Keeping Kids Stupid: The Intellectual Lynching of Jay Bennish

[kskiska]

by Michael I. Niman

One of the biggest problems confronting higher education is the fact that most students entering colleges and universities lack basic social science skills and knowledge. In a recent survey of college students in Buffalo, for example, almost half did not know who George Pataki is. Eighty percent had no idea, correct or incorrect, as to what communism is. Nearly the same number of students couldn’t define capitalism. For whatever reason, social science education in America has collapsed at the high school level. For a democracy that relies on an informed electorate, such ignorance is toxic.

There are, however, a few rays of hope out there. Jay Bennish (pictured above), a high school geography teacher in Aurora, Colorado, was one of them. During the last week, however, he’s become a household name, suspended from his job and facing death threats after being vilified on reactionary talk radio for teaching geopolitics in a high school geopolitics class.

The controversy began at the end of January when Bennish assigned George W. Bush’s State of the Union address as required viewing. On February 1 Bennish led a class discussion deconstructing Bush’s speech from a geopolitical perspective. Sixteen-year-old Sean Allen, an aspiring comedian who describes himself as “the youngest stand up comic,” recorded a 22-minute segment of the discussion. Aided by his father Jeff, the younger Allen, who boasts on his myspace Web site of having beaten Jehovah’s Witnesses over the head with Bibles, shopped his recording around the ultra-right media landscape.

After three weeks, Allen’s father Jeff found a bite with Walter Williams, a Virginia-based columnist and regular guest on Rush Limbaugh’s show. Williams argued that Bennish wasn’t preparing students for standardized tests and should be fired. One week later, with Iraq unraveling into civil war and with the Bush White House facing new charges of benign neglect in New Orleans and of misleading the nation regarding Iraq, right-wing talk radio switched over to an All Jay Bennish, All the Time format.

more…
http://artvoice.com/issues/v5n10/getting_a_grip

[rodeodance]

1. lots of scary stuff going on in the schools (not this teacher).

[sinkingfeeling]

2. That is a truly well-written piece. Keeping a copy of it. Thanks.