High school teacher's "left wing political rants" investigated by district

Towards the end of the class, Bennish goes on to say, "I'm not in anyway implying that you should agree with me, I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth and not to just take things from the surface."

WHOA

jesus... how could anyone have a problem with this?

This is called PATRIOTISM

it wouldn't make the news, but i think you're head of dept would have a quiet word if you tried this out on 12-year-olds in england.

I'm not necessarily saying that this guy's bullying is a premeditated teaching method though....

Oh no, the teacher has an actual opinion that he has to get off his chest that has no bearing on the class. What if he'd complained about bad drivers? I went through school listening to Spanish teachers complain about sex and violence in movies, middle-aged teachers who made snarky comments about their relationships, science classes that got sidetracked to talk about sports. I don't think I ever complained.

This isn't a case where it's a college professor that's grading poorly because a student differs in opinion. It's just a guy who probably should have saved a comment for the breakroom instead of talking about it in front of his students.

Political discussions are what social studies and citizenship classes are for! If you could take a pro-Palestine line at my school, argue HEAVILY with someone who supports Zionism for 45 minutes, and still be on speaking terms ever after, then anyone anywhere should be able to discuss anything contentious in an academic setting, because you get to chat about why it makes tempers flare so.

xxpost

No matter what your political bias may be, you must make students in the room feel welcome. Even Republican students.

As a high school teacher, I have argued with colleagues and friends who parade their politics. One wears a "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot" t-shirt to class. This gesture succeeds in making the Bush-haters at my school (95 percent of students and teachers) smile and smirk and the tiny minority of Bush-supporters feel like crap.

Far better for a teacher to not be an advocate or a proselytizer (and, if you hear this Colorado teacher's rants on tape, you will hear that he possesses all the nuance and intellectual rigor of a third-string Air America DJ).

When my lit class discusses God, original sin, and justice when we read Candide, no student in the room knows that I am an atheist with little respect for faith. I make a point of including and encouraging every viewpoint. Every student in the room, from the agnostic to the Catholic to the Moonie, must feel that my classroom welcomes them.

And whilst speaking from a position of some authority, can a teacher not lead a debate on politics and also state their own politics? I for one would have found it a touch disingenuous if one of my teachers - out on a march against Maggie Thatcher's education cuts, then came in the next day and did not try to explain their actions, with regards to their own politics sometimes.

Of course this is probably another case where the left are being their own worse enemy - though only after the right have whipped them up into being it.

Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.

And the question really is whether he was leading a discussion or just kind of going off about his personal views on things. The latter actually is inappropriate. Keep in mind that this isn't college, where you can teach more from a particular viewpoint, to students who choose to be there; high school doesn't quite work that way. You can't spend loads of time explaining your own opinions and then say "I'm just trying to make them think" -- even if it doesn't cross "appropriate" lines, it's not very good teaching. Because it turns the class into an education in the teacher's opinions and possible responses thereto, not a class on the topic itself.

But like I said: I can't listen to the recording right now, so who knows. I could see those quotes fitting into the most innocent, open discussion in the world. I could see those quotes coming from a decent teacher who just happens to occasionally bore his students by going on a bit much about the Bush administration. I could see those quotes coming from someone who's just gone too far into pushing his own analysis of things on his students -- like he fancies himself a college prof who gets to advance more of his own ideas than a high school teacher. And I could see them coming from someone who's gone totally off into inappropriately haranguing his students.

In geography class?? I can see this coming up in a social studies or American government or civics class or what have you, but geography? No.

He took his complaints to a blog and a radio show, but not to the school administrators?
(http://www.9news.com/includes/buildasx.aspx?fn=http://wm.gannett.speedera.net/wm.gannett/kusa/backup/1141281812610-03-01-06-bennish-10p.wmv&sp=http://wm.gannett.speedera.net/wm.gannett/kusa/pre-stream/frontier-prestream905.wmv)
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my teenaged cousin is proud to watch FoxNews with his dad. He'll have a grand old time when he finally goes off to university.