LA security bot

At a conference in LA and why did they choose to make security droids look like Daleks?

Good evening, everyone! Just a heads-up: we've got a whopper of a Texas SBOE meeting tomorrow. Things are getting to a dramatic pitch on the social studies standards revision and the literacy lists. Watch this thread tomorrow at 9 AM CT ⬇️. I'll be here all day so you don't have to.

Texas Social Studies TEKS Revision Field Guide - AHA Support Honest History in Texas Public Schools Over the next few months, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will make decisions with profound implications for the future of history and social s...

I’m glad to hear of that focus, and definitely see the significance. But as I’m following updates from Texas, just the latest in a series of such instances, politicized central control over history education appears the greater danger to me.

And though I see things a bit differently, I really appreciate your thoughtful response!

It is a risk/reward calculation with few great options. I acknowledge that local politics can be just as fractious, but the damage done with poor standards in one district is far less than an entire state. Agree that working together and forging shared norms is the key in either case.

But mandated standards are too prone to culture wars that hurt teachers and their students in many cases. I'm glad that things worked out in Illinois, but millions of students are impacted by overtly politicized standards in states like Virginia, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

I don't advocate walking away from content or professional support. And I think guides are a great idea! This is what the state of Kansas provides. Minimal prescriptive standards, but a substantial set of suggested resources to help teachers. www.ksde.gov/Agency/Divis...

C3 had less content but accepted centralized state control over the subject. I’m making the case that we should leave as may of these decisions to local districts and teachers as possible.

A very legitimate concern! I say in the piece that it would be ideal to do away with these types of mandates since they are too prone to politicization. But they are so entrenched at this point that having a minimal number might end up doing the least harm.

Melania and the Robot

Robot Plato? No thanks.

Article Title: The Best History Standards Govern Least: The Case for Standards Minimalism. By Stephen Jackson

K-12 standards are likely not improving history education, but are providing endless grist for the culture wars. We can do better. In my latest with the Journal of American History, I suggest a minimalist approach to the creation of standards. doi.org/10.1093/jahi...

If we keep going down the path we're on, we run the risk of the subject descending to the level of mere indoctrination.

We can and should trust in the professionalism of history teachers in their own communities rather than an increasingly authoritarian top-down system that often excludes expertise and forces teachers to offer highly polarized interpretations of the past.

Instead, I argue that we should practice standards minimalism by mandating only broad and basic concepts, leaving the rest to local school districts and individual teachers. The states of Kansas and Maine provide good examples of how to do this.

Standards centralize too much power over such a sensitive topic into the hands of state-level political factions. They are often not driven by the common pursuit of truth, but in 'winning' against their perceived political foes.

We should have learned this lesson after the National History Standards fiasco of the 1990s. In the time since we've had multiple flare ups over history standards in states across the country, which are getting worse, not better, in the 2020s.

Why can't we create a consensus set of standards in history? Because we don't agree about the past, and the topic has become deeply politicized.

Second, history standards tend to privilege 'coverage' at the expense of deep thinking in the discipline. Endless lists of names, dates, and facts lead to rote memorization, not critical thinking and interpretation in the discipline.

Historians have made good faith arguments in support of standards since the 1980s, but they have two primary drawbacks. First, they present inviting targets for culture warriors who want to prioritize their controversial versions of history at scale.

Article Title: The Best History Standards Govern Least: The Case for Standards Minimalism. By Stephen Jackson

K-12 standards are likely not improving history education, but are providing endless grist for the culture wars. We can do better. In my latest with the Journal of American History, I suggest a minimalist approach to the creation of standards. doi.org/10.1093/jahi...

The 2026 CUFA Program Chairs are excited to share the call for proposals with members & the broader #socialstudies community: Continuities, Countercurrents, & Change in Social Studies.

Proposals will be due April 13, 2026, 11:59pm Hawaii Standard Time. Submissions go live March 6!

My sense is that they don’t engage with scholarship that does not come from their ideological milieu.

Major news: A @nytimes.com story today reports on developments in our lawsuit, filed with @modernlanguage.bsky.social and @acls1919.bsky.social, opposing the illegal dismantling of the NEH.

The article covers newly released discovery in the case.

Here’s what discovery confirmed:

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Note the connection between Western and American exceptionalisms, which is a pronounced feature of the contemporary history wars that doesn’t often generate headlines.

The latest issue of History of Education Quarterly is out. Here's a thread with open-access links to all of the articles...

Opinion | A.I. Companies Are Eating Higher Education

The environmental and social harms are clear but it’s also made students tune out, not knowing why they should bother learning or thinking. Now I have to tell them why uni is useful for THEM, beyond just feigning work to get a degree. I’ve gone analog a lot. They’ve actually liked it.

Literally and figuratively confronted by inflation while buying balloons for my kid’s birthday party.

Exploding tree warnings were the last straw. I’d like to speak to Nature’s manager, please.