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Indoctrination High
By Ben Johnson--FrontPageMag.com--03/03/06
IT GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE TERM, “CLASS WARFARE.”
A 16-year-old student’s recording of Jay Bennish’s
virulent political screed during a 10th grade geography class held
February 1 at Overland High School of Aurora, Colorado, demonstrated once again
that the Left prefers to begin its
indoctrination as early as possible.
One
snippet of the class, in which Bennish said President
Bush’s most recent State of the Union Address “sounds a lot like the things
that Adolf Hitler used to say,” has garnered media exposure. In the clip, Bennish claimed Bush told the world in his State of the
Union Address:
Parents are rightly outraged,
but this quotation hardly does justice to the 21-minute, 40-second rant – a
rambling, full-throated shout denouncing Bush, Operation Iraqi Freedom,
capitalism, the War on Drugs, the CIA, Israel, and the American flag. (Listen
or download here.
Read Michelle Malkin’s partial transcript here, additional
excerpts here.)
The
Rest of the Story
Bennish actually begins the rant by suggesting Iranians would
be justified in bombing
Then he calls the
In what way are we the most
violent nation on the planet? “Between the years 1960 and 1962, the
Making a quick about-face, he
urges students to “Make sure you get these definitions down.” Among them is capitalism. After his “instruction,” he asks, “Do you
see how this economic system is at odds with humanity? At
odds with caring and compassion? It’s at odds with human rights.”
He hints
Besides, the
Some of the companies
that work in the
When Sean asks Bennish if there is a distinction between terrorists
killing innocent people and uniformed military men retaliating for their
actions, Bennish responds, “You have to remember who's doing the defining of
a terrorist.”
Then he plays the ultimate
atrocity card: “To many Native Americans, that [American] flag is no different
than the Nazi flag or the Confederate flag.”
The
12-Minute Geography Hour
When asked how often these
sweeping condemnations of the
“In class, I felt like he was
trying to justify why al-Qaeda attacked us and that in their eyes, we were the
real terrorists,” Sean continued. “He was a pretty intimidating teaching to
confront, in his body languages, and the things that he said.” Earlier
yesterday, Sean summed up his position, telling Neil Cavuto,
“I think he’s really trying to get kids to think his way.”
Not
Bennish’s First Offense
Upon hearing of the national
backlash he’d inspired, the
“We want to find out all the
facts, what other students have to say about it, whether there have been other
incidents,” school district spokeswoman Tustin Amole stated.
Cherry Creek’s official statement on the matter agrees its first agenda item is to “Determine if this
is an isolated incident or a pattern of behavior. ”
But Amole already knows the
answer to this question, and revealed that fact to the
Apparently, this is not
the first time he has been in hot water over comments made in class, according
to Amole. A few years ago, another student complained about remarks Bennish made in class. In that case, Bennish
met with the parent and the school principal, and the issue was resolved
without district intervention.
Denver-area media have
had no trouble finding several such stories. Former student Derek Belloni, 18, told the Rocky Mountain News, “He is making
interpretation as facts. He's preaching politics in geography class.”
“Brad,” a University of Miami (FL) student soon to
enlist in the Marine Corps, told a Denver radio program when Bennish taught him American History in 2000-1, he used an
extreme left-wing book as the text; his tests asked students to give examples
of how American history is the story of white male imperialist oppression; and
glowingly recounted personal tales of underage drinking, drug use, and
premarital sex. (Brad vividly recalls Bennish’s
explicit story of an amorous encounter in a cornfield five years after the
fact.)
Thankfully, the school district’s
statement concludes, “The district is in the process of identifying
any personnel actions that may be necessary.” Only one comes to our minds….
Fire
Bennish
In response to being placed
on leave, Bennish has threatened to file a lawsuit
first thing Friday morning. (Still future as of this
writing.)
“I know about 10 federal
judges who are more than willing to teach the
Discussing the
disciplinary measure with local media, Cherry Creek spokeswoman Tustin Amole said: “After listening to the tape, it's
evident the comments in the class were inappropriate. There were not adequate
opportunities for opposing points of view.” In another outlet, she reiterated,
“It appears that they were inappropriate because they didn't contain the
balance.” (“The” balance?)
Her comments prove both sides
miss the obvious. In fact, the “nature” of Bennish’s
class is to get students to think about geography: the latitude
and longitude of Cairo, the height
of Machu Picchu, the length of the Amazon,
etc. (Links included for the benefit of Bennish’s
students, who may not have been familiarized with these concepts in class.) No
school district should continue to employ – at taxpayer expense – a teacher who
consumes 80 percent of class time with off-topic material of any kind,
much less foisting his extremist, personal political views on a captive
audience of unemancipated minors who signed up to
learn the verifiable data of geography.
Sean Allen says he does not
want Bennish fired. He should. Bennish’s
irresponsible political diatribes are robbing Allen and all his fellow students
of an education. They would be equally out of place if they were about his
favorite sports team or college fraternity, or if his political views were
conservative or centrist. But it seems little accident the majority of reported
transgressions against pedagogy are perpetrated by leftists.
The
Leftist Indoctrination Campaign in Our K-12 Schools
This incident was apparently
not the first offensive action by Bennish in class.
It certainly was not the Left’s first foray into indoctrinating minors at
taxpayer expense. To cite but a few such examples:
- The Pacific Palisades High School English
department intended to force 300 students to sit through a
105-minute lecture from far-leftist Ray
McGovern, who told his
underage audience
- An American History teacher at
- On February 13, 2003, Miller High School of
Corpus Christi, Texas, required all students to attend a political rally held by
presidential candidate Al Sharpton.
- Many high school students have had to endure the one-sided
presentations of Wheels
for Justice, a group focused on Middle Eastern issues.
Even elementary school
students are vulnerable to leftist proselytization.
In 2003, after an eight-year-old boy wrote a paper saying he wanted to be a
soldier like his grandfather, the boy’s second grade teacher snapped, “If
you ever write anything like that again, you are going straight to the
principal’s office.”
This incident clearly
illuminates the problem gripping many classrooms. Unfortunately, not all
students have Sean’s courage – to record and document the offense, then expose the best disinfectant. Most acquiesce to the
pressure to go-along and get-along, to smile and nod through the teacher’s
political rants, regurgitate the teacher’s leftist bias on tests, learn
nothing, and reach college prepared for four more years of the same.
The
cure is clear: more students need to follow Sean’s lead, more K-12 schools need
to form chapters of Parents
and Students for Academic Freedom, and more state legislatures need
to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights.
And Jay Bennish should get his next opportunity to
spout his extremist views as a columnist for Z magazine, not as a
geography teacher paid by
Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of the book 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving.