Daily Archives: June 5, 2017

ALTONA Rep. Paul Tonko (D-Amsterdam) does not think the country is headed in the right direction.

The pullback from the Paris Climate Agreement is "a scar." Income inequality remains an issue. Proposed cutbacks in scientific research have his scientistfriends outraged and pushing him to take action. And the looming rollback of the Affordable Care Act lacks compassion.

Were not going to take this anymore, Tonko said, throwing his arms up in frustration.

The crowd whooped and hollered.

Tonko, speaking Friday night at a labor dinner organized by the Clinton County Democratic Committee, repeatedly assailed Republican policy in Washington, D.C. in a half-hour stemwinder.

Darwinism doesnt quite cut it, Tonko said on White House policies, including the court-entangled travel ban from Muslim-majority counties, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and proposed deep budget cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and social programs.

Weve been cutting these agencies since Republicans controlled the House, Tonko said. Were asking unimaginable things with this budget.

On the reduction in funding for scientific research: Its foolish, foolish thinking.

Tonko, who represents the Capital District, serves on the Science, Space and Technology and Emergency and Commerce Committees, as well as the Subcommittee on Research and Technology.

Doing so gives him a firsthand perch to witness what he said are science deniers sitting on top GOP-controlled House committees.

Thats what drove him to author the Scientific Integrity Act, a bill he said would put watchdogs at every federal agency to make sure when the federal government invests in research, federal officials cannot manipulate, misrepresent, mischaracterize, suppress or not share those findings.

Tonko did not mention President Donald Trump by name, nor the lawmaker who represents the 21st Congressional District, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-Willsboro).

The lawmaker took particular relish in eviscerating the American Health Care Act, calling the bill a poison pill."

And on the Paris Agreement: What a scar across the face of America, Tonko said. A deep scar shared with the entire world.

Jobs in the renewable energy sector including the manufacture of turbines and solar panels will instead go elsewhere, he said.

Whos going to produce these jobs now? The nations who are at the table.

The countrys infrastructure is deteriorating to the point where the electric grid is currently unable to import renewables from Canada, Tonko said, citing field visits across the country as part of a congressional task force.

The White House is expected to roll out a $1 billion infrastructure plan this week.

But the plan, said Tonko, needs to be detailed and paired with how it will be paid for not vague commitments or promises of tax relief to contractors.

This is the kind of smart government that America needs and deserves, Tonko said.Were going to Make America Great Again, were going to put you to work do not give us broken promises. Do not tell us you stand for something and then you pull our job opportunities away.

CANDIDATES EMERGE

The speech was red meat to Democrats disaffected with current administration policy including prospective candidates Tonko acknowledged were in the audience, including Patrick Nelson, a Stillwater-based political organizer who has already declared his candidacy to run against Stefanik, and Emily Martz, a Saranac Lake resident who has been involved in community organizing since last falls election.

Im looking at running at the congressional level as well as the local level, Martz told the Sun after the event. Im committed to running for something.

Martz, a registered Democrat, said she appreciated the lack of partisan politics in the area.

That to me is important. The lack of party politics is strong at the local level, and I wish we could get that at the state and local level, Martz said. We need to move beyond that. Its not about party its about the people.

Mike Derrick, who challenged Stefanik last year as a Democrat, also expressed interest in a rematch.

I havent decided yet, said Derrick, who attended the event.

EYE ON 2017

This year is a local election year. On the tailwinds of last November's combative national election, Clinton County Democratic Chairman Sara Rowden said she has seen an uptick in local interest and enthusiasm over the previous local election cycle.

The activity isnt only coming from the left, she said, but also the center, with health care as a driving interest.

Grassroots groups were scant ahead of last years election, she said. But now she estimated there are 40+ independent groups actively involved in the region.

I think we need to take advantage of this momentum and everyone that is there, Rowden said. This is our time.

Clinton County was the only county in the 12-county congressional district that went for former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, who notched a razor-thin 1 point margin over Trump, besting him by just 265 votes.

Stefanik defeated Derrick by 35 points the highest margin for a Republican in the state.

Rowden said the Democratic Party has become complacent due to recent big-ticket accomplishments, including social justice issues.

The party, she said, must now return to their roots if they want to start winning elections again.

Social justice may have overshadowed our commitment to the working class, Rowden said.

Clinton County Republican Chairman Don McBrayer said he respects true grassroots involvement, but questioned if some of the recent local protests he witnessed in the area could be categorized as locally-organized.

To me, it looked more like protests being organized by state and federal level organizers to promote populist politics, McBrayer told the Sun. It is not something I wish to be a part of.

McBrayer said the GOP prefers to work with people individually, educating them on issues, and finding dedicated candidates willing to put in the sweat-equity required to keep local government efficient, transparent and honest.

McBrayer said local Republicans are excited about the reelection prospects for a number of local and county races, and the committee looked forward to recruiting more candidates this spring and summer.

Continue reading here:

'Darwinism doesn't quite cut it,' says Tonko, rallying North Country Democrats - Sun Community News

Its shocking. Darwin died 135 years ago, with his home country largely converted to his beliefs. Why dont students embrace the teachings of their national hero? England has largelyabandoned its religiousheritage, so thats not it. Everybody knows about Darwin. Evolution should be an easy sell in the classroom.Whats the problem?

Evolution is one of the trickiest subjects to teach and not just because some people find it controversial. The ideas are subtle and the language and concepts can be confusing; how many of us have thought that survival of the fittest was an encouragement to go to the gym. Many studies have sought to discover the reasons why evolution is so difficult for students to understand and accept, but few have attempted to find ways to improve the understanding of evolution in the classroom. [Emphasis added.]

So writes Lawrence Hurst in The Conversation, along with an associate professor and an educator. At the University of Bath, a mere 100 miles from Down House, they conducted experiments on how to get children to understand evolution, using secondary school students as their lab rats.

They published their results in PLOS Biologyunder the title, Teaching genetics prior to teaching evolution improves evolution understanding but not acceptance. Sarah Chaffee responded earlier in light of Discovery Institutes education policy.

Notice, as she pointed out, the distinction between understanding and acceptance. They cant even get to the acceptance part! They just want to get students to understand it.

But is evolution so hard to understand? Its simple; people evolved from bacteria ancestors; no source of intelligent designwas involved; everything advances by a blind process of natural selection, not that different from dog breeding. Things change over time. Whats the problem? You can explain it in a few sentences. Finches change. Peppered moths change. Your children will change, even if you dont go to the gym, as long as you leave more offspring than the bodybuilder next door. Simple concepts. There must be an obstacle to understanding. Yes, its those deplorablecreationists again. The paper identifies them:

Students grasp of evolution is often poor and does not always agree with the scientific understanding. Commensurately, numerous studies report low levels of understanding among first year undergraduate students. These factors likely contribute to the poor public understanding of evolution reported by many researchers, including in the UK context. This tempts the question, what are the best methods to teach evolution?

This issue here is currently much debated, particularly at the secondary school level. This is because the theory of evolution can be a controversial issue. Strong opposition is well documented in the United States, but there is increasing concern about the impact that religious movements or strong cultural and social traditions may have on evolution education in other countries, including Northern Ireland, Poland, Turkey, and the UK. There are also concerns that creationism has been taught in UK schools and that religious-motivated groups have attempted to influence science lessons. More generally, numerous studies have focused on impediments to understanding and acceptance of evolution. While religious orientation, prior acceptance/rejection of the theory of evolution, and views of authority figures including teachers and religious leaders are commonly cited reasons, reasoning skills are also considered to be of importance.

And so they sought ways to improve teaching methods, presuming that if students only understood evolution, they would be more likely to accept it. Their hypothesis was to teach genetics as a prerequisite to teaching evolution. Our original idea was what psychologists called priming preloading with some facts to make it easier to take in other information. They continue:

It seemed intuitive to us that a good understanding of genetics should help understanding of evolution: DNA is the heritable material through which variation needed for evolution occurs. If you understand DNA, you can understand what mutations are. And if you understand what mutations are, you can understand that they can change frequency in populations and bingo, evolution can happen. In its simplest, evolution is no more than mutations changing frequency. The differences between species started out as new mutations that went from being rare within one species but then became very common.

Bingo, evolution can happen. The metaphor is very apt. You win at bingo by unguided natural processes. The winner (the fittest) may not be the smartest; just the luckiest. Its not like the chance component of Battleship, where you can infer from past successes where the Destroyer is likely to be. Bingo is a variant of the Lottery: you win by having the luckiest card by pure chance, and each card you get is a new start.

In short, the educators think that by understanding how Bingo works, students will accept the game. Are they missing something?

While this connection might seem self-evident, genetics and evolution are typically taught to 14 to 16-year-old secondary school students as separate topics with few links and in no particular order. Sometimes theres a large time span between the two. Our idea was simple: teach genetics first and look at how that affects the understanding and acceptance of evolution.

Like good lab experimenters, they divided their lab rats into an experimental group and a control group.

Using questionnaires, we conducted a study of almost 2,000 students over three years. Importantly, all that was changed in our study was the order of the teaching material exactly what was to be taught was left to the teachers. This meant our study was a realistic mimic of what would happen should any switch be made. We tested students before and after the two subjects were taught and so could examine the extent to which students improved in their understanding.

The experiment was only partially successful (according to their criteria). Yes, the more students understood microevolution by genetic mutations (the Bingo theory of evolution), the more they understood evolution. We found that students who were taught genetics before evolution performed 7percentbetter on knowledge-based questions about evolution than those who learned about evolution first, they say, proud of this strikingly large effect. But alas, it did not help the students accept evolution very much. Both before and after testing, the students with a better understanding were those with higher levels of acceptance, they said. However, these effects were not strong. So they investigated why students fail to accept evolution.

We also set up a series of focus groups to find out why the understanding and acceptance of evolution are not more strongly coupled. Evidence from these suggests that what is more important for evolution acceptance is not what is taught, but who provides the endorsement. For some students, being told that key authority figures such as parents or teachers approve of scientific evidence for evolution made a big difference to their ability to accept it.

Television documentaries were commonly given as a source of reassurance about evolution, and some students felt that these, and their presenters, were important in helping them accept evolution. Perhaps more predictable, religious leaders, and their views on evolution, were also of key importance. For students from a Catholic background, being told that the Pope approves of evolution was important in helping them to approach evolution as any other science.

The challenge, in their view, becomes one of reducing the impact of authority figures who put obstacles in the way of student acceptance of evolution. Religious leaders are making evolution a scary idea. Avoid the E-word, they say, to soften the blow:

Perhaps helping them understand that mutations can change frequency under the banner of genetics enabled students to learn with less of a clash of ideas? We suggest a simple test: dont teach students material labelled as evolution, teach it as population genetics instead and then tell them after the fact that they have just learned about evolution.

Its a bit like pinching and wiggling the arm before sticking the needle in, for a child afraid of needles. Before the child knows whats going on, the needle is in. When are you going to stick me? Johnny asks. Oh, I already did; now, that didnt hurt a bit, did it? And use less scary words: its not a needle; its a syringe. Its not Darwinism: its population genetics. The indoctrinators conclude:

Whatever the underlying cause, the data suggest a really simple, minimally disruptive and cost-free modification to teaching practice: teach genetics first. This will at least increase evolution understanding, if not acceptance. As with many emotive subjects, it takes more than teaching the facts to shift hearts as well as minds.

Heres a conundrum to end on: these educators, so concerned about student acceptance of evolution, do not accept evolution themselves! Think about it:

The astute reader recognizes that reasoning about evolution is self-refuting (listen to Nancy Pearcey on ID the Future). Lets teach that to the teachers. Bingo! Education happens.

Photo: Bingo cards, by Edwin Torres [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Read more:

Evolution as Bingo: Darwinists Seek Better Ways to Indoctrinate - Discovery Institute