Teach put on leave for making anti-Bush remarks.

[WeRQ4U]

*Snip*

"About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while they investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/03/03/teacher.bush.ap/index.html

I read the article and felt proud of that group of kids. I can only hope that I had that much awareness at that age.

[sandnsea]

1. Response to SOTU speech

Funny how that little detail gets omitted, along with the fact that the tape was 20 minutes and classes are at least 40. 150 kids walking out speaks volumes. Wish I'd sent my kids to school with video when some of their teachers went gaga over Bush. Sometimes we are too tolerant for our own good.

[father_of_hope]

2. Bush is NOT Hitler!!

Hitler at least had brains. He could speak at least on language. He was also an artist (painter) and a lover of the music of Wagner.

Bush can't hold a candle to Hitler. And the Chimp is way more dangerous, he has access to nukes, which Hitler didn't (yet).

[zbdent]

3. Frame it this way

"Teacher fired for not being politically correct!"

[Xithras]

4. Heard the tape this morning. I agree with the suspension.

A couple of the local morning radio meatheads were talking about this and played the tape. The guy basically drew extensive parallels between Bush and Hitler, and America and Nazi Germany. While I didn't necessarily disagree with everything the guy said (he was a little on the extreme side), the basic point was that this type of political speech really has no place in a GEOGRAPHY class. It wasn't related to class discussion at all...the teacher simply hijacked his classroom to use it as his personal political soapbox. Left, right, blue, red, or Green, I can't stand teachers tho pull that kind of crap. If this was a politically or historically oriented course, I could see the discussion coming up, but it's hard to defend a political rant in a GEOGRAPHY class.

And understand that I say this AS a college professor. The right to speak freely in the classroom is extremely important, but academic freedom was developed as a way to permit teachers to pursue and teach THEIR FIELDS without threat of punishment or ostracism. When someone abuses the concept of academic freedom by using it as a cover for controversial speech unrelated to anything they're teaching or researching, ALL teachers suffer for it.