The TUSD Governing Board decided to table a vote on reinstating the course, Phil 101: Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship. The course was created by UA’s Koch Brothers-infused Freedom Center and has met with controversy and skepticism since people found out about it.
It looks like the main reason for delaying the vote is the textbook. New textbooks are supposed go through a review process and be on display in the district office for 60 days before the board votes on adoption, which hasn’t happened. Up to this point, the district has played fast and loose with the course. The board wasn’t even involved in approving it. It would have been difficult to justify fast tracking the textbook after all the prior shenanigans.
So, no Phil 101 course at TUSD. For now. The issue will almost certainly come to a board vote sometime during this school year after the textbook has gone through the 60 day review process, which means the board could decide to reinstate the course.
That’s the end of the news. Now, for your amusement…
Let’s take a look at whether Phil 101’s Freedom Center-created textbook is a primary or supplementary text. That’s important because, if the book is a supplementary text, it may not need the same 60 day review period. So that’s the story we’re hearing, that the Freedom Center-created book is a supplementary text.
It’s so obvious it’s the primary text, it shouldn’t even bear mentioning. Still, we’re being told it’s a supplementary text. And that’s where the amusement part comes in, for me anyway. The word “ethics,” features prominently in the Phil 101 course title, but it looks like the folks pushing the course aren’t very good at practicing the ethics they claim to be preaching to their students.
So let’s see how the “supplementary text” assertion stands up under scrutiny.
The title of the course is “Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship.” The title of the textbook they want to call supplementary is also Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship. Same name. Kinda makes you think either the course was designed around the book or the book was designed around the course. Actually, it’s a little of both. In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, the authors say the first time they taught a version of the course at UA, they used a draft of the textbook. The next time they taught it, they refined the book to its final version. The text was tailor made to fit the course.
But maybe the TUSD version of the course is different enough from the original, the textbook no longer occupies a primary role. To figure out if that’s true, let’s take a look at the course syllabus on file with TUSD and see how closely it corresponds to the textbook. The syllabus is divided into 8 parts, each with a heading and a number of sub-topics. The textbook’s Table of Contents is also divided into 8 parts with headings and sub-topics. The 8 headings are identical in the syllabus and the textbook, word for word. The 65 sub-topics in the syllabus are different from those in the textbook in maybe a dozen places: an addition here, an omission there, a changed order in another place. They’re so similar, you have to go though the sub-topics line by line to find the differences.
The course is designed around the book. The book is written for the course. A textbook doesn’t get any more “primary” than that.
Whoever tried to pass off Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship as a supplementary text committed what can be described as an ethical lapse, if you want to be kind. I’d call it lying. When people pushing a course with ethics as one of its core components lie, well, I don’t know about you, but I find that amusing, maybe because that feels better than being infuriated.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2018.
There is nothing wrong with exposing TUSD Students to Ideas!! This is the Essential Rational for a Public Education in our Representative Democracy. But the Course Presentation Must be Balanced; forming the basis of an Informed Decision as to the Social Structure that is in the Best Interests of ALL US Citizens!
However, the Course Title: Philosophy 101: Ethics, Economy and Entrepreneurship should be changes to:
“An Introduction of Economics”; with Course Texts:
Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship
by Cathleen Johnson, Robert F. Lusch, and David Schmidtz; and
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Is there a definition of primary text / supplementary text in TUSD policy, David? If so, what is it?
From what Ive seen of TUSD secondary instruction, the only text required for a history course may not be used at all. Tests in some courses are based mainly on lectures and students only choose to use the text as a supplement when, for example, they miss a class and dont feel theyre getting a complete picture of the material from classmates lecture notes theyve borrowed. In cases like this ANY text is supplementary to lecture, which is the primary mode of instruction delivery. Not great preparation for college, but how much that goes on in the district is? Id love to know the exact degree to which TUSD secondary students grades are based on READINGS they have had to do independently and comprehend without having the same material spoon fed to them through the auditory channel.
But no doubt TUSD needs to dump AIMS and have the ACT as its only quality control on the degree to which meaningful instruction is taking place and appropriate goals being met every year, in every grade level.
Right?
Ever been in TUSD secondary classrooms, David? Which ones, and for how long?
Oh, and that other question that never received an answer in the comment streams on this blog: How many long term subs will be covering instruction in TUSD secondary classrooms this fall? Those folks might appreciate having a supplementary text so closely aligned with what they will be expected to deliver in the way of instruction. Makes it easy for them, and this particular course provides double delight in that it is both easy for the unqualified to teach AND it promotes the spread of more privatization and / or outsourcing and / or ruthlessly suppressing labor costs the very same practices for which these subs have their current employment to thank.
Lovely TUSD.
Guess I should say, Sounds like it MAY promote privatization / outsourcing, etc. I have not read the text, just the various course descriptions circulating. To know exactly what the course does promote, I would have to read the (primary / supplementary?) textbook which should now be made available for review. Heres hoping plenty of people DO read it before the next vote on the topic occurs.
The 60 day requirement is silly in this day and age. How many people are going to go down and review the text.
It gives the board a fig leaf anyway.
Yes, the text is clearly a primary textbook. It could not be used for any other course (unless it was, as the first commenter suggested, used as a primer on libertarianism of the 1800s) and the course could not be fully taught with any other text (although I would not be surprised if the FC folks try that next).However, to be a bit more ethical than the course creators are, its only fair to say that a review of the truly supplementary materials that each teacher used last year showed that it was not the ONLY reading that was expected. Nonetheless, you got it right. It was purchased as a “supplemental” text last year, showing once again that the level of Board oversight was nonexistent.
Still waiting for the definition of primary and secondary texts in TUSD policy. Is there one? There should be, when policy dictates that primary texts must be made available for a 60 day review.
Still waiting for an answer to the question of how many secondary teaching positions in TUSD do not yet have a certified teacher who has signed a contract to occupy them for the 2018-2019 school year. (Hint: this kind of information can probably be obtained by public records requests. You know, David. The kinds of things youve been known to submit to chisel information out of Basis. Funny how your *advocacy-for-good-education* energy entirely dissipates when it comes to reporting on what kinds of services students get in TUSD.)
…but you and your friends have blocked the addition of Philosophy 101 as a dual enrollment course AND supported the deletion of yearly AIMS testing in TUSD high schools. So youve accomplished a lot. Surely theres NOTHING else that needs to be done to improve services to TUSD high school students. You and your cohort of devoted servants of the common good can rest your on your laurels for the coming school year and receive the grateful praise of all those parents depending on TUSD to prepare their children for college and / or the workforce.
Hurray for Supporters of Public Schools and their distinguished list of accomplishments! Too bad these accomplishments dont happen to include making the system they favor better than the alternative systems to which they relentlessly try to cut off public access.