Re: Bioethics
by Burke, Mack
Those are excellent points Dr. Eslami.
Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who later became a Catholic priest and bioethics advisor to George Bush the sr. said “Culture shapes politics, and religion is at the root of culture”
Jim Kauffman and the late Gary Sasso (was Dean at University of Iowa) and passed away 2 years ago from cancer- wrote this piece and critiqued whole language, "radical multiculturalism," and facilitated communication in 2010. Of the three- cultural relativism and multi-culturalism are what people are going to have to figure out right now- and the difference between “universals and particulars” and what the “sweet spot” is…
I think about the situation of Afghan refugee families, particularly those with disabled children, and the cultural dilemmas they face. There is a prevailing Western Enlightenment view rooted in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle that is now seen as outdated. This view presupposes some sort of universal elements within the human condition, hence terms like "humanism" and "Christian Humanism." However, we are moving away from universal concepts in education. The current multicultural conception, particularly its radical or hard form, focuses on hardening identity and traditions within groups. And tradition is conservative by necessity, as they help to define individual identity.
For example, consider what might occur when an Afghan family, having fled their home country, and their faith and community is the only thing keeping them afloat—and religiosity by the way is a known protective factor in prevention science literature for those reasons. But what happens when their child comes home and wants to be referred to with gender pronouns like "they"? There is going to be to a clash of civilizations and worldviews- the normative values are too different driving the underlying views.
And the current postmodern ideologies in education seem to encourage students with autism and female adolescents into this direction as disproportionate rates than one would expect. And then, the underlying gender ideology rejects empirically-based scientific viewpoints, resists scrutiny and questioning, and operates in a manner akin to religious belief, grounded in its own ideological premises. Outside the West- it is referred to as “Western ideological colonization”…how is that for a term…or “Western Decadence”- and as Neuhaus said- Culture shapes politics, and religion is at the root of culture”- but religion is broadly defined in the sense that- everyone- even the non-religious- have a world view that is informed by something- some ism or ideology that functions and provides some kind of value- based framework- whether they realize it or not- even my secular- materialist friends of whom I have many…
As someone who takes pride in being from the South but is committed to its progress or a working toward a new South- I am always the bad guy in the films it seems- I can't help but think that promoting the strict or hard forms of multiculturalism without balanced by universal human experiences will inevitably lead to problems. At the end of the day- this is what you get:
https://archive.org/details/takeyourchoice3/mode/2up?utm_source=substack&...
The review from 2022 is not very encouraging from whoever wrote it- Pandora's Box has been re/opened. My reflection is not meant to disparage anyone—I come from a time when open inquiry meant that nothing was off-limits for discussion. Which I don’t do with undergrads anymore- but doctoral students have to be anti-fragile. And I've learned that we must distinguish between what "is" from what "ought" to be. We live in a very strange, extremely complicated, and often opaque time right now and it will require many intelligent/smart people with a lot of heterodox thinking to resolve our thorny educational issues- MDB
PS- the smart people by the way are all of you…we need help figuring all this out...MDB
From: Eslami, Zohreh R. <zeslami(a)tamu.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 4:20 PM
To: Burke, Mack <Mack_Burke(a)baylor.edu>, project.leer(a)lists.it.utsa.edu <project.leer(a)lists.it.utsa.edu>, project.diverse(a)lists.it.utsa.edu <project.diverse(a)lists.it.utsa.edu>
Subject: RE: Bioethics
Thanks for sharing these thoughtful, debatable, socially and culturally loaded issues and then most important is the role of religion.
It gives us lots of research ideas as well.! Which societies would choose one vs the other option? Why? Which individuals? The level of religiosity and its relation to these decisions to be made. Individuality vs collectivism?....
Best
Zohreh
Dr. Eslami
From: Burke, Mack <Mack_Burke(a)baylor.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 5:41 PM
To: project.leer(a)lists.it.utsa.edu; project.diverse(a)lists.it.utsa.edu
Subject: [Project.diverse] Bioethics
Some of you might like- Just got back from judging a Bioethics competition that my dear friend and colleague Dr. Carter got me roped into…it was a great multi-cultural cross section of very smart philosophy students- some the most anti-fragile
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Some of you might like- Just got back from judging a Bioethics competition that my dear friend and colleague Dr. Carter got me roped into…it was a great multi-cultural cross section of very smart philosophy students- some the most anti-fragile undergrads I have seen in years- a couple prepping for med school- descend on Baylor from across the country to debate incredibly difficult questions there is no clear answer- like: is it morally ethical for someone with a disability to use germline genetic therapy/genetic editing to remove the genetic basis of their disability and eliminate future suffering for their offspring and for future generations- basically eradicating it. An extension of current logic in many areas. For example, there are no people with Down’s Syndrome for example in Iceland and many Nordic countries.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-ice...>
And is a recuring issue in the UK-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/mps-bring-bill-to-ban-late-...<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/...>
And likely will see it as a robust issue in the US as there is a strong pro-life disability advocacy group- especially among traditional Catholics and the faith based community which will put the issue of disability and choice on the front burner- who in a related issue- just put out an encyclical letter critiquing gender theory. People forget- social justice is a deeply religious idea- the person who coined the term was Luigi Tapreli- a Jesuit priest in 1848 and serves as the bases of Catholic Social Teaching. In today’s language- it is a cultural appropriation in the way it is currently being used politically. So- expect more cultural conflicts on that front as those of faith reassert its original meanings.
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/vatican-human-dignity-docu...<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news...>
Interestingly- the counter point used in the Bioethics competition was from Elizabeth Barnes- a disability studies professor who is in the Philosophy Department at University of Virginia and the mere difference view. I was looking at some of her views- which are interesting- I had to do my own homework.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677021?seq=16<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677021?se...>
Reminds me of Jim Kaufman’s piece on Disability Chic- based on the fad going around in the fashion world of “Heroin Chic” at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic__;!!...>
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09362835.2017.1283632<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0...>
and people giving themselves a disability- which is a mental illness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_d...>
I think this was circulating some time ago- but not sure about its- veracity-
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-woman-who-put-drain-cleaner-in-her-eye...<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.huffpost.com/entry/why-woman-who-p...>
https://www.snopes.com/news/2015/10/02/jewel-shuping-blind/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.snopes.com/news/2015/10/02/jewel-s...>
Strange times/strange issues and debates…MDB
Mack D. Burke, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Psychology
Applied Behavior Analysis and Special Education Programs
Behavioral Education & Assessment Research (BEAR Lab)
School of Education, Baylor University
7 months, 1 week
Bioethics
by Burke, Mack
Some of you might like- Just got back from judging a Bioethics competition that my dear friend and colleague Dr. Carter got me roped into…it was a great multi-cultural cross section of very smart philosophy students- some the most anti-fragile undergrads I have seen in years- a couple prepping for med school- descend on Baylor from across the country to debate incredibly difficult questions there is no clear answer- like: is it morally ethical for someone with a disability to use germline genetic therapy/genetic editing to remove the genetic basis of their disability and eliminate future suffering for their offspring and for future generations- basically eradicating it. An extension of current logic in many areas. For example, there are no people with Down’s Syndrome for example in Iceland and many Nordic countries.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
And is a recuring issue in the UK-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/mps-bring-bill-to-ban-late-...
And likely will see it as a robust issue in the US as there is a strong pro-life disability advocacy group- especially among traditional Catholics and the faith based community which will put the issue of disability and choice on the front burner- who in a related issue- just put out an encyclical letter critiquing gender theory. People forget- social justice is a deeply religious idea- the person who coined the term was Luigi Tapreli- a Jesuit priest in 1848 and serves as the bases of Catholic Social Teaching. In today’s language- it is a cultural appropriation in the way it is currently being used politically. So- expect more cultural conflicts on that front as those of faith reassert its original meanings.
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/vatican-human-dignity-docu...
Interestingly- the counter point used in the Bioethics competition was from Elizabeth Barnes- a disability studies professor who is in the Philosophy Department at University of Virginia and the mere difference view. I was looking at some of her views- which are interesting- I had to do my own homework.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677021?seq=16
Reminds me of Jim Kaufman’s piece on Disability Chic- based on the fad going around in the fashion world of “Heroin Chic” at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09362835.2017.1283632
and people giving themselves a disability- which is a mental illness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria
I think this was circulating some time ago- but not sure about its- veracity-
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-woman-who-put-drain-cleaner-in-her-eye...
https://www.snopes.com/news/2015/10/02/jewel-shuping-blind/
Strange times/strange issues and debates…MDB
Mack D. Burke, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Psychology
Applied Behavior Analysis and Special Education Programs
Behavioral Education & Assessment Research (BEAR Lab)
School of Education, Baylor University
7 months, 2 weeks
FW: Free Chick-fil-A lunch and Friday Forum on Unlocking Second Chances for Adults with Criminal Records
by Burke, Mack
For those of you interested in older students, alternative settings, school-to prison pipeline type issues- there are spaces where conservatives/liberals/progressives should be able to find agreement- I keep thinking this is one of them and perhaps for juvenile justice as well. I don’t know how we got to a point in society where it is 1 in 3- although that number includes arrest status and not necessary a felonies (I think it is a 80/20 split). It is a far cry from the 1980s where the term “latchkey” kids was the issue (kids letting themselves in when they got home from school because no one was home). Not sure what the juvenile stats look like currently-but it is a similar issue from last time I visited the detention center over at Marlin- I keep thinking about the risk/protective factor framework endorsed by CDC and at one time- the rationale for SWPBIS was focused/organized around those recommendations in the context of youth violence prevention - it seems like there are lots of “ecumenical” discussions that could occur- MDB
From: Susan Gates, PhD <info(a)faithandlaw.org>
Date: Friday, April 12, 2024 at 12:01 PM
To: Burke, Mack <Mack_Burke(a)baylor.edu>
Subject: Free Chick-fil-A lunch and Friday Forum on Unlocking Second Chances for Adults with Criminal Records
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FRIDAY FORUM
Unlocking Second Chances: Balancing public safety with successful reentry for the 1 in 3 American adults with a criminal record
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Over 70 million adults in the U.S. have a criminal record. These individuals face over 44,000 government-imposed barriers to work, housing, education, and civil rights that limit their efforts to become responsible stewards of their families and communities. How can churches, businesses, law enforcement, and policymakers better unlock second chances for Americans who have paid their debt to society?
Please join us as we host Prison Fellowship<https://faithandlaw.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5ac511ea637f68c459...> for a conversation about the importance of strategies that protect public safety and promote success for individuals with a criminal record.
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* Pastor Kenneth Jones, Lead Pastor, Redeemer City Church
* Matt Martens, Attorney & Author
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Audio and video recordings of this seminar will be available in our online audio archive<https://faithandlaw.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5ac511ea637f68c459...> after the event.
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Faith and Law
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7 months, 2 weeks
Voices from the Field
by Burke, Mack
Cool interviews from doctoral scholars in OSEP sister projects- especially this quote:
“To truly make a difference, I needed to engage with all three realms. Research informs policy; policy shapes practice; practice, in turn, informs research. It’s a cycle of continuous learning and improvement, and I now see that my role is to participate in this cycle, not as a bystander but actively. This triad of research, policy, and practice is interrelated and interdependent — each one’s existence and efficacy are contingent on the others.”
https://exceptionalchildren.org/blog/osers-features-work-its-doctoral-sch...
“I wanted to understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ — to delve into the systemic disparities that set children on such divergent paths from the start. My aim was clear: to ensure that every child, no matter their economic background, had access to a beginning as shiny and promising as those kids in the higher-income neighborhoods.”
On this second quote- I would encourage those of you interested in early intervention/early childhood to take a look at Hart and Risley’s Meaningful Differences- a seminal work in the area of early language development, poverty and SES- language differences vary by type, frequency, and complexity and correlate with speaking, listening, reading, and writing in childhood development (all those things we are interested in in Bilingual special education since communication plays such a big issue). Then- it in turn- correlates with vocabulary- and academic and cognitive ability (i.e., IQ). There is a reason everyone in early childhood education pushes parents to read daily to their children…
https://products.brookespublishing.com/Meaningful-Differences-in-the-Ever...
“Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to know why, despite best efforts in preschool programs to equalize opportunity, children from low-income homes remain well behind their more economically advantaged peers years later in school. Each month, they recorded one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Two and a half years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to four years, a child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, while an average child in a welfare family would hear just 13 million—coining the phrase the 30 million word gap.”
MDB
7 months, 2 weeks
Mississippi ‘miracle’
by Burke, Mack
Was revisiting this- as some people I know are involved at the state level.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/kids-reading-scores-have-soared-in...
My guess- only a matter of time before it is debunked out of existence, not really helped by the current progressive left who seems to undercut evidence in education. Don’t really understand why, because in other areas- they promote evidence (e.g., environment) but that has been the repeated trend in educational politics for as long as I have been in the field.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/7/18/23799124/mississippi-miracle-test-sco...
We have in the past argued for a right to an education, right to a special education- but then- we need to follow it up with a right to read, a right to critical thinking, right to quality teaching, right to numeracy, right to a safe and respectful learning environment, right to social-emotional well-being, right to fair and consistent discipline, right to a positive school climate, right to specially designed instruction, right to evidence-based supportive interventions, and in this climate- perhaps start making the case that the “disenfranchised and marginalized” have a right to evidence-based practice as well- something the SJ folks don’t seem to want to talk about….or at least when I mention it- the room gets awfully quiet- need to make the case for evidence informed justice in special education and disability.
If you listen to the Doug Canine talk- he makes a strong case that the failure to provide evidence-based practices to minority and disadvantaged is discrimination or at least a sin of omission- and in reading- there is no other area that we know what to do- we have repeated decades of research from basic research in neuroscience and eye tracking to cognitive psychology to reading disabilities on how to teach reading- as he says- providing non-evidence based instruction to students of color is a form of unintended racism- it is something we know how to do- but won’t because of ideology.
https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/play/Mn-Gem1_NIpfmDItpXetzoP73Sa6RvSVw1KbowW_...
Things to thing about- MDB
7 months, 2 weeks
SCR standards
by Burke, Mack
Jennifer Ledford from Vandy presented on a set of standards she and some others have put forward for SCR at the BK conference. I pulled them to take a look. It is a good discussion- basically- she is worried that people are interpreting the research standards sometimes in a way that is overly rigid. And that is likely true- evidence-based practices are better thought of I think with a “best available evidence standard” rather than a yes/no- and it is a multi- part question- What works, for whom, under what conditions? And on what outcomes? Nothing works for everyone- all the time, and then, some things that don’t work for most will occasionally work for someone…here is the special issue that contains commentary across all the methods.
MDB
7 months, 2 weeks
Path of Totality
by Burke, Mack
Don’t forget your eclipse glasses for the path of totality- MDB
7 months, 2 weeks
Martin Luther King on truth and the purpose of education
by Burke, Mack
I was looking through some of the MLK stuff- there is a pitch fight over his legacy- one lead by Cornell West from Harvard- basically- the Marxist- Leninist view of MLK, and the more liberal/democratic/conservative MLK lead by some family members. I came across this one that was interesting on issues related to the purpose of education, truth, and morality- also thought this was a nice quote related to what it means to be a scholar.
“To my mind, education has a two-fold function in society. On the one hand it should discipline the mind for sustained and persistent speculation. On the other hand it should integrate human life around central, focusing ideals. It is a tragedy that the latter is often neglected in our educational system.
Education should equip us with the power to think effectively and objectively. To think is one of the hardest things in the world, and to think objectively is still harder. Yet this is the job of education. Education should cause us to rise beyond the horizon of legions of half truth, prejudices and propaganda. Education should enable us to “weigh and consider,” to discern the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real from the unreal.1<https://kinginstitute.sites.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-ed...> The first function of education, therefore, is to teach man to think intensively. But this is not the whole of education. If education stops here it can be the most dangerous force in society. Some of the greatest criminals in society have been men {who) possessed the power of concentration and reason, but they had no morals. Perhaps the most dangerous periods in civilization have been those periods when there was no moral foundation in society.
Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere. It is not enough to have the power of concentration, but we must have worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and sacrifice for it.”
Two other points of trivia- his favorite philosopher was the German Philosopher Hegel and he was named by his father after the German protestant reformer- Martin Luther- not sure how the German influence on him would be interpreted in today’s climate- perhaps it is why many in academia currently actually do not like him- and my guess- is there is a large academic divide on interpreting his intellectual legacy either way...MDB
https://kinginstitute.sites.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-ed...
7 months, 2 weeks
