The name of the blog artofteachingscience.org has been changed to jackhassard.org.  It’s a seamless change.

I began writing the artofteachingscience blog in May of 2005, and now 14 years later, the focus of my original blog has broadened.  For years I wrote about science teaching, inquiry learning, learning how to learn, the evolution wars, and other issues related to science education.  If you click on this link, you’ll be brought to the same blog, but with a new name.

Over the years, I’ve published more than 1,200 posts.  Many of my posts were featured on National Education Policy Center blog which features researcher perspective on various education policy issues. I also used the content of the posts to create a series of e-books highlighting significant issues that emerged over the period from 2005 – 2016.  Titles included:

• The Enigma of High-Stakes Testing in Science
• Extreme Earth: The Importance of the Geosciences in Science Teaching
• The Mischief of Standardized Teaching and Learning: How Authoritarianism is Damaging Public Education with its Canopy of a Common Core, High-Stakes Tests and Market-Based Hooey
• Why Do We Teach Science?
• Investigating the National Council on Teacher Quality: The Devil is in the Detail
• Evolution by Design
• Science Standards
• The Artistry of Teaching: Exploring the Cornerstone of Teaching

But as time went by, the topics that I chose to write about moved away from science education per se, and into other realms of education, including political events that impinge on not only education, but the whole of our lives.

For years, conservative politicians and think tanks, funded by big money from a small number of families and groups, made a concerted effort to alter the state of our union by beginning to influence state governments.  ALEC, the right wing “bill mill” has managed to inflict its narrow way of thinking into state legislatures by influencing environmental and energy laws, education, guns, privatizing schools, voter rights, taxes, and worker rights. ALEC and the election of George Bush paved the way for what happened in the election of 2016.

Education was beginning to give way to authoritarian policies, and the privatization move funded by the groups I mentioned above.  Charter schools, which I wrote about for years, and tried to show were less effective than public schools, still have made inroads into public schools, especially in urban areas.

The presidential election of 2016 had the most impact in the nature of this blog.  One of the posts I wrote in that awful month, was A Clear and Present Danger—How the New Administration Endangers Us All.

Several areas of content will form the focus for the blog, and these include the following:

Authoritarianism—Authoritarian spray is inflicting harm on the fabric of America’s democracy, and we need to call this out, and make sure that it is stopped in its tracks.

Climate and Nuclear Threats—We live in an age of twin menaces, climate change and nuclear weapons. The current administration has played havoc with the EPA, and it is planning to completley replace the United States nuclear arsenal.  Climate change is evidenced daily by extreme events including hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, flooding, and drought. 

Environmental Activism—The degradation of environmental protections has produced an emerging state of unease among citizens and scientists. 

 I hope to write about these topics and others, and use progressive ideals as the cornerstone of the blog. There is a strong movement to stand up against the wealthy and powerful who have benefited from the present administration.  I hope to join this movement by continuing to write about issues that impinge on human rights, environmental protection, as well as climate science, and nuclear threats.