Free Republic

DENVER -- The case of the Aurora teacher who made comparisons between President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler has now hit the state Legislature. State senators are considering whether to give school districts greater protection to fire teachers who present biased views in the classroom. It wouldn't apply to teacher Jay Bennish, only future cases. The Cherry Creek School District is investigating Bennish's comments. A recording of 20 minutes of his lecture has been made public but he has said the rest of the 50-minute class balanced out those comments. State Sen. Doug Lamborn saif school districts may fear...

An attorney for Overland High School teacher Jay Bennish said this afternoon he expects Bennish to be back in the classroom on Monday. Attorney David Lane said that is his best guess after he and Bennish spent 90 minutes speaking with Cherry Creek Schools administrators and attorneys. Lane said he heard nothing that led him to believe Bennish would be disciplined.

See for example this thread first. Jay Bennish Geography Class: Where liberal rants got a pass; 'Till one student tape-- Now there's no escape for the teacher who talks out his ass!

DENVER -- The father of a teacher who compared President Bush's State of the Union address to speeches made by Adolf Hitler said he and his family have received at least 12 death threats. Jay Bennish is on paid leave from Overland High School while Cherry Creek School District investigates whether his Feb. 1 lecture violated a policy requiring that balancing viewpoints be presented in classes. Bennish's father, John Bennish of Beverly Hills, Mich., told The Detroit News in Wednesday's editions that people have called his house threatening to kill him or his family. He said he did not report...

No one familiar with our nation’s increasingly dysfunctional public schools should have found it surprising that a Colorado High School teacher named Jay Bennish delivered a 20 minute, anti-American rant to his 10th grade geography class taken straight out of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore. True enough, Mr. Bennish was somewhat cruder than your average leftist teacher. Apparently, he was also too stupid to realize that political indoctrination in the classroom goes over much more smoothly and is less likely to cause a public uproar if the teacher observes a few minor pedagogical constraints. In fact, Bennish might have been...

TEACHERS who express radical left-wing views in the classroom are facing a new tactic in America: conservative parents are encouraging students to make recordings of their views. The use of micro-recording devices, often in mobile phones or digital music players, is the latest twist in conservatives' struggle against what they see as the leftist slant of American education. A high-school geography teacher was placed on leave last week in Colorado after a 16-year-old pupil recorded him comparing US President George W. Bush to Hitler. The latest flare-up in the festering controversy came not at a university but at a suburban...

Cherry Creek Schools officials extended their investigation of embattled geography teacher Jay Bennish after his appearance on television and radio sparked a new wave of phone calls. Bennish learned the news from reporters after stepping off a plane Tuesday afternoon at Denver International Airport in returning home from a quick trip to New York, where he spoke publicly for the first time on the Today show. "That's their decision," Bennish said when told that administrators apparently would not end their investigation today - as they had planned - because of unspecified new information that came to light after he appeared...

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...

The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the "news" industry they serve doesn’t seem to care. If you want political opinion, you’ll find it in Associated Press dispatches. If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns. On February 22nd, Walter Williams, a Townhall.com columnist, scooped the mainstream media. Williams reported that high school teacher Jay Bennish lectured his geography class stating: 1) "[President Bush’s State of the Union Speech] sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say." 2) "Bush is threatening the whole planet." 3) "[The] U.S. wants to keep...

COLORADO high-school sophomore Sean Allen couldn't convince his father that his geography teacher was as over-the-top as he contended. So Allen taped one of his teacher's rants on his MP3 player. Too bad for Jay Bennish: His 20 minute lecture ended up on talk radio. As aired on Mike Rosen's show, Bennish said President Bush talks like Hitler: "I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same," but that the two share "eerie similarities." Peruvians and Iranians arguably have "a right to bomb North Carolina" because the state grows tobacco. On Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda operatives were...

by Mark Finkelstein March 7, 2006 Turns out the real culprit in the Colorado kerfluffle over the teacher who compared Pres. Bush to Hitler is . . . the student who complained about it. Just ask Matt Lauer. Interviewing teacher Jay Bennish this morning, Lauer laid out this sympathetic scenario: Lauer: "The family here, the student's family, didn't go to the school board with this tape." Bennish: "They never contacted me." Lauer: "They shopped it around to conservative media outlets and finally released it to one and created an uproar. On the tape you can hear Sean Allen [the student...

Student 'starting to get crucified,' his dad says By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News March 4, 2006 Sean Allen's dad says he isn't handling this week's media attention and threats as well as his son. "Sean has handled this way better than his father," Jeff Allen, Sean's dad, said in an interview with Sean Hannity, syndicated talk show host with Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes. "To read some of these e-mails that are attacking Sean is just devastating," he said. "It looks like the tactic is to turn it around, to make it about Sean and not about the...

March 2, 2006 — A Colorado school is in upheaval following the suspension of a teacher who was recorded comparing President Bush's rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler. More than 100 students at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo., walked out of class this morning to protest the decision to put geography teacher Jay Bennish on administrative leave. The school administration made the move after a student went public with a 20-minute recording of Bennish's comments to his class. In the tape, the teacher is heard saying there were similarities between remarks Bush made in his State of the Union...