Posted on 03/14/2006 1:24:24 AM PST by beyond the sea
Governor Bill Owens of Colorado has cut through the cant about "free speech" and come to the defense of a 16-year-old high school student who tape-recorded his geography teacher using class time to rant against President Bush and compare him to Hitler.
The teacher's lawyer talks about First Amendment rights to free speech but free speech has never meant speech free of consequences. Even aside from laws against libel or extortion, you can insult your boss or your spouse only at your own risk.
Unfortunately, there is much confusion about both free speech and academic freedom. At too many schools and colleges across the country, teachers feel free to use a captive audience to vent their politics when they are supposed to be teaching geography or math or other subjects.
While the public occasionally hears about weird rantings by some teacher or professor, what seldom gets any media attention is the far more pervasive classroom brainwashing by people whose views may not be so extreme, but are no less irrelevant to what they are being paid to teach. Some say teachers should give "both sides" -- but they should give neither side if it is off the subject.
Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things -- teach chemistry or accounting the way you think chemistry or accounting should be taught. It is also freedom to engage in the political activities of other citizens -- on their own time, outside the classroom -- without being fired.
Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections .....
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Right on ............. ping.
"Inbred ideological narrowness shows up, not only in hiring and teaching, but also in restrictive campus speech codes for students, created by the very academics who complain loudly when their own "free speech" is challenged." ---
Check this out if you wish:
http://www.boundless.org/1999/features/a0000104.html
When Speech Codes Silence
schools ................ ping
Yes, sir.
"Only among "educators" is there such confusion that merely exposing what they are doing behind the backs of parents and taxpayers is regarded as a violation of their rights."
This has to end.
A good example of this I have come across lately is the book, "Where there is no doctor". It sounds like a health book for people who don't have quick access to medical attention and it sort of is. But the two main mantas in the book is the promotion of communism and abortion.
He couldn't shut up about it. It was in every chapter. It ruined what could have been a very useful book by making it mostly unreadable.
The left sticks it's messages everywhere where they don't belong. Check out childrens' shows (cartoons and otherwise) on weekend mornings. Unreal socialist/enviroweenie/one-worlder propaganda.
Ping.
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If it wasn't for weird rantings, FR would take up half the space. :)
"If physicists taught physics and economists taught economics, what they did on their own time politically would be no more relevant than whether they go swimming or sky diving on their days off."
Yes.
If it weren't for weird rantings .........
Sowell is usually spot on, and this column is no different. Too many people got wrapped up in the whole political rant that Bennish made and lost track of the fact that his entire rant was inappropriate because he was supposed to be teaching geography. Geography is the study of where places are on the globe - NOT politics.
While I'm at it, I'll also toss this in - I predicted that nothing would happen to Bennish, the incompetent socialist - and I was proven right. He is bacxk in the same classroom spewing the same political garbage that landed him on the front page.
More "much ado about nothing" since nothing of any benefit came from it. This is more reason that our system of public education MUST be completely overhauled, starting with the elimination of the teacher's union.
Good for Governor Owens too!
If it weren't for weird rantings .........
Not to mention the grammar/spelling police! ;-P
Morning, y'all.
When I attend college, I found those instructors teaching hard courses - computer programming, geology, math, etc. - did not use their classroom as a political soapbox. They taught the subject matter and there was no veering off of it. However, in the soft courses - English, History, etc. - they veered all over the place, usually leading portside.
LOL ...... it is an "education" thread after all.
;-)
I don't know if you heard Rush last week. He explained this "new geography" they are "teaching" kids today that combines social gripes against countries and actual places ......... mostly the gripes though. It's disgusting.
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