YouTube, found the one I hope is the right one, and posted it beneath Bee’s entry here. She has posted this one in the past; I recall it. It’s beautiful and perfectly expressive. Well worth a repeat listen!
Last week when I was flying home I was scanning the ocean because I’m always certain that I’ll see Godzilla or a sea serpent if I look hard enough, but instead I saw a rainbow from the plane window and it was a perfect circle over the ocean. I was so excited I hit my head on the window and scared the person behind me. I didn’t have time to capture it on my phone but I shook Victor awake and was like, “YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW OUTSIDE THE WINDOW” and he said, “Was it a colonial woman churning butter on the wing?” and I was like, “…yep…that’s exactly what it was” because a circular rainbow feels anticlimactic after that guess.
Aaanyway, that leads to this week’s drawing, which I’m fairly certain counts as a scientific illustration:
The Texas State Board of Education launched the process of redesigning the state’s social studies standards earlier this year. Trace Thomas for The Texas Tribune
The Texas State Board of Education is reshaping how public schools will teach social studies for years to come, but its recent selection of the panelists who will advise members during the process is causing concern among educators, historians and both Democrats and Republicans, who say the panel’s composition is further indication that the state wants to prioritize hard-right conservative viewpoints.
The Republican-dominated education board earlier this year officially launched the process of redesigning Texas’ social studies standards, which outline in detail what students should know by the time of graduation. The group, which will meet again in mid-November, is aiming to finalize the standards by next summer, with classroom implementation expected in 2030.
A majority of the 15 members in September agreed on the instructional framework schools will use in each grade to teach social studies, already marking a drastic shift away from Texas’ current approach. The board settled on a plan with a heavy focus on Texas and U.S. history and less emphasis on world history, geography and cultures. Conservative groups like Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Heritage Foundation championed the framework, while educators largely opposed it.
In the weeks that followed, the board selected a panel of nine advisers who will offer feedback and recommendations during the process. The panel appears to include only one person currently working in a Texas public school district and has at least three people associated with far-right conservative activism. That includes individuals who have criticized diversity efforts, questioned school lessons highlighting the historical contributions of people of color, and promoted beliefs debunked by historians that America was founded as a Christian nation.
That group includes David Barton, a far-right conservative Christian activist who gained national prominence arguing against common interpretations of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prevents the government from endorsing or promoting a religion. Barton believes that America was founded as a Christian nation, which many historians have disproven.
Critics of Barton’s work have pointed to his lack of formal historical training and a book he authored over a decade ago, “The Jefferson Lies,” that was pulled from the shelves due to historical details “that were not adequately supported.” Brandon Hall, an Aledo Republican who co-appointed Barton, has defended the decision, saying it reflected the perspectives and priorities of his district.
Another panelist is Jordan Adams, a self-described independent education consultant who holds degrees from Hillsdale College, a Michigan-based campus known nationally for its hard-right political advocacy and efforts to shape classroom instruction in a conservative Christian vision. Adams’ desire to flip school boards and overhaul social studies instruction in other states has drawn community backlash over recommendations on books and curriculum that many felt reflected his political bias.
Adams has proclaimed that “there is no such thing” as expertise, describing it as a label to “shut down any type of dialogue and pretend that you can’t use your own brain to figure things out.” He has called on school boards to craft policies to eliminate student surveys, diversity efforts and what he considers “critical race theory,” a college-level academic and legal framework examining how racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions. Critical race theory is not taught in K-12 public schools but has become a shorthand for conservative criticism of how schools teach children about race.
In an emailed response to questions from The Texas Tribune, Adams pointed to his earlier career experience as a teacher and said he understands “what constitutes quality teaching.” Adams also said he wants to ensure “Texan students are taught using the best history and civics standards in America” and that he views the purpose of social studies as forming “wise and virtuous citizens who know and love their country.”
“Every teacher in America falls somewhere along the political spectrum, and all are expected to set their personal views aside when teaching. The same goes for myself and my fellow content advisors,” Adams said. “Of course, given that this is public education, any efforts must support the U.S. Constitution and Texas Constitution, principles of the American founding, and the perpetuation of the American experiment in free self-government.”
Republicans Aaron Kinsey and LJ Francis, who co-appointed Adams, could not be reached for interviews.
David Randall, executive director of the Civics Alliance and research director of the National Association of Scholars, was also appointed a content adviser. He has criticized standards he felt were “animated by a radical identity-politics ideology” and hostile to America and “groups such as whites, men, and Christians.” Randall has written that vocabulary emphasizing “systemic racism, power, bias, and diversity” cannot coexist with “inquiry into truth — much less affection for America.” He has called the exclusion of the Bible and Christianity in social studies instruction “bizarre,” adding that no one “should find anything controversial” about teaching the role of “Judeo-Christian values” in colonial North America.
Randall told the Tribune in an email that his goal is to advise Texas “as best I can.” He did not respond to questions about his expertise and how he would work to ensure his personal beliefs do not bleed into the social studies revisions.
Randall was appointed by Republican board members Evelyn Brooks and Audrey Young, both of whom told the Tribune that they chose him not because of his political views but because of his national expertise in history and civics, which they think can help Texas improve social studies instruction.
“I really can’t sit here and say that I agree with everything he has said. I don’t even know everything that he has said.” Brooks said. “What I can say is that I can refer to his work. I can say that he emphasizes integrating civics.”
The advisory panel also consists of a social studies curriculum coordinator in the Prosper school district and university professors with expertise ranging from philosophy to military studies. The group notably includes Kate Rogers, former president of the Alamo Trust, who recently resigned from her San Antonio post after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick criticized her over views she expressed in a doctoral dissertation suggesting she disagreed with state laws restricting classroom instruction on race and slavery.
Seven of the content advisers were selected by two State Board of Education members each, while Texas’ Commissioner of Higher Education Wynn Rosser chose the two other panelists. Board member Tiffany Clark, a Democrat, did not appoint an adviser, and she told the Tribune that she plans to hold a press conference during the board’s November meeting to address what happened.
Staci Childs, a Democrat from Houston serving on the State Board of Education, said she had anticipated that the content advisory group would include “extremely conservative people.” But her colleagues’ choices, she said, make her feel like “kids are not at the forefront right now.”
Pam Little, who is the board’s vice chair, is one of two members who appear to have chosen the only content adviser with active experience working in a Texas K-12 public school district. The Fairview Republican called the makeup of the advisory panel “disappointing.”
“I think it signals that we’re going in a direction where we teach students what we want them to know, rather than what really happened,” Little said.
The board’s recent decisions show that some members are more focused “on promoting political agendas rather than teaching the truth,” said Rocío Fierro-Pérez, political director of the Texas Freedom Network, a progressive advocacy organization that monitors the State Board of Education’s decisions.
“Whether your political beliefs are conservative, liberal, or middle of the road really shouldn’t disqualify you from participating in the process to overhaul these social studies standards,” Fierro-Pérez said. “But it’s wildly inappropriate to appoint unqualified political activists and professional advocates with their own agendas, in leading roles and guiding what millions of Texas kids are going to be learning in classrooms.”
Other board members and content advisers insist that it is too early in the process to make such judgments. They say those discussions should wait until the actual writing of the standards takes place, which is when the board can directly address concerns about the new framework.
They also note that while content advisers play an integral role in offering guidance, the process will include groups of educators who help write the standards. State Board of Education members will then make final decisions. Recent years have shown that even those within the board’s 10-member Republican majority often disagree with one another, making the final result of the social studies revisions difficult to predict.
Donald Frazier, a Texas historian at Schreiner University in Kerrville and chair of Texas’ 1836 Project advisory committee, who was also appointed a content adviser, said that based on the panelists’ conversations so far, “I think that there’s a lot more there than may meet the eye.”
“There’s people that have thought about things like pedagogy and how children learn and educational theory, all the way through this panel,” Frazier said. “There’s always going to be hand-wringing and pearl-clutching and double-guessing and second-guessing. We’ve got to keep our eye on the students of Texas and what we want these kids to be able to do when they graduate to become functioning members of our society.”
The makeup of the advisory panel and the Texas-heavy instructional framework approved in September is the latest sign of frustration among conservative Republicans who often criticize how public schools approach topics like race and gender. They have passed laws in recent years placing restrictions on how educators can discuss those topics and pushed for instruction to more heavily emphasize American patriotism and exceptionalism.
Under the new framework, kindergarteners through second graders will learn about the key people, places and events throughout Texas and U.S. history. The plan will weave together in chronological order lessons on the development of Western civilization, the U.S., and Texas during grades 3-8, with significant attention on Texas and the U.S. after fifth grade. Eighth-grade instruction will prioritize Texas, as opposed to the broader focus on national history that currently exists. The framework also eliminates the sixth-grade world cultures course.
When lessons across all grades are combined, Texas will by far receive the most attention, while world history will receive the least — though world history would receive more time under the new framework than the one currently used.
During a public comment period in September, educators criticized the new plan’s lack of attention to geography and cultures outside of America. They opposed how it divides instruction on Texas, U.S. and world history into percentages every school year, as opposed to providing students an entire grade to fully grasp one or two social studies concepts at a time. They said the plan’s strict chronological structure could disrupt how kids identify historical trends and cause-and-effect relationships, which can happen moreeffectively through a thematic instructional approach.
But that criticism did not travel far with some Republicans, who argue that drastic changes in education will almost always prompt negative responses from educators accustomed to teaching a certain way. They point to standardized test results showing less than half of Texas students performing at grade level in social studies as evidence that the current instructional approach is not working. They also believe the politicization of education began long before the social studies overhaul, but in a way that prioritizes left-leaning perspectives.
“Unfortunately, I think it boils down to this: What’s the alternative?” said Matthew McCormick, education director of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “It always seems to come down to, if it’s not maximally left-wing, then it’s conservative indoctrination. That’s my perspective. What is the alternative to the political and policymaking process? Is it to let teachers do whatever they want? Is it to let the side that lost the elections do what they want? I’m not sure. There’s going to be judgments about these sorts of things.”
This is not the first time the board has garnered attention for its efforts to reshape social studies instruction. The group in 2022 delayed revisions to the standards after pressure from Republican lawmakers who complained that they downplayed Texan and American exceptionalism and amounted to far-left indoctrination. Texas was also in the national spotlight roughly a dozen years prior for the board’s approval of standards that reflected conservative viewpoints on topics like religion and economics.
Social studies teachers share the sentiment that Texas can do a better job equipping students with knowledge about history, geography, economics and civics, but many push back on the notion that they’re training children to adhere to a particular belief system. With challenges like budget shortfalls and increased class sizes, they say it is shortsighted to blame Texas’ academic shortcomings on educators or the current learning standards — not to mention that social studies instruction often takes a backseat to subjects like reading and math.
“I think we’re giving a lot more credit to this idea that we’re using some sort of political motivation to teach. We teach the standards. The standards are there. That’s what we teach,” said Courtney Williamson, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at a school district northwest of Austin.
When students graduate, some will compete for global jobs. Others may go to colleges across the U.S. or even internationally. That highlights the importance, educators say, of providing students with a broad understanding of the world around them and teaching them how to think critically.
But with the recent moves requiring a significant overhaul of current instruction — a process that will likely prove labor-intensive and costly — some educators suspect that Texas leaders’ end goal is to establish a public education system heavily reliant on state-developed curricula and training. That’s the only way some can make sense of the new teaching framework or the makeup of the content advisory panel.
“I’m really starting to notice an atmosphere of fear from a lot of people in education, both teachers and, I think, people higher up in districts,” said Amy Ceritelli-Plouff, a sixth-grade world cultures teacher in North Texas. “When you study history, you look at prior conflicts and times in our history when there has been extremism and maybe too much government control or involvement in things; it starts with censoring and controlling education.”
Disclosure: Schreiner University, Texas Freedom Network and Texas Public Policy Foundation have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The president of Boston University College Republicans wrote on X he called the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requesting it detain employees at Allston Car Wash, the site of a Nov. 4 raid where nine employees were arrested.
Boston University College Republicans President Zac Segal being interviewed at a club meeting. Segal posted on X that he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to investigate the Allston Car Wash that was raided last week. (AVA RUBIN)
“I’ve been calling ICE for months on end. This week they finally responded to my request to detain these criminals,” BUCR President Zac Segal posted Nov. 7 above a Boston.com article about the ICE raid.
Segal declined to comment Thursday morning.
“As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I’ve seen how American jobs are being given away to those with no right to be here. Pump up the numbers!” Segal’s post concludes.
BUCR did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
The nine detained employees all had work permits, Allston Car Wash Manager Jose Barrera told Boston.com.
Barrera said around 22 federal agents arrived at the Cambridge Street car wash holding subpoenas, but agents began arresting employees before they could retrieve their documents from the locker room, Barrera told Boston.com.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
This is a developing story and will be updated with more information.
American Bird Conservancy has changed its page. It seems even easier to use. Here are some bits about this week’s bird.
About
Most woodpecker species in the United States and Canada display a mix of black, white, and red plumage, but don’t tell the Lewis’s Woodpecker. Its unusual mix of colors includes a red face, pink belly, glossy green back, crown, and nape, and silver-gray collar. The bird is simply stunning.
Lewis’s Woodpecker also differs from other members of its family in many of its foraging styles and food choices. In the summer, the bird eats mostly insects, catching them in flight by swooping out from a perch like a flycatcher or by foraging in flight like a swallow. Wide, rounded wings give the bird a buoyant, straight-line flight, more like a jay or crow than a woodpecker. The bird seldom excavates for wood-boring insects; unlike other woodpeckers, this species lacks the strong head and neck muscles needed to drill into hard wood.
In the fall, Lewis’s Woodpeckers switch to eating nuts and fruit, chopping up acorns and other nuts and caching them in bark crevices for later consumption. During the winter, they aggressively guard these storage areas against intruders, including other woodpecker species.
Ornithologist Alexander Wilson described the species in 1811 and named it for Meriwether Lewis, who observed the bird in 1805 during the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Threats
Birds around the world are declining, and many of them, like Lewis’s Woodpecker, are facing urgent, acute threats. Moreover, all birds, from the rarest species to familiar backyard birds, are made more vulnerable by the cumulative impacts of threats like habitat loss and invasive species.
Habitat Loss
Surveys indicate that Lewis’s Woodpecker populations may have declined by about 60 percent since the 1960s, and much of the reduction is likely due to loss or alteration of suitable nesting habitat. Like all other woodpeckers, the Lewis’s Woodpecker requires cavities in snags (standing, dead, or partly dead trees) for nesting. Logging, the suppression of wildfires, and grazing have altered many of the western forests where the species is found. The changes to the landscape often result in large areas dominated by trees that are the same age, leaving few dead or decaying trees available for the birds’ nests.
Pesticides take a heavy toll on birds in a variety of ways. Birds can be harmed by direct poisoning from pesticides, lose insect prey to pesticides sprayed on crops and lawns, or be slowly poisoned by ingesting small mammal prey that have themselves ingested rodenticides. Lewis’s Woodpeckers are likely exposed to pesticides in orchards and other agricultural settings.
Two from Bee; she participates in the blog strike on Thursdays, for Gaza. Both excellent pieces; one from Pink, one from Alicia Keys, each with some info about the artist and her music.
For some people, gender shifts over time, often through changes in one’s sense of self. A transgender man may realize they are nonbinary and stop hormone replacement therapy. A trans woman may face so much discrimination that she represses her identity. And some trans people medically reverse their transition to live as their sex assigned at birth.
These experiences are all part of a process known as detransitioning. Although detransitioning does not have a consistent social or academic definition, it generally applies to someone who has sought a gender transition and then stopped, shifted or reversed aspects of it. Their experiences offer a deeper look at how discrimination and gender norms impact our lives, how gender-affirming care can be improved, and how identity is perhaps more fluid than previously thought.
As experts work to understand detransitioners, their vulnerabilities and their highly individualized needs, their identities are being co-opted as part of a national campaign against transgender rights. Health care access and research are being blocked by politicians for both trans people and detransitioners — while anti-trans rhetoric puts everyone at risk.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are investigating gender-affirming care as medical fraud, and they are rooting this effort in detransitioners’ stories that fit the narrative the Trump administration wants to advance. The White House wants the National Institutes of Health to study “regret” and “detransition,” even as it cuts any federal funding for researchthat mentions the word “trans.” The U.S. Department of Education hosted a “Detrans Awareness Day” event last March. Meanwhile, its functions have been severely undermined by layoffs and budget cuts.
The White House and agencies like the Justice Department claim that gender-affirming care is mutilating children, overlooking that young trans people live happily after transition and the studies showing that adolescents who regret transition are in the minority. Government officials describe trans people and detransitioners as victims of a medical conspiracy to boost profits and force gender ideology on families. Now, they are seeking evidence to prove those claims by subpoenaing hospitals for patients’ private data, including doctors’ notes, patient addresses and Social Security numbers.
Gender-affirming care has been broadly endorsed by the medical community for its effectiveness in treating gender dysphoria, a persistent distress felt when one’s body is out of sync with their identity. The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, which polled over 92,000 trans and nonbinary people 16 and older, found that social and medical transition were profound sources of life satisfaction. Experts and advocates agree that more research and more understanding are needed to improve trans medical care. But under Trump, they also expect transgender and intersex health to keep getting worse, not better.
The 19th spoke with two detransitioners who feel harmed and usedby the Trump administration, which has positioned itself as a protector of those who detransition. Adriana lives in New York City, where she feels safe to express herself among so many LGBTQ+ people, but has struggled to access adequate health care. Ara lives in North Carolina, a state that has several laws restricting trans rights and health care access — and where support from a mental health program and her partner has helped her navigate the challenges of detransitioning. As politicians stoke fear about gender non-conformity, their experiences offer a deeper understanding of what it means to live authentically in a politically volatile time.
Still, more young people have been exploring their identities, expanding the boundaries of gender and adding to the cultural and social norms surrounding it. Detransitioners’ experiences are part of that social evolution. Their stories of regret and pain exist alongside stories of joy and empowerment — and these are all part of a journey of self-discovery that may have turned out to be more complicated than they initially thought. The question is, will elected officials support them on this journey or cause more harm?
‘Taking away trans health care is taking away people’s lives’
As providers of trans health care have become political targets, Ara Kareis’ own routine treatments have been disrupted.
‘I just feel like such a power source’
The joy that Adriana Del Orden feels in her body could have only come through exploring her gender. She’s tired of being told that she ruined her life.
The politics of detransition
Political rhetoric doesn’t capture the complexity of detransitioning — or what taking away health care means.
This blogger is a newer subscriber to Scottie’s, and comments here some. Here is a short bit with info on Poland’s November 11th Independence Day observance and history.
The Texas State Board of Education launched the process of redesigning the state’s social studies standards earlier this year. Trace Thomas for The Texas Tribune
Scottie's Playtime 