David Hilton's Page

The Panda Factories - The New York Times

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

from the beginning, zoos saw panda cubs as a pathway to visitors, prestige and merchandise sales.On that, they have succeeded.

Today, China has removed more pandas from the wild than it has freed, The Times found. No cubs born in American or European zoos, or their offspring, have ever been released. The number of wild pandas remains a mystery because the Chinese government’s count is widely seen as flawed and politicized.

Because pandas are notoriously fickle about mating in captivity, scientists have turned to artificial breeding. That has killed at least one panda, burned the rectum of another and caused vomiting and injuries in others, records show. Some animals were partly awake for painful procedures. Pandas in China have flickered in and out of consciousness as they were anesthetized and inseminated as many as six times in five days, far more often than experts recommend.

Breeding in American zoos has done little to improve genetic diversity, experts say, because China typically sends abroad animals whose genes are already well represented in the population.

Yet American zoos clamor for pandas, and China eagerly provides them. Zoos get attention and attendance. Chinese breeders get cash bonuses for every cub, records show. At the turn of the century, 126 pandas lived in captivity. Today there are more than 700.

Kati Loeffler, a veterinarian, worked at a panda breeding center in Chengdu, China, during the program’s early years. “I remember standing there with the cicadas screaming in the bamboo,” she said. “I realized, ‘Oh my God, my job here is to turn the well-being and conservation of pandas into financial gain.’”

Kimberly Terrell, who was director of conservation at the Memphis Zoo until 2017, said, “There was always pressure and the implication that cubs would bring money.” She noted that zoo administrators insisted on inseminating its aging female panda every year, despite concerns among zookeepers that it was unlikely to succeed. It never did.

“The people who actually worked day to day with these animals, who understand them best, were pretty opposed to these procedures,” she said. The zoo said its breeding efforts followed all program requirements.

The Times collected key documents and audiovisual materials from the Smithsonian archives and supplemented them with materials obtained through open-records requests. The trove, which spans four decades, includes medical records, scientists’ field notes and photographs and videos that offer crucial evidence of breeding procedures, side effects and the conditions in which pandas were held.

They show that the riskiest techniques happened in the program’s infancy, but that aggressive breeding continued at the National Zoo and at other institutions for years. A panda in Japan died during sperm collection in 2010. Chinese breeding centers, until recently, separated cubs from their mothers to make the females go back into heat.

This panda proliferation has prompted debates among zoo workers and scientists over whether it is ethical to subject animals to intensive breeding when they have no real prospect of being released into the wild. But those discussions have largely played out privately because researchers and zookeepers said that criticizing the program could hurt their ability to work in the field.

when a species is on the verge of extinction, conservationists sometimes make a last-ditch effort to save it.

with pandas, zoo administrators take chances again and again simply to make more cubs, while keeping the grimmest details from the public.

Tags: china, propaganda, zoo

by: Javier E

Power Standards: Focusing on the Essential

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Very often, teachers operate under the assumption that all standards are equally important and that they have to ensure that students are taught all of the standards with the same level of intensity each year.

The danger of delivering standards that are an inch deep and a mile wide is that students will inevitably leave a grade level or course with gaps in their learning.

prioritize certain standards and performance indicators, rather than giving each of them an equal amount of attention in the curriculum and on assessments.

teachers collaboratively prioritize their standards

requires teachers to look at the standards vertically. This vertical alignment allows teachers to identify important prerequisite skills students need

higher quality assessments

aligned, purposeful, and essential in identifying those students in need of intervention, remediation, or enrichment.

If a collaborative approach to prioritizing standards is not used, then teachers are forced to choose what they feel is essential. Often those decisions are based on a teacher’s comfort level, availability of resources, or personal preferences. This approach does not give all students access to a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

narrowing the focus

It is far easier for teachers to go in depth when they have fewer priority standards

deepening students’ understanding of essential content, strategies, and skills

debate and discuss the significance of the standards they teach

easier for teachers to choose high quality resources

teachers have clarity around what is essential to teach

We call these prioritized standards “power standards.”

distinguishes the standards that are essential for student success

“those standards that, once mastered, give a student the ability to use reasoning and thinking skills to learn and understand other curriculum objectives.”

support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Part of the problem is that the students don't see many REAL world (ie popular in media) examples of this. They have unsubstantiated claims from both side, demonization of the other side instead of discussion and debate over content and ideas. - Todd Murdock

learning that is essential for success

goes beyond one course or grade level

important in life

students will need to read informational texts proficiently and substantiate their claims using evidence from the text when reading, writing, and speaking

multidisciplinary connections

relevant in other disciplines

learning that is applied both within the content area and in other content areas

standard represents learning that is essential for success

Does this standard contain prerequisite content

think of a triple Venn Diagram, and that for the overall success of students each circle in that Venn Diagram has equal importance

skills necessary for the next

power standards are those that teachers will spend most of their instructional time teaching

standards emphasized on state and national assessments

focus of teacher assessments

If every teacher in the grade level or course is emphasizing something different, you do not have a guaranteed curriculum for students.

Not all standards are equally important at every grade level or in every course

work collaboratively in vertical teams

Tags: Power Standards

by: Todd Murdock

Will the Palestinian Authority Take Over Gaza? - The Atlantic

Tags: israel, Palestine, Authority, gaza

by: Javier E

JOIN, OR DIE: Political and Religious Controversy Over Franklin's Snake Cartoon - Journal of the American Revolution

Comments:

An article for history nerds and interested teachers who want to dig deeper into the materials they use in class. Many, many teachers use this cartoon as the basis for a full lesson or include it in the presentation of content. Teachers should read or even just skim through this article to recognize the vast depth of historical inquiry that lies beneath even the most commonplace elements of their instruction. - Mr Maher

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

May 9, 1754, Franklin published a political cartoon depicting a rattlesnake with the admonishing title, “JOIN, or DIE.”

To Loyalists, the serpent represented Satan, deception, and the spiritual fall of man, proving the treachery of revolutionary thought. To Patriots however, the snake depicted wisdom, vigor, and cohesiveness, especially when the colonies united for a common purpose

. Franklin’s cartoon was resurrected as a potent call for colonial unity against Great Britain, ultimately giving momentum to the religious controversy that would soon follow when Loyalists and Patriots began writing their opinions on what the snake symbolized.

Tags: political cartoons, 5th Grade Unit 3 - American Revolution, 3rd Grade Unit 2 - Colonial New Jersey & The American Revolution, US I Unit 2 - Revolutionary America

by: Mr Maher

Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker

Tags: race, conservation, conservatives, heritage, history, Britain, politics, empire, conservatism, colonialism, education, UK

by: Ed Webb

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Comments:

This source has a ton of resources, primary resources and secondary resources on the Great Migration. I want to have this on hand for when I need to teach this someday. - caseymoriart

Tags: history, ushistory, blackhistory, GreatMigration, Culture, Art, Letters, Paintings

by: caseymoriart

The United States Magazine and Democratic Review - Google Books

Comments:

Almost every US History teacher tells students about Manifest Destiny, boiling down an explanation of the term to about eight words in a bullet point of a 18 slides presentation that students dutifully copy and recognize out of four other distractors in a multiple choice question. This is the article the phrase comes from - teachers should be forced to read it and explain why they think their teaching of the phrase does any justice to history at all - Mr Maher

Tags: primary source, US I Unit 5 Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism, pedagogy, teaching history

by: Mr Maher

Blame game erupts over Trump’s decline in youth vote - POLITICO

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

For instance, a post-election study by the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University showed that 60 percent of Trump voters between the ages of 18 and 29 believe racism is a “somewhat or very serious issue,” compared to 52 percent of Trump voters above 45 years old. Similar gaps emerged when young Trump voters were asked about the importance of climate change (52 percent said they were “concerned” versus 40 percent of older Trump voters) and their self-proclaimed identity (61 percent identify as conservative versus 74 percent of older Trump voters).

Tags: youth, vote, trump, climate change

by: Javier E

The American Yawp

Comments:

A good collection of primary sources in US history - David Korfhage

Tags: history, ushistory, primarysource

by: David Korfhage

China Razed Thousands of Xinjiang Mosques in Assimilation Push, Report Says - WSJ

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

New research shows Chinese authorities have razed or damaged two-thirds of the mosques in China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, further illuminating the scope of a forced cultural-assimilation campaign targeting millions of Uighur Muslims.

the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said satellite imagery showed that roughly 8,500 mosques, close to a third of the region’s total, have been demolished since 2017. Another 7,500 have sustained damage

Important Islamic sacred sites, including shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, were also demolished, damaged or altered, the study found.

“The Chinese government’s destruction of cultural heritage aims to erase, replace and rewrite what it means to be Uyghur,”

China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday repeated its claims that Xinjiang has around 24,000 mosques and that the number of them per capita among Muslims in Xinjiang is higher than in many Muslim countries. It said that China fully protects the human and religious rights of all ethnic minorities and described the ASPI report as “smear and rumor.” It denied the existence of detention camps in Xinjiang.

ASPI estimated that around half of important Islamic sacred sites—many of which are supposed to be protected under Chinese law—have been damaged or altered since 2017.

The report estimated there are fewer than 15,500 mosques left intact in Xinjiang, the lowest number since the 1980s, when Uighurs had just begun rebuilding mosques destroyed during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Most of the land where mosques were razed remained vacant, it said.

The campaign is part of a longer-term trend to transform communities in the name of public safety. The strategy has gained pace under President Xi Jinping who has called for the “Sinicization” of religion

During a visit the following month, the Journal found that some facilities had indeed been closed, with former detainees sometimes sent away to work in factories. One facility had been converted into a prison after being previously described as a school.

Of the dozens of facilities ASPI identified as recently under construction, roughly half were higher-security facilities. The most-secure facilities had high walls, multiple layers of perimeter barriers, watchtowers and dozens of cell blocks with no apparent outside exercise yard for detainees

Authorities are likely singling out people who they have lost hope of re-educating and putting them into long periods of incarceration, said Mr. Leibold. It is “the only way to really explain their pretty remarkable expansion,”

One challenge in pressuring China’s government over its Xinjiang policies is the relative silence of Muslim-majority countries. ASPI made its work available in 10 different languages to try to raise awareness beyond the English-speaking world

Tags: china, xinjiang, Uighur, religion, repression

by: Javier E

Valerie Hansen article on global connections in the Middle Ages - Eric Beckman

Tags: World History, World History AP, Exchange Networks, Medieval History

by: Eric Beckman

The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

Comments:

An online exhibition from the Museum of the American Indian about the Great Inka Road, using it to examine the history of the Inka empire - David Korfhage

Tags: history, worldhistory, inca

by: David Korfhage

European History Crash Course Notes

Comments:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1taps7Fy94O-6dQC4gLMdunddxsyTHxlI2bqo3tBXe-4/edit?usp=sharing
- caseymoriart

Tags: no_tag

by: caseymoriart

Crash Course Notes

Comments:

US history Crash Course Notes
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pzAS5_P8EPOX_5_S8trWmCrMZ97hosCzUqAIbvi-IIQ/edit?usp=sharing

World History I Crash Course Notes https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g56F8oiJRU0WyOjePzWMvMv0zQg6WVUXWEjq1mV_GiM/edit?usp=sharing

World History II Crash Course Notes
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18yo-sXLVZ0J-BPwvLEpYD95Rl9SVDzlXw-rIo0UI1CY/edit - caseymoriart
I added them to the history section of Academic Subjects Libraryies
http://www.textbooksfree.org/academic%20subjects%20libraries.htm#Health - Walter Antoniotti
Thank you very much! A very useful tool to complement another very useful tool!

However, when I tried to open the WH II file I received the error message that I did not have viewing access. - Javier E