Thoughts on Colorado teacher being suspended

I was a bit surprised nobody brought this up. What do you all think of the suspension of that Colorado high school teacher for presenting "lectures with a left-wing bias," which also resulted in a massive walk-out at the high school in protest of his suspension?

I for one am appalled by this decision. I listened to the tape recording (made by a student who got tired of the teacher's "left-wing rants") which incriminated the man and it is clear his comments were blown way out of proportion. First off, this kid makes it sound like he DIRECTLY compared Bush to Hitler, even though in the recording, the teacher makes it clear that Bush and Hitler are not alike, that they are very different. Instead, he emphasized the fact that they sound very alike in the manner which they speak, which is actually a legitimate point.

This incident is also very indicative of a very conservative state of mind present in the U.S. The accusation that the lectures are biased is just ludicrous. For one, to expect any lecture to be completely neutral is naive. Second, this shows our society has a problem with letting kids learn how to differentiate between fact and theory and instead would rather have kids just learn the cold, hard facts, which almost mean nothing without exposing those facts to various abnormalities and whatnot. The only way you learn is to apply those facts and one way to apply them is to hear alternative theories and spins so you can decide what's what for yourself. This kid and most of the U.S. does not get this concept very well and that is a big problem. They might know the facts but they don't know what the facts mean and how to find that meaning. It is just absurd to be punishing a teacher for showing a student a certain viewpoint and unconsciously driving in the idea that you do control what you think.

And as if the story couldn't get any better, the teacher even stated on his course overview that he tends to get very opinionated and that if this bothered anyone, they should take a different class. Obviously, everyone else got the message, but this kid didn't.

As an end note, this is a very sad state of affairs and is only proof of the vast right-wing hegemony and griphold the country is under and has been under for a very long time. Not to mention the intelligence level in the country has shot to hell. When I was in high school, I dealt with a good number of right-wing teachers who were quite opinionated but I never felt any need to get them suspended. If anything, I'm thankful I knew those people.

A teacher says in class, "Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven"

Teacher's gone, probably fired.

Writing a letter to congress that is leaked to the press:

Teacher's suspended without pay, fired shortly after.

A geography teacher spends his class time railing against Bush:

Teacher's suspended with pay.

A very conservative state of mind, and the lectures on geography were not biased? Lemme quote some of it:

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.

He also talks about the US being "probably the single most violent nation on planet earth…And we’re a democracy, quote-unquote."

Just the facts, ma'am, no bias there.

Now, the teacher stated on his course overview that he tends to get opinionated, and if that wasn't acceptable they should take another class? This is high school, not college. You sign up for class, you are assigned to the class that would best suit your schedule, and on the first day of class you find out about the course overview. So this teacher, essentially, says, "I'm opinionated, have no intention of talking much about geography, instead defining words like conservativism (in the recording as well) instead of words like plateau. If you have a problem with that, drop this class, get a study hall instead, and, if you're lucky, you won't have to go to summer school or take a fifth year of high school." Yeah, that's fair. It was Sean Allen's problem, not the schools, not the teacher's, because Sean Allen is responsible for completing enough courses to graduate in 4 years.

[edit on 3/3/06/03 by junglejake]

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We are all having at it on this thread.