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Thread: Teacher reinstated after doing nothing wrong....

  1. #1
    Good Doctor HST Guest

    Teacher reinstated after doing nothing wrong....

    Teacher who compared Bush to Hitler reinstated

    Michigan native to resume teaching at Colorado school Monday.

    Joe Menard / The Detroit News

    AURORA, Colo. -- Geography teacher Jay Bennish has been reinstated at Overland High School effective Monday.

    The 28-year-old Beverly Hills native had been placed on paid administrative leave since March 1 after a lecture he made where he compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler and criticized America's foreign policy was published in conservative media.

    "We're pleased with the outcome," said his father, John Bennish. He said he talked to his son after the Cherry Creek School District reinstated him and that he is doing well.

    "He's pretty stressed out, like we all are," he said. "It was an unfortunate situation and I think we can all get on with our lives now. Jay can get on with his teaching career and his life."

    District officials said they were working with the family of the 10th-grade student who taped the lecture to get him back into Overland or another high school. The student, Sean Allen, has not been back to school since the national controversy erupted.

    The Allen and Bennish families received several violent threats since the audiotape hit mainstream news outlets, but have not involved their respective police authorities.

    District officials declined to say whether Bennish was punished in any way, citing Colorado privacy laws. John Bennish said his son didn't discuss the contents of the meeting with him because it was confidential.

    Bennish said he always presents balancing viewpoints in class, but not always at the same time. His attorney, David Lane, acknowledged that was a mistake.

    "Jay's teaching style will perhaps be, as some would say, a little more fair and balanced on a minute-to-minute basis," Lane said. "When you put out one side, put out the other then and there."

    Bennish said he would continue to try to improve as a teacher and to encourage students to think critically.

    "I will be back in the classroom on Monday and I am excited to continue to teach," he said.

    The Associated Press contributed. You can reach Joe Menard at (248) 647-7429 or jmenard@detnews.com.

  2. #2
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    Heh... nice title...
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  3. #3
    Good Doctor HST Guest
    I happened to see a piece on this story on CNN Friday morning. Many of the students held billboards saying "Teach, Don't Preach" and protesting the teacher's reinstatement. Seems the indoctrination process is working on the youth..... This is very frightening.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Good Doctor HST
    I happened to see a piece on this story on CNN Friday morning. Many of the students held billboards saying "Teach, Don't Preach" and protesting the teacher's reinstatement. Seems the indoctrination process is working on the youth..... This is very frightening.
    I believe analogies are very educational. It's working on some of the youth. Other yoots know better.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  5. #5
    Partridge Guest
    There was a big discussion about this on Guerilla News, and here's my contribution:

    (You can listen to the 'rant' here)

    "Uhh… why was he talking about Capitalism, Bush et al when he was supposed to be presenting a GEOGRAPHY class?"

    Have you ever studied geography, even at high school level? I was taught three aspects of geography – Pyshical (how mountains are made, why volcanoes erupt, why plates shift etc), Political (the interaction between states, environmental effects of things such as war, pollution etc) and Economic (things such as the EU CAP program, ‘Develpoment’ Aid, why the IMF is the best thing since sliced bread etc).

    I’d think a discourse on Bush, capitalism and war would fit right into such a class. But then, I live in Ireland, and that’s how our syllabus was (at least as of 1998 when I finished school).

    I should point out though that what we were taught in economic geography was ‘capitalism good’, ‘imf good’, ‘eu good’ – never once did I hear a contrary opinion expressed. And I learned more, albeit in a skewed way, about contemporary politics from my geography class than I ever did in history class (history apparently ended in 1968 with the Prague Spring and Civil Rights Movements [USA & Northern Ireland] – funnily enough, no mention of the Paris uprising – though it did skip the 70’s & 80’s and come back with the fall of the Eastern Bloc).

    And this horsehit about ‘both sides’ being presented – well we never had a Communist in class explaining why, say, they saw the crushing of the Hungarian Uprising as good thing, or any of the benefits they may have seen in the communist system. It was simply ‘communism was evil, carried out X, Y and Z, and be glad its gone’. We were never taught historiography – ie that there are different interpretations of history, not just of individually disputed events, but of historical development as a whole – needless to say, the first I ever heard about say Marxist or Whig Historiography was in University. As far as we were concerned, there was only one history and that’s what was in our textbooks.

    In religion calss we were never given the atheist argument (this being Catholic Ireland) and I’m kinda proud to say that however apolitical I was in school, I was the ‘class atheist’ – and reprimanded several times for ‘distrubiting propaganda’.

    Our art class was totally stripped of political context – we managed to study Warhol without once (as I recall) hearing the words commercialism or consumerism. Warhol made his images ‘just because’. We learned about Picassco without once learning that he was a PCF member and that his involvement with revolutionary politics probably played a role in his radical (in an artistic sense) works. And so on.

    From my experince, it’s bunkum that ‘both sides’ [or even more than one side, that side being pro-status quo] are presented in schools, either in Ireland or the US or anywhere else. And no, having a democrat and a republican come in to explain their interpretation of say the State of the Union does not count as ‘diversity’, no more than does a Fianna Failer and Fine Gaeler coming in to give their opinions on the EU.

    [Later...]



    Having listened to the entire thing, I can’t really see any problem with the content of what he has said (maybe there are some small historical inaccuracies, one I noticed was he implied that the US set up Israel, it was the British – though maybe he meant ‘Western Imperialism’ – but certainly his comments about Israel’s place in US policymakers hearts rings true after ‘67) – his tone could rightly be criticised as ‘in you face’, but he engages the student who asks questions about 9-11, says “you gotta figure this stuff out for yourself, I want you think about these things”. He never tells the student to shut up, makes the point that ‘it depends on perspectives’, and repeatedly encourages them to think for themselves.

    In regard to Cuba – You’ll get no argument from me that the Castro regime has carried out human rights abuses over the years – but suggesting that the CIA terrorist war against Cuba was motivated by concern for human rights is absurd. What the guy says is correct, it was an attempt to bring down the Cuban economic system, nothing else. This cannot seriously be disputed except by ideologues – these CIAers and if there are indeed ‘independent’ anti-communist crusaders, could care less about human rights – a fact proven by the terrorist war against the people they carried out over the years.

    But its funny that Anthony says, as a criticism: ”[The student] reads about Castro’s human rights abuses and that maybe the situation wasn’t as black and white as his teacher made it seem, he’ll question the rest of rant.”

    Isn’t that what we want? A critical perspective. So a student questions the rest of the ‘rant’, comes back the next day with questions and poses them. Dialogue is created, people are free to agree, disagree, or have independent thoughts of both sides. But I find it highly unlikely that even 10th Graders in the USA are not fed anti-Castroite propaganda (remember propaganda can be truthful, the best propaganda is always truthful) in history class when studying the Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs (and if they are not taught about these things then that’s a serious flaw in the cirriculum). Like I said above, what we were taught about Communism, in the Eastern Bloc, China and Cuba was entirely negative – I find it hard to believe that the US cirriculum is radically different in that respect.

    And his definition of capitalism, which he says came from the dictionary, is pretty much spot on:

    From dictionary.com – Capitalism: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
    His opinion that capitalism and caring are at odds with each other is of course open to debate – one would presume the percieved benefits of capitalism are extolled in Economics class. (I’ll bet there is no counterpoint to the ‘capitalism=freedom’ argument in that class).

  6. #6
    Partridge Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Good Doctor HST
    I happened to see a piece on this story on CNN Friday morning. Many of the students held billboards saying "Teach, Don't Preach" and protesting the teacher's reinstatement. Seems the indoctrination process is working on the youth..... This is very frightening.
    Thankfully,a lot of kids also took his side:

    Students Protest After Teacher Suspended for Bush-Hitler Comments
    ABC


    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 address and "things that Adolf Hitler used to say."

    Superintendent Monte Moses told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV that policy calls for both sides of an issue to be presented to students. He said Bennish's presentation appeared unbalanced.



    Sophomore Takes Recording to Radio Station

    The recording was made by 16-year-old sophomore Sean Allen the day after the president's speech. Allen said he had been disturbed by "political rants" he heard in Bennish's class.

    "So these kids are going to have notes on why George Bush is related to Hitler and why the state of Israel was founded on violence and terrorism," Allen told KHOW Radio Wednesday when he went public with his tape.

    "These kids are going to have notes on this and accept that as fact."

    On the tape, Bennish, who has taught in the Colorado district for five years, is heard quoting part of the State of the Union address: "It is our duty as Americans to use the military to go out in the world and make the world like us." Bennish continues: "Sounds a lot like what Adolph Hilter used to say."

    "We do want teachers to express their opinions, but to put that in context and to provide opposing points of view," Moses said. "All discussion must be fair and balanced."

    "[The suspension] is not a disciplinary action. It is to give us enough time to sit down and gather all the facts," said Moses.

    Tustin Amole, a Cherry Creek School District spokeswoman, told KMGH that an investigation of the incident would take about a week.

  7. #7
    Partridge Guest
    Oh yeah, and do you think any action would have been taken if he said "I think Bush is great and everyone America has ever bombed and invaded deserved it. U!S!A! U!S!A!!"

  8. #8
    PhilosophyGenius Guest
    The irony of this story is that after he compared Bush to Hitler, he was treated like a descenter in Nazi Germany! But great, now all classes are gonna be bland and straight from the book and no more critical thinking or politics in class cuz of this twerp.

    And this little punk kid Sean Allen took verbal bitch slapping on Hannity & Colmes last week. It was great.

  9. #9
    Partridge Guest
    Here's the little snot's myspace page. He's allegedly a 'comedian' - his two routines (presumably his best offerings, seeing as they're posted online) are awful!

  10. #10
    PhilosophyGenius Guest
    somone slap this mothafucka!

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