Yes, it is time for WMD to cover that rascally liberal nut from Colorado, teacer Jay Bennish, the guy who thinks the WTC is a military target, who thinks that killing coco plants warrants bombing North Carolina, and equates Bush and Hitler in front of your children. WhattaGuy! Let's look at some links here:Free Republic has a copy of his syllabus/course intro. Here is the gem:
Two of the primary tenets of my class are respect and tolerance. The classroom must be a safe learning environment. As such, all students are entitled to their own opinions and beliefs. Students will not be permitted to insult or belittle others in the class, respect is paramount, tolerance is also extremely important. Students will be treated as adults, as long as they demonstrate mature, responsible behavior. Since discussions and participation are a significant part of my class, all students must feel comfortable sharing their ideas. Listening skills are essential, interruptions and/or disruptions are inappropriate.
Students will be given weekly syllabi to help organize and manage their time. Students are expected to be prepared, with necessary materials and/or assignments completed. I expect students to be attentive and active participants in their own education; the following is a brief list of classroom rules that are very important:
· Respect must be show to myself and fellow peers at all times
· Tolerance for differences, remain open-minded· Turn in all assignments at appropriate time
· Complete all readings and arrive to class attentive and prepared
Apparently this does not apply to those who think GW Bush is not Hitler. Apparently tolerance and respect for country are not encouraged. This guy is a total hypocrite. Where are the alternative views of the US as the good guy? I think I can speak on this because I am a teacher by education, if not by current vocation. One of the reasons for my dismissal is my refusal to sink to these levels. In my second year, the new principal constantly quizzed me on if I was teaching that the US murders people in South America, and that if I was instructing students on the Arab view of the US as interlopers and infidels. I told this prinipal those were not factual accounts, and that I do cover opposing views. However, in his conversations, he always said I was too easy on America. Because I would not slander my country, or my leaders, or those who fight in the military, I was not doing a good job. I allowed anti-Bush folks to speak in class. I routinely would take the anti-Bush or anti-Republican position in class to challenge students. However, I never would resort to the garbage this guy has been recorded saying. And yes, I taught in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, so don't say that things are different now.
Mr. Bennish has abused his position. You can tell in the recordings by a student that he ardently believes in the screeds he is going on about. He really hates Bush, and wants to get his students to equate Bush with Hitler. At their age, they are still developing their values and beliefs, as well as their abilities to defend them. The fact that he has a captive audience that is not as fully up intellectually in skills as him and that he teaches this way is galling. However, he failed to ralize that some students are above level. Shawn Allen challenged him, and was routinely criticized. He left the class, and went to the "less accelerated" geography class. That class was farther along in the curricula than the supposed "accelerated geography" class. That is because Mr. Bennish was not teaching geography, but political propaganda. This must stop, and more students need to be courageous like young Shawn and tape these lectures. With the advent of handheld mp3 recorders and such, it is not as difficult as it used to be.
People who seek to indoctrinate our children under the guise of "critcal thinking," but who then don't allow the divergent points of view, should be held accountable. Mr. Bennish is not a teacher, he is a synchopant. He is not an educator, he is a propagandizer. He is not teaching students, he is harming them with false and incorrect assumptions. He should not be allowed back to work.
This is a good start, but there are far more Mr. Bennish's out there than we think or would like to believe. We must encourage our children to stand up to people like this. Check out Michelle Malkin for the latest on this fascinating case.
Hats off to Shawn Allen! There are true critical thinkers among our young people, who must be encouraged rather than crushed by establishmentarian liberal "educators" like Mr. Bennish. We must fight on to take back our schools as learning centers and not as indoctrination chambers for the Left.
Update: Mr. Bennish, typical of libs, is filing a FEDERAL SUIT. Let's hope the 9th Circus doesn't hear it, or they might put poor young Shawn Allen before a firing squad and give Mr. Bennish a medal.
Please refer to this post by Michelle Malkin for the now completed transcripts of Shawn's tapes, where you read him duking it out with this guy and Bennish's rants. Here are my excerpts with context:
Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler use to say.
We're the only ones who are right. Everyone else is backwards. And it's our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to.
Now, I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. Obviously, they are not. Ok. But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use. Very, very "ethnocentric." We're right. You're all wrong.
I just keep waiting. You know, at some point I think America and Mexico might go to war again. You know. Anytime Mexico plays the USA in a soccer match. What can be heard chanting all game long?
0841
Do all Mexicans dislike the United States? No. Do all Americans dislike Mexico? No. But there's a lot of resentment--not just in Mexico, but across the whole world--towards America right now.
We told--Condoleezza Rice said--that now that Hamas got elected to lead the Palestianians that they have to renounce their desire to eliminate Israel. And then Condoleezza Rice also went on to say that you can't be for peace and support armed struggle at the same time. You can't do that. Either you're for peace or war. But you can't be for both.
What is the problem with her saying this? That's the same thing we say. That is exactly the same thing this current administration says. We're gonna make the world safe by invading and killing and making war. So, if we can be for peace and for war, well, why can't the Palestinians be for peace and for war?!
0950.
*Student Sean Allen, who is taping Bennish's rant, speaks up:*
Allen: Isn't there a difference of, of, having Hamas being like, we wanna attack Israelis because they're Israelis, and having us say we want to attack people who are known terrorists? Isn't there a difference between saying we're going to attack innocents and we're going to attack people who are not innocent?
1007
Bennish: I think that's a good point. But you have to remember who's doing the defining of a terrorist. And what is a terrorist?
Allen: Well, when people attack us on our own soil and are actually attempting to take American lives and want to take American lives, whereas, Israelies in this situation, aren't saying we want to blow up Palestine...
Bennish: How did Israel and the modern Israeli state even come into existence in the first place?
Allen: We gave it to them.
Bennish: Sort of. Why? After the Israel-Zionist movement conducted what? Terrorist acts. They assassinated the British prime minster in Palestine. They blew up buildings. They stole military equipment. Assassinated hundreds of people. Car bombings, you name it. That's how the modern state of Israel was made. Was through violence and terrorism. Eventually we did allow them to have the land. Why? Not because we really care, but because we wanted a strategic ally. We saw a way to us to get a hook into the Middle East.
If we create a modern nation of Israel, then, and we make them dependent on us for military aid and financial aid, then we can control a part of the Middle East. We will have a country in the Middle East that will be indebted to us.
Allen: But is it ok to say it's just to attack Israel? If it's ok to attack known terrorists, it's ok to attack Israel?
Bennish: If you were Palestinians, who are the real terrorists? The Israelis, who fire missiles that they purchased from the United States government into Palestinian neighborhoods and refugees and maybe kill a terrorist, but also kill innocent women and children. And when you shoot a missile into Pakistan to quote-unquote kill a known terrorist, and we just killed 75 people that have nothing to do with al Qaeda, as far as they're concerned, we're the terrorists. We've attacked them on their soil with the intention of killing their innocent people.
1215
Allen: But we did not have the intention of killing innocent people. We had the intention of killing an al Qaeda terrorist.
Bennish: Do you know that?
Allen: So, you're saying the United States has intentions to kill innocent people?
Bennish: I don't know the answer to that question.
Allen: But what gain do we get from killing innocent people in the Middle East? What gain does that pose to us?
I don't see how anyone who isn't completely looney can say this guy was being fair or was being neutral. He was advocating an anti-Israel, anti-American view. And, this guy can't even get his Presidents straight--check this out:
Now, do I think President Bush says 'I'd like to go kill some innocent Palestianians?' I don't think he thinks like that. But I also know that he's not the only one making decisions. I also know that after September 11, President Bush got on TV and he said, 'You will feel our wrath. You will feel the full force of the United States military. There will be paybacks.' He said it again last night. He said, 'We've killed a lot of top-ranking al Qaeda members. And for those who aren't killed yet, you're day will come!' Right? That kind of language to me is very obvious.
1547
And when you go trying to kill one particular type of person, you know that you're gonna kill other people, too. And let me ask you this...
Allen: Later in that, he stated that he's [Osama bin Laden] trying to kill innocents...
Bennish: I understand that, but hold on, you have to understand something, that when al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, in their view, they're not attacking innocent people. Ok. The CIA has an office at the World Trade Center. The Pentagon is a military target. The White House was a military target. Congress is a military target. The World Trade Center is the economic center of our entire economy.
1625
The FBI, who tracks down terrorists and so on and so forth around the world, has offices in the World Trade Center. Some of the companies that work in the World Trade Center are these huge multinational corporations that are directly involved in the military-industrial complex in supporting corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East.
And so in the minds of al Qaeda, they're not attacking innocent people. They're attacking legitimate targets. People who have blood on their hands as far as they're concerned!
We portray them as innocent because they're our friends and neighbors, family, loved ones. One of my best friends from high school, elementary school, and birth, lives in lower Manhattan. You know, he was right there, he was four blocks away from it. So, anytime it comes close to home, you begin to see things differently.
1711
In no way am I implying, I don't know, you got to figure this stuff out for yourself, but I want you to think about these things--you know, think about this right here. [Apparently pointing to American flag.] Here's the real homeland security. Fighting terrorism since 1492! Ok. I mean, to many Native Americans, that flag is no different than the Nazi flag or the Confederate flag. It represents the people that came and stole their land, lied, brought disease, rape, pillage, destruction, etc. So it all depends upon varying people's perspectives
varying. And of course, we're going to see ourselves as being in the right , at least the majority of us, because that's us.
Allen: But we were the ones that were attacked first. On September 11, 2001,
we were the ones that were attacked. We were not attacking anybody until that point. Then we said ok, we're going into Afghanistan. Then we said ok, the Iraqi government has ties with al Qaeda. We're going to go into Iraq. We were the ones that were attacked.
Bennish: In actuality, if you remember back to my first day, the Sept. 11 attacks were, according to bin Laden, a direct response to our 1) support of the nation of Israel, which they consider to be a terrorist regime that does not have the right to control the land that the Palestinians lived on for over 1,500 years, and they also did it because of what George Clinton did--Bill Clinton, not George Clinton, they had a little documentary on him on PBS last night I was watching--Bill Clinton, when he launched the missile attacks into Afghanistan and Sudan and killed thousands of innocent Africans and Afghanistan people - Afghanis - that had nothing to do with al Qaeda or anything. In fact, in sudan, he blew up the country's largest pharmaceutical plant, which was producing medicines, alright, um, you know, that's as far as, in their eyes, that was retaliation for those attacks.
OK, so he trashes our flag and brings up the Indian thing. Then, he thinks funkadelic is President. Maybe he spent more time listening to George Clinton while he was high on "that illegal coco" that he wants North Carolina bombed in retaliation for, and less time actually thinking for himself in college. With educators like this, it is no wonder American History, Civics, and the social sciences are among the most hated subjects. This guy is not instructing--HE IS PREACHING! He is preaching a message of self-loathing and hate to these kids. How sad. This guy needs to be fired. Your Mileage may vary....
