Posted on 03/07/2006 2:43:02 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
A high school social studies teacher who was put on leave after comparing President Bush's State of the Union address to speeches made by Adolf Hitler defended his lecture on Tuesday, saying he was trying to encourage students to think.
"My job as a teacher is to challenge students to think critically about issues that are affecting our world and our society," Jay Bennish said on NBC's "Today Show."
Bennish is on paid leave from Overland High School in suburban Aurora, Colo., while Cherry Creek School District investigates whether his Feb. 1 lecture violated a policy requiring that balancing viewpoints be presented in classes.
A student recorded at least part of the lecture in Bennish's world geography class and took it to a Denver radio station, which played parts of it on a talk show.
Bennish told "Today" the excerpts broadcast weren't representative of the full lecture.
"This is 20 minutes out of a 50-minute class. The rest of the class provides the balance," he said.
On the recording, Bennish told the students that some of Bush's speech "sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say. We're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards and our job is to conquer the world and make sure that they all live just like we want them to."
Later in the recording, Bennish said he was not claiming Bush and Hitler were the same, "but there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use."
Bennish said no parents - including the family of the student who recorded the lecture - have complained to him. He said all the students' parents had seen his syllabus and that school officials had approved it.
"My job as a social studies teacher is to argue alternative perspectives and viewpoints so that students are aware of those point of views. They do not necessarily reflect my own views. They are simply thrown out there to encourage critical thought," he told "Today."
Someone needs to remind our Colorado teacher that he's in no danger of being beheaded under the Bush Administration.
Matt was too busy setting the ball back on the T-ball stand for the little commie.
Funny...
But I have yet to find "Hate-Bush" or Hate-Capitalism" any where in the Colorado State Teaching Standards Cirriculum for Stalinist Geography....
I'd write my own questions too.
When you find yourself standing in a hole, stop digging!
i went to a private school, and i remember my American history teacher saying that the difference between liberals and conservatives was that liberals put the rights of people above property rights, but conservatives put property rights above people, or something like that!
on the other hand, he was against gun control and also told us about union featherbedding.
So, he's a stoner, too. Why doesn't that surprise me?
Thomas Sowell's "Inside American Education" documents numerous ways teachers attack parental authority.
Teachers have asked third-graders, "How many of you ever wanted to beat up your parents?"
In a high school health class, students were asked, "How many of you hate your parents?"
I thought I read somewhere he was on unpaid leave? Was I mistaken?
I thought that it was paid leave.
Then he can a book deal and meet again with that perky ...
I listened to and read the transcript, and the guy comes across as a huge anti-semite. He kept bringing up Israel, saying that Palestinians are justified in calling Israelis terrorists.
He has a problem.
President Taft confronted the issue of so-called Human Rights in 1912 recoginizing them for what they were, a construct meant to trump Property Rights. I have stolen a find from nicolo as follows. Taft stated:
It has been said, and it is a common platform expression, that it is well to prefer the man above the dollar, as if the preservation of property rights has some other purpose than the assistance to and the uplifting of human rights. Private property was not established in order to gratify love of some material wealth or capital. It was established as an instrumentality in the progress of civilization and the uplifting of man, and it is equality of opportunity that private property promotes by assuring to man the result of his own labor, thrift, and self-restraint.When, therefore, the demagogue mounts the platform and announces that he prefers the man above the dollar, he ought to be interrogated as to what he means thereby -- whether he is in favor of abolishing the right of the institution of private property and of taking away from the poor man the opportunity to become wealthy by the use of the abilities that God has given him, the cultivation of the virtues with which practice of self-restraint and the exercise of moral courage will fortify him.
I brought up the issue of his entire course's political slant as constructed by his course outline and comments of his on the John Gibson show this evening, early.
Pluggged FR while I was at it. LOL.
If Bush was Hitler, that goofball would have already been whisked off to the concentration camp after a 4 AM raid by the secret police, never to be seen again.
Idiot.
I listened to and read the transcript, and the guy comes across as a huge anti-semite. He kept bringing up Israel, saying that Palestinians are justified in calling Israelis terrorists."
That seems to be at the root of his problems.
Tsft seems to have got it exactly right!
the people who are against property rights seem to believe (or pretend to believe) that property rights mean the property (as opposed humans) has rights. we should probably refer to these rights as "rights of individuals to own property". (we don't talk about "gun rights", but the "right to own guns".) property rights are really a subset of individual rights.
opposing property rights to human rights is as silly as opposing voting rights to human rights.
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