If you’ve been reading blogs today, you’re probably aware of this story out of Colorado of a high school geography teacher who was suspended for indulging in an extended rant against President Bush, capitalism, and the United States in general. A student in the geography class caught the entire thing using a digital audio recorder attached to his iPod, and then let his dad listen to it; his dad sent it to the local radio station; and the radio station turned it into a podcast. Michelle Malkin has a transcript.
I have no great love for any particular politics and would prefer not to blog about the leftist-infiltration-of-academia meme. But one thing ought to be painfully obvious: Presenting your own extreme views in a way that’s clealry meant to cause mass agreement and which brooks no disagreement — and then saying that, oh, all I really want you to do is think for yourself — is disingenuous and dishonest in the extreme.
Read the transcript; watch the furious backpedaling that begins when a student begins to challenge the notion that Bush is Hitler and capitalism is anti-human rights. “In no way am I implying, I don’t know, you got to figure this stuff out for yourself”; “But what I’m trying to get you to do is to think, right, about these issues more in-depth, you know”. Uh huh. Look, if you want students to think for themselves, design instructional activities that do so — don’t engage in a tent revival meeting right there in class. Not only dishonest but outrageously unprofessional to boot.
It’s hard for people with strong beliefs to teach, because you have to keep yourself out of the equation and focus instead on the long-term best interests of the students. But this is part of the work of teaching, and a spectacular failure on that front will have consequences.
More from the blogosphere:
- Spunky weighs in on the school choice angle here.
- Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker makes a very interesting point on the technology-education-politics intersection here, and I’ll have another post about that soon.
1 response so far ↓
mahndisa // 7 March 2006 at 9:29 pm
03 07 06
Hey there:
I found you via Right Wing Prof’s site. I agree that having a strong personality and teaching is a very difficult mix. None of us are truly objective, but that teacher was wayyyyy out of line. I recall taking a human sexuality course at San Francisco State University. The Prof opens up the lecture like this:
“For all of you who have your minds made up about abortion, I bet you I can tell you something that will change your minds.” Now the very premise of that statement is bothersome because I always thought the teachers should give information and teach kids how to think and process that info. Yet, I never thought it was their job to prosletyze. Are we in a school or what? Good post.
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