Posted on 03/10/2006 3:34:40 AM PST by beaversmom
Here's how the Los Angeles Times spun the story: "Teacher suspended for Bush remark." Wrong! Several other news stories in our local papers have been no better. Congratulations to Rocky Mountain News reporters who got it right: "The teacher, Jay Bennish, is on paid leave pending the outcome of an investigation into whether he violated a district policy requiring balanced viewpoints being presented in class."
Bingo! If teachers were disciplined merely for criticizing President Bush, half of them would probably be out of work. Bennish is under scrutiny for violating his public trust as a teacher of callow young minds by carting his personal political soapbox into his 10th- grade geography class in violation of a perfectly sensible and reasonable Cherry Creek Schools policy that requires teachers to be "impartial and objective" when dealing with controversial issues.
There's an old saying among lawyers: "When you're weak on the facts, argue the law. When you're weak on the law, argue the facts. And when you're weak on the facts and the law, abuse your opponent."
So Bennish, the Overland High School left-wing political activist who masquerades as a geography teacher, has retained David Lane to personally attack Sean Allen, the 16-year-old student who had the courage to expose Bennish as the propagandist he is. Lane - who also represents Bennish soundalike Ward Churchill - doesn't have much to work with. This is not a First Amendment issue. Lane conceded on my radio show last week that the district policy requiring that teachers offer a balanced presentation in class is most certainly constitutional. And anyone who has listened to the recording of Bennish's 20- minute tirade (you can hear it by clicking on the "Mike Rosen" link under "Shows" at www.850koa.com) will recognize it as a one-sided, left-wing rant. So all that's left is to attack the whistleblower, Allen.
Lane isn't really lawyering for Bennish at this point since a lawsuit would be premature. The district hasn't concluded anything yet. No, Lane is Bennish's PR man, his media flack. And he's made young Allen the target of preposterous claims that he doctored the recording or that he's lied about Bennish's past political diatribes. Allen has offered to make the recording available to an audio expert and has been corroborated by past students of Bennish who have testified to a pattern of left-wing indoctrination in his lectures, which may be why the school district has decided to extend its investigation.
Equally preposterous is the claim that Bennish's remarks have been "taken out of context." Just listen to the recording yourself. It must be heard to be believed. It's indefensible. He sounds like Michael Moore - only angrier! He isn't merely "playing devil's advocate."
Bennish is supposed to be a teacher not an agitator. And, no, balance wouldn't be served by an offsetting right-wing diatribe, wholly unlikely for an ideologue of his leftist ilk - and just as inappropriate in a 10th-grade classroom. His pretense is that this is Socratic dialogue meant to engage students. Nonsense. Socratic dialogue is reasoned, measured and dispassionate, not ranting and raving. Bennish's tone is bitter and inflammatory. He's a demagogue. He asks rhetorical questions and answers them himself with simplistic, left-wing sloganeering. "Capitalism is a violation of human rights," he declares as incontrovertible fact. Really? According to whom, Karl Marx? Josef Stalin? Kim Jong Il? That kind of a declaration would be out of line even in a class on comparative economics and has no relevance whatsoever in a geography class!
Bennish shamelessly concludes his 20-minute harangue saying: "And I'm not in any way implying that you should agree with me. I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position," after he just finished doing precisely that. What chutzpah! This is part of his charade as an advocate, pretending he's just provoking thought. He inserts this facile disclaimer, imagining that it inoculates him from charges of manipulating the impressionable young minds he rewards for regurgitating this twaddle back to him on a test or paper.
Lane, the Bennish button man, has questioned Allen's "agenda." Allen has made that clear. He believes it's wrong for a teacher to exploit his position of trust to engage in self-indulgent ideological indoctrination. And Allen's parents believe their public education tax dollars shouldn't be used to subsidize Bennish's political agenda and that their son is entitled to a fair and honest education. Apparently, many other parents and taxpayers agree. Nobody's taking Jay Bennish "out of context." He damns himself with his own words. This is nothing less than intellectual child abuse.
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA.
The closest thing to geography that I could find in his syllabus is "cultural landscape".........whatever THAT is.
Yes, because those liberal wimps at NPR only have two conservatives per liberal guest, when anyone knows that liberals can win against 2 to 1 odds, easy.
It's a shame there's no countering point of view from the heritage foundation, the Wall Street Journal, or the P.N.A.C. to help balance out those places where the conservatives only have a 2 to 1 advantage, because . . oh, wait, they're listed? and Wikipedia shows many of these other institutions are . . . centrist? almost as if they didn't have a specific agenda?
Wow - NPR, the BBC, and the Times versus the Journal, PNAC, and the Heritage foundation, with the Brookings intitution to ref. A balanced debate - almost exactly 1 to 1.
Unfair - A horrendous advantage to the Liberals!
CD
Looking at President George W. Bush's overall job performance this term, what grade would you assign to him?
Choice Votes Percentage of 1535 Votes
A 70 5%
B 89 6%
C 114 7%
D 249 16%
F 1013 66%
Freep here:
President Bush. What's his grade?
http://www.nbc5.com/index.html
US/Israel plan nuclear attack on Iran to control oil and defend the dollar .
Of course not - there is of course no connection between geography, and any desire to understand a culture, or politics, or history, or anything slightly political.
In which case, one has to ask - why are we bothering to teach the geography, if it's completely disconnected from anything important? If geography is nothing but the location of the country, it's a lot cheaper to reference the CIA worldbook, Google Maps, or Worldwind than to go to all the effort of, y'know, teaching a course.
CD
Ergo, in geography there are no 'balanced viewpoints', only facts - "A" is here and "B" is there -- period.
In the late 60's, college geographers produced the High school geography project in an effort to upgrade the content of secondary classes. It introduced concepts that would be used in marketing and regional planning. Place geography can be mastered in elementary school. In the fifties we had a book for each continent and did one a year. Later, I taught geography in high school and college based on what I learned in grammar school.
"Child abuse" nails it. The man's a bully.
Thank you for sharing this data with me. Yep, no bias in Bennish, not. lol.
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