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U.S. Public Schools: Preaching Instead of Teaching? Barrett Kalellis The undercover outing of Overland High School geography and history teacher Jay Bennish by one of his students made headlines when portions of his surreptitiously recorded rant was broadcast over national radio and TV networks. The opinionated and insulting teacher went on a tear in class by fatuously comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler, also claiming that capitalism is "at odds with humanity." The public outcry was so great that the high school temporarily suspended him from teaching. Making the rounds of various media interviews, Bennish and his lawyer tried mightily to spin the issue: He was only trying to "challenge the students with controversial ideas" and "both sides of issues are discussed." After he was reprimanded, then re-instated, the school principal soft-soaped the entire matter, welcoming him back to the fold once the furor died down, cryptically adding that "geography is not about maps anymore. It's about politics. It's about religion. It's about culture." When some of his charges were questioned, however, they couldn't seem to remember any opposing points of view, only Bennish's posturings. This also was the opinion of Sean Allen, the 16-year-old student who made the recording on his MP3 player.
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"Challenging the students" and "getting them to think" are easy, automatic and ultimately fraudulent smokescreens for teachers who wish to use their classrooms to politicize and proselytize their students. Anyone who actually listens to the 20-minute tape will quickly discover that Bennish's mode of instruction and Socratic dialogue are two different things. Whereas a dispassionate question-and-answer format can stimulate discussion between teacher and students on controversial issues, Bennish eschews this method. Rather, he prefers the soapbox orator method – a loud, haranguing monologue, hectoring listeners with provocative and emotional anti-American and anti-Israeli casuistry, most of it sophomoric. This, of course, does not invite reasoned discussion at all. One wonders how a muddle-headed person with such a skewed view of history can even be selected to teach children. Only a step up from the pamphleteer, teachers like Bennish in high schools and Ward Churchill in universities take advantage of their captive audiences by attitudinizing their ideologies instead of seriously examining issues. They assume that their positions are the correct ones, and all that remains is to shape or sway their listeners to their way of thinking. It is no accident that their public discourse is usually bitter and vitriolic. This is particularly dangerous at the high school level, where students know next to nothing about history or politics or even current events. With "skulls full of mush," they are in no position to challenge the strongly held pronouncements of teachers who have the advantage of at least a college education and also the power to give them grades. On the tape, the students sit pretty much in stone silence. And they probably sense that this kind of teacher would not be inclined to encourage or respect contrarian views.
High school classroom propagandists are the predictable consequence of indoctrination at universities, where left-leaning professors hold sway, filtering course instruction through their own peculiar worldview prisms. Some observers think that the Bennish case is by no means atypical; they believe instead that preaching instead of teaching is widespread throughout the education establishment, with much of it anti-American. It's no wonder that the caustic acid of years of "re-education" at the hands of disgruntled college academics steeped in radical feminism, gender studies, ethnic studies and the grievance industry in general would finally seep into secondary and even primary school education. This is made manifest not only in classroom ideologues, but also in textbooks and many other class materials that are tinged with a soupçon of ideological revisionism. A recent study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that 47 percent of U.S. students leave high school with skills that are below basic levels (57 percent in American history), along with another survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, noting that Americans know more about the TV show "The Simpsons" and advertising slogans than they do about the five essential freedoms contained in the First Amendment. Under these circumstances, it's hard to see how Mr. Bennish's angry brand of political education will impart any basic knowledge, let alone raise test scores among U.S. schoolchildren.
Barrett Kalellis is a pundit for NewsMax.com whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and other online publications.
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