Fair and Balanced?Jay Bennish, a Colorado High School Social Studies teacher is on paid leave as a result of a lecture he gave in which he drew comparisons between G.W. Bush's State of the Union addresses and speeches by Adolf Hitler.
(Seen to the left is Stephanie Edge, one of the people protesting the suspension of the teacher over this issue.)
Based on the report, none of the students nor parents complained, but for whatever reason one of the students had taped the lecture and the 20 minute segment (from a 50 minute lecture) had made its way onto a local talk radio show. The paid suspension was a move by the Overland County School District to show it was taking the issue seriously while it reviewed the lecture in light of policy statements requiring a balanced viewpoints in classes.
All indications are that the remainder of the lecture provides the balance.
Certainly, many of us have rightly drawn many of the same comparisons over the past five years, as fear has become this administration's greatest asset. Everything's reduced to oversimplifications, starting with "with us or against us" and continuing through lines like Dubya's invitation for us to imagine the 19 hijackers armed with weapons of mass destruction provided by Saddam Hussein. Simplistic crap, but an amazing number of people fall for it while they clutch their chidren in fear with one arm and wave a flag in tight, angry and scared arcs with the other while watching for the latest terror alert color du jour.
I expect that the teacher will soon be back in the classroom, but I'm concerned that more aggressive and restrictive policy language may be put in place. Other than that, I'm awaiting the drop of the other show as inevitably there's some Ditthoead on this or another school's faculty out there even now drawing on another set of speeches for his "B-b-but Clinton..!" version of a comparison and contrast lecture.
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Comments
Good post though.
The differences are that in a social studies class not only are we dealing with perceptions but the facts and comparisons are much more obvious to the layman.
With respect to evolution the layman simply lacks the background to adequately evaluate it and those who don't continue on to a fuller education in science likely never will have that basis. This makes many easy prey for those who come along with the "well, I'm just a simple farmer, but evolution just doesn't make sense to me" approach that attempts to turn it into a simple matter. People eat it up because it lets them off the hook for actually trying to understand the matter.
I'll try to set up a section on my Links page for "News Services I Find Useful". Just in case.