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.
Apparently, it was neither brief nor occasional in Bennish's case however. And whose denying anyone first amendment rights? People who cannot contain their own personal, political opinions while teaching class such that it affects the students' abilities to actually learn the subject at hand, should instead give speeches in appropriate settings, write editorials, conduct group discussions in the evenings, work at a radio station at night, hold signs on corners etc.... but not on our dime.