Posted on 03/09/2006 11:57:18 AM PST by bubbabuddha
One of the biggest problems confronting higher education is the fact that most students entering colleges and universities lack basic social science skills and knowledge. In a recent survey of college students in Buffalo, for example, almost half did not know who George Pataki is. Eighty percent had no idea, correct or incorrect, as to what communism is. Nearly the same number of students couldn’t define capitalism. For whatever reason, social science education in America has collapsed at the high school level. For a democracy that relies on an informed electorate, such ignorance is toxic.
(Excerpt) Read more at artvoice.com ...
"He writes that the main objective of his class is 'to help students to think for themselves, and to become independent, responsible, upright young adults. This entails showing respect, consideration, and tolerance to all people and ideas in an academic context.'
What I heard him doing on the tape was not to help students to think for themselves, but helping them know what to think. I would be just as offended if the teacher were saying similar things about one of Nancy Reed's speeches.
IBTZ?
I wish I could find that story of the teacher who was told, under threat of disciplinary action, to take down a picture of George Washington kneeling in prayer before crossing the Potomac.
Your point is excellent.
Never had "human geography" in my high school. I think they expected us to learn it in the back seat of the car.
IBTZ.
I am not going to bother listing the lies is this creep's anti-American screed. They have been discussed here on FR for a week.
Mr. Bennish cured my hemmorhoids!
I too, am bored with Mr. Nebbish, but he is an example of something far too common in the schools and the topic needs to be thoroughly discussed.
Yep, I learned it that way too. From the Grand Tetons to the fertile delta...this land is your land, this land is my land...everybody sing along!
LOL
Proving once again the spell-checker is not omniscient.
Well, I didn't know some of us had so much invested in tearing down paper tigers, which is what Bennet is IMHO. Come, on guys, he looks like that hippie from BnB, that was always getting the crap kicked out of him! Ha ha! There are far more insidious targets and the fact that kids don't even know what Capitalism is, that depresses me much more.
Whether he was a favorite punching bag of high-schoolers is beside the point. The bigger question is whether teachers should be pushing their own political viewpoint upon students who mostly will just parrot his opinion as gospel.
Geopolitics: analyses politics, history and social science with reference to geography. In other words, it studies the political and strategic significance of geography; where geography is defined in terms of the location, size, and resources of places.
Yeah, that's exactly what this stupid teacher was teaching his kids. NOT. Paleeze. His schpeel and geopolitics are two completely different things.
I hope this does not put a nail into this story's coffin. It is just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. There is a place and time for vigourous political debate but a math, english or geography high school class is not usually the place. A one-sided, anti-American, political attack usually makes students feel intimidated and less likely to voice their own opinions given the power the teachers have over the students' grades. The best teacher my son says he ever had was a history teacher who kept his political biases out of class. Even after the class was over, my son had no idea which way the teacher leaned politically. I think that is what we want out of our teachers. He presented both sides of each issue and encouraged a variety of responses and free debate without any kind of intimidation. We want teachers who actually teach the subject for which they are paid and do not spend 50% of the class spewing their personal opinions.
Uh huh. It certainly is more important for this geography teacher to indoctrinate his students in Marxist agitprop than to teach them actual geography.
The problem of politics in the classrooms maybe not just a teacher issue but a student one as well.
Kids would start to do this:
Well, I better not express myself, cause then my teacher might disagree with my opinion or tell me it's political or not relevant. What happens then, no discussion with any real meat occurs. No debate, no cognitive dissonance, etc.
I've experienced this in even a college classroom and I felt as if the teacher was muzzling my opinion. It leads me to wonder if classrooms are more about indocrination instead of information, because the information even if not obviously political can contain subtle undertones or persuasion. Where do we draw the line?
It seems untenable to me to deny first amendment rights on the basis of cognitive dissonance caused by political discussion that might occur occasionally or briefly in a semester. Cognitive dissonance seems to me a natural outcome of vigorus discussion of whatever is at hand, be it geography or biology or ethics.
With respect to his assertion that he was sparking thinking and the school policy that both sides be given. I would argue that his presentation was so wacko that it represents a tiny minority in America, surely not one of two sides.
Exactly...That's why it is so laughable to me that some people are sticking up for his version that he was only trying to stimulate the students.
I believe mast people can identify a political rant when they hear it.
If it is a minority opinion then why the uproar? I really don't understand why the need to inform me of the subject ,etc. I mean it's all I've heard on most of the talk shows. I thought the end of the school system was upon us.
I agree he has a opinion, but to amplify somebody's opinion to some terrible disease inflicting our children our worse corrupting their minds, just seems to me a bit over the top. Politics infects everything in a sense. What technologies evolve, what papers get published, what art becomes mainstream, what ideas get expressed or what business gets done. I wish it was not so, but that's reality. Schooling in and of itself is a political institution, a place for pavlovian bells and various other forms of mind control, a place to create effecient worker bees and exploit the most gifted. Who are we kidding?Most of us have all gone through this system, have we not? To imply these kids can't handle teachers like this guy is to imply we wouldn't as well. He's nothing, just some guy teaching a class. Maybe next year we will have HAL9000 teachers and spayed and neutered curricula, God, I hope not.
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