Let's discuss the high school teacher who told his class that Bush was just like Hitler. The school board and conservatives (including some parents and students) want him fired. I want him put back into the classroom. As long as he covers the required material, I think it is fine for him to tell the students that he believes that Bush is just like Hitler. I think that his students should challange him -- and each other -- on this topic. Such discussions are excellent often result in people learning more about Hitler and Bush than they otherwise would. They can also help people learn to tolerate the expression of veiws that oppose their own without wanting to fire or force appologies the expressor of such views.
And I'm confident that about half of his students will oppose his view and present credible facts and logic to support themselves.
7 comments:
I think that we should not view children as incapable of forming their own opinions, or handling forcefully expressed opinions delivered by adults. But I have the following stipulations:
1. All the required material gets covered.
2. The staff comprises people who have a diversity of opinion on these matters. This is the problem that upsets conservatives about the professoriate in the US. Whereas about half of all US voters are repo, 95% or so of professors in the humanities vote demo. And conservatives correctly perceive that faculties discriminate against candidates who disagree with such liberal totems as affirmative action.
I don't want the asshole fired mainly because it'll make a martyr out of the jerk. I don't think he should be going off on lectures that have nothing to do with the class cirriculum. Talk about geography, dipshit.
And I disagree Paul. Teachers, especially in primary, middle and high school, should be teaching their students "how" to think, not "what" to think, except of course in subjects where their are absolutes, such as language courses, or mathematics.
Six: I don't quite have a definate position, here. I do think, though, that our education has gone down as these sorts of lectures have increased. But consider this forum, where you and I bang it out with Tom and Nadir. I find that this causes me to learn more and sharpen my arguments... sometimes even change my mind.
But as I said, I think that teachers must cover their assigned material, and have their students tested in standardized fashion. With that requirement, there will be little or no time for proselitizing. The best place for these sorts of discussions are extra-curricular forums. OK, so maybe I'm changing my position...
In my last incarnation as a campus radical, I was a grad student who taught the absolute hell out of organic chemistry. I spent almost zero class time promoting wholistic medicine, or my view that HIV did not cause AIDS. But I used to stage regular seminars on these topics.
Those seminars used to get between 10 and 250 students, and generated enormous campus discussion. The credability that I earned in the classroom teaching tough organic chemistry translated into interest in my contempory views. That's what I think this teacher should do, and his school should encourage.
And that's fine Paul. If this Nebbish, or Bennish, or whatever the hell his name is character wants to hold extra-cirricular seminars to spew his propaganda, fine. Do it on your own time and spend class time on what it's intended for.
The spokesperson from the school district says the issue isn't free speech, but whether the teacher offered sufficient balance in his discussion. If he said Bush is like Hitler, he is also required to encourage the debate giving equal time to the opposite opinion.
I agree with this approach. An analysis would show that he is correct and Bush is spreading fascism in America. The students should be taught to examine the data and come up with the correct conclusion on their own. This is teaching the students "how" to think for themselves as Six stated.
My opinion on this matter is that history and geography classes are no place for this kind of debate, though a class in something like rhetoric would be. My ideal high school curricula would have students studying Arabian history, with references to some of the things going on there today. I believe that humans have a lifetime to sort out issues of the day, but that K-12 is precious time to lay groundwork for that and other thinking.
And Six, I would have these classes submitted to rigorous standardized tests, for which the teachers would be held accountable. Under such a scenario, the teacher wouldn't have time to hold forth on Issues of the Day.
In a proper rhetoric class, I am very confident that a large fraction of students (assuming that they've previously taken and mastered various classes in history, economics, literature, composition, and geography!) would find charges of Bush as Hitler to be quite preposterous!
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