Posted on 03/02/2006 3:38:43 AM PST by Glacier Honey
The Overland High educator is on administrative leave. Cherry Creek's superintendent said a balanced viewpoint will be given to students.
An Overland High School teacher who criticized President Bush, capitalism and U.S. foreign policy during his geography class was placed on administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after a student who recorded the session went public with the tape.
In the 20-minute recording, made on an MP3 player, teacher Jay Bennish described capitalism as a system "at odds with human rights." He also said there were "eerie similarities" between what Bush said during his Jan. 28 State of the Union address and "things that Adolf Hitler used to say."
The United States was "probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth," Bennish also said on the tape.
Bennish, who has been part of Overland's social studies faculty since 2000, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday. Cherry Creek School District officials are investigating the incident, but no disciplinary action has been taken, district spokeswoman Tustin Amole said.
Bennish was placed on leave "to take some of the pressure off of him" during the investigation, which could wrap up in a week, Amole said.
Superintendent Monte Moses, who received a copy of the recording on Monday from 850 KOA-AM radio show host Mike Rosen, said it appears "a breach of district policy" occurred.
"Our policy calls for both sides to be present ... in the interest of intellectual discourse," Moses said. Bennish's presentation appeared to be unbalanced, he said.
The district is looking into whether the incident was an isolated one and will ensure that a balanced viewpoint of the president's State of the Union address is provided to students, Moses said.
Moses also said the district will be fair to Bennish. "People in life make mistakes occasionally," he said. "We address them. We learn from them."
The 20-minute recording of only a portion of the class was made by 16-year-old sophomore Sean Allen the day after the president's speech. The recording has raised questions about what level of academic freedom is acceptable for high school teachers. It also has generated discussions about Bennish on dozens of websites.
Sean, who appeared on Rosen's show Wednesday morning, said in an interview he had been disturbed by the "political rants" he heard in Bennish's class. He added that he wanted to tape the session for his father, who later shared it with the media.
Sean, who described himself as a political independent, said the comments seemed inappropriate for a geography class.
"If he wants to give an opinion in class, I'm perfectly OK with that," he said. "But he has to give both sides of the story."
James McGrath Morris, an author who has written about academic freedom issues, said Bennish's comments are acceptable for an adult audience, but they are hard to defend in a high school classroom.
In a number of legal cases, courts have ruled that "up until the age of majority, children are easily influenced ... in a way that they don't have the faculties to sort out rights from wrongs," Morris said.
NO MORE! PLEASE!!! LOL
(happy ID to you too! Now go make a brisket!)
The mind controllers of the Left defend the use of classrooms for this kind of rhetoric as "academic freedom." In reality, it is political indoctrination, inasmuch as students, in most cases, must regurgitate such a world view and philosophy on tests and exams in order to get good grades.
The time has come for American citizens to wrest control of the education of their children from the unions and bureaucracies!
I just looked through the Colorado statutes and can't find anything that prevents a person visibly present from recording a speaker. Well, that is if the intent was not for sale of or profit from the recording (and that's if you classify the rant as a "performance").
We're probably just left with school policy.
I don't know why, but I love that movie. (FYI, the next scene the prof put up tape player to play his lecture to their recorders)
Laura is on this right now.
Colorado law hinges all aspects of eavesdropping on the listener not being visbly present. This kid was.
This story is big here in Denver (where my flight has been canceled this morning...grr): A 16-year-old World Geography student taped his Bush-bashing, capitalism-hating high school teacher's screeching diatribe.
Here's the audio. You have to listen to believe it.
Teacher Jay Bennish: Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?!Unidentified brainwashed student interjects: We are.
Bennish: The United States of America!
More:
Bennish: I'm not saying Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they're not. OK? But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use. Very "ethnocentric."
Update: Ok, I'm transcribing the whole, crazy screed. I'll post in progress:
Bennish: [tape begins with class already underway. Bennish completing an unintelligble statement about Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.] Why do we have troops in Colombia fighting in their civil war for over 30 years. Most Americans don't even know this. For over 30 years, America has had soldiers fighting in Colombia in a civil war. Why are we fumigating coca crops in Bolivia and Peru if we're not trying to control other parts of the world. Who buys cocaine? Not Bolivians. Not Peruvians. Americans! Ok. Why are we destroying the farmers' lives when we're the ones that consume that good.Can you imagine? What is the world's number one single cause of death by a drug? What drug is responsible for the most deaths in the world? Cigarettes! Who is the world's largest producer of cigarettes and tobacco? The United States!
What part of our country grows all our tobacco? Anyone know what states in particular? Mostly what's called North Carolina. Alright. That's where all the cigarette capitals are. That's where a lot of them are located from. Now if we have the right to fly to Bolivia or Peru and drop chemical weapons on top of farmers' fields because we're afraid they might be growing coca and that could be turned into cocaine and sold to us, well then don't the Peruvians and the Iranians and the Chinese have the right to invade America and drop chemical weapons over North Carolina to destroy the tobacco plants that are killing millions and millions of people in their countries every year and causing them billions of dollars in health care costs?
Make sure you get these definitions down.
Capitalism: If you don't understand the economic system of capitalism, you don't understand the world in which we live. Ok. Economic system in which all or most of the means of production, etc., are owned privately and operated in a somewhat competitive environment for the purpose of producing PROFIT! Of course, you can shorten these definitions down. Make sure you get the gist of it. Do you see how when, you know, when you're looking at this definition, where does it say anything about capitalism is an economic system that will provide everyone in the world with the basic needs that they need? Is that a part of this system? Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It's at odds with human rights.
Anytime you have a system that is designed to procure profit, when profit is the bottom motive -- money -- that means money is going to become more important potentially than what? Safety, human lives, etc.
Why did we invade Iraq?! How do we know that the invasion of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction-- even if weapons had been found, how would you have known, how could you prove--that that was not a real reason for us to go there.
There are dozens upon dozens of countries that have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is one of dozens. There are plenty of countries that are controlled by dictators, where people have no freedom, where they have weapons of mass destruction and they could be potentially threatening to America. We're not invading any of those countries!
0345.
[Pause.]
I'll give you guys another minute or two to get some of these [definitions] down. I agree with Joey. Try to condense these a little bit. I took these straight out of the dictionary.
Anyone in here watch any of Mr. Bush's [State of the Union] speech last night? I'm gonna talk a little about some of things he had to say.
0452
...One of things that I'll bring up now, since some of you are still writing, is, you know, Condoleezza Rice said this the other day and George Bush reiterated it last night. And the implication was that the solution to the violence in the Middle East is democratization. And the implication through his language was that democracies don't go to war. Democracies aren't violent. Democracies won't want weapons of mass destruction. This is called blind, naive faith in democracy!
0530.
Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?!
Unidentified brainwashed student interjects: We are.
The United States of America! And we're a democracy. Quote-unquote.
Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world? The United States.
Who's continuing to develop new weapons of mass destruction as we speak?!
The United States.So, why does Mr. Bush think that other countries that are democracies won't wanna be like us? Why does he think they'll just wanna be at peace with each other?! What makes him think that when the Palestinians get their own state that they won't wanna preemptively invade Israel to eliminate a potential threat to their security just like we supposedly did in Iraq?! Do you see the dangerous precedent that we have set by illegally invading another country and violating their sovereignty in the name of protecting us against a potential future--sorry--attack? [Unintelligible.]
0625.
Why doesn't Mexico invade Guatemala? Maybe they're scared of being attacked. Ok. Why doesn't North Korea invade South Korea?! They might be afraid of being attacked. Or maybe Iran and North Korea and Saudi Arabia and what else did he add to the list last night - and Zimbabwe - maybe they're all gonna team up and try and invade us because they're afraid we might invade them. I mean, where does this cycle of violence end? You know?
This whole "do as I say, not as I do" thing. That doesn't work. What was so important about President Bush's speech last night--and it doesn't matter if it was President Clinton still it would just as important) is that it's not just a speech to America. But who? The whole world! It's very obvious that if you listen to his language, if you listen to his body language, and if you paid attention to what he was saying, he wasn't always just talking to us. He was talking to the whole planet. Addressing the whole planet!
He started off his speech talking about how America should be the country that dominates the world. That we have been blessed essentially by God to have the most civilized, most advanced, best system and that it is our duty as Americans to use the military to go out into the world and make the whole world like us.
0759.
Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler use to say.
We're the only ones who are right. Everyone else is backwards. And it's our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to.
Now, I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. Obviously, they are not. But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use. Very, very "ethnocentric." We're right. You're all wrong.
(Hat tip: Tony J.)
Update: The teacher has been put on leave. I think he needs medical help. Via the Rocky Mountain News:
An Overland High School geography teacher was put on leave Wednesday while Cherry Creek Schools investigates whether he violated district policy that requires balanced viewpoints in the classroom.Jay Bennish, who teaches 10th grade world geography, is being investigated for making biased, anti-President Bush comments in class during a discussion of the State of the Union speech last month.
"These are serious allegations and we're very concerned about it," said Tustin Amole, spokeswoman for Cherry Creek Schools. "This does not reflect the type of teaching that we want to see in Cherry Creek school district."
Bennish could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.
On Feb. 1, Bennish, who has been at Overland High School since the fall of 2000, had a discussion in his class about the State of the Union address.
Sean Allen, a student in the class, taped the discussion, in which Bennish made a number of unfavorable comments about Bush that upset Allen's father.
"He said that some people may compare (Bush) to Hitler," Amole said.
The school district did not learn about Bennish's lecture until last Wednesday, when it received an e-mail about it from an out-of-state person who had seen an online column on it written by Walter Williams on www.townhall.com, Amole said. That same day, Allen's father also called the principal of Overland High School to complain about the teacher, and the complaint was forwarded to the district, which began its investigation.
"After listening to the tape, it's evident the comments in the class were inappropriate," Amole said. "There were not adequate opportunities for opposing points of view."
Allen's father apparently gave a copy of the taped discussion to KOA radio host Mike Rosen, who did a show on the subject Wednesday.
KOA has made Bennish's 20-minute rant available as a podcast here.
Denver Post coverage here.
***
Rocky Mountain bloggers Slapstick Politics (who, by the way, have a few photos of our speaking event last night) have more on the story.
ROFL!
Coming from a family whose history is so intertwined with that of Texas that more than one family member has made a career of Texas history, I am not unbiased enough to respond to that statement
(grin)
I hear ya! Gosh, I miss TX! The people were such characters and so full of life!
Why did my ancesters have to settle in such a dreary, cold part of the country???? AND NONE OF MY FAMILY WILL MOVE OUT OF HERE!!
Glenn Beck has been playing segments of these tapes all morning. These are truly unbelievable. This teacher should really be introduced to a straight jacket.
Israel committed terrorist acts to get their homeland in the first place? Wow.
Something in the water making Colorado school teachers live on the nutty side of things.
NEA must have had a loss of dues or something.
Having lived in other parts of the country, I've wondered why folks chose the places they did to settle down-
*Denver, Colorado*
Upon crossing the plains of Kansas and reaching the Rocky Mountains, the settlers looked up & exclaimed - "To Heck with that!"
*Phoenix, Arizona*
Settlers figured they would wind up in Hell, so this is where they went to acclimate.
--------------
(No FReeper flames, please.... I am j/k ;)
I wonder how many paychecks Jay Bennish has refused?!
You gotta love the keywords that have been posted for this!!!!!!
KEYWORDS: ANTISEMITISM; BENNISH; BORTZ; CAPITALISM; CHERRYCREEK; COCAINE; COLORADO; COLUMBIA; COMMUNISTMANIFESTO; DEMOCRATS; DENVER; DRUDGE; DRUGCARTEL; DRUGS; DU; EDUCATION; HANNITY; HITLER; HOROWITZ; IRAQ; ISRAEL; ISRAELIS; JAYBENNISH; JEWS; LEFTISTLUNATIC; LEFTISTS; LIBERALS; LIMBAUGH; MALKIN; MARX; MARXISM; NAZI; NEA; NORTHKOREA; OVERLAND; OVERLANDHIGHSCHOOL; PALESTINE; PALESTINIAN; PROPAGANDA; PUBLICSCHOOL; PUBLICSCHOOLS; RADICALS; REVISIONISM; SCHOOLS; SEANALLEN; SOCIALISM; TEACHER; TEACHERS; TEACHERSUNION; TERRORISM; TERRORIST; TERRORISTS; USEFULIDIOTS; VOUCHER; WARONTERROR; WMD; WOT; ZIONIST; ZIONISTS;
He clearly never waited in a breadline in the wonderful country of Russia or tried to find a resturant in Morocco.
His rant is without global perspective or knowledge.
Overland High School website -
http://blazernet.ccsd.k12.co.us/
Teacher Jay Bennish contact info -
jbennish@cherrycreekschools.org
(720) 747-3780
School principal Jana Frieler -
jfrieler@cherrycreekschools.org
(720) 747-3880
At least she had more moral courage than the scum preaching the beauty of the communist and muslim systems. They preach but they wont move.
Here's a link to the teacher's rant. He disses North Carolina, for growing the drug that kills the most people. His voice sounds like he's a little bit overwrought:
http://www.9news.com/includes/buildasx.aspx?fn=http://wm.gannett.speedera.net/wm.gannett/kusa/backup/1141263993253-03-01-06-overland-class-une.wmv&sp=http://wm.gannett.speedera.net/wm.gannett/kusa/pre-stream/frontier-prestream905.wmv
there is currentlty a sit-out at Overland High School...one of his defender former students was asked, What did you learn from this teacher? the student's answer, "Well, if you think it's right, then it is right."
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