Another cut-n-paste.Follow

I don't think it was the teacher that wanted the attention. I'm pretty sure the student was just after the media attention. After all why would you submit the recording to a drive time conservative talk show instead of TV News or better yet the school district.

[edit] Fixed for clarity

Edited, Tue Mar 7 16:11:57 2006 by baelnic

For even less than that you could just play a recording of the state-approved textbook and sidestep these kinds of nasty incidents entirely!

So have the classroom engage in discussion and mediate rather than command. Have them hold a debate and research their positions. Have them write a position paper. Ask them probing questions ("But why this and not this?" "Why do you think that is?", etc) to make them dig deeper into their explanations rather than berate and mock them.

Whether or not the methods you mention can make students think, I still don't believe it's near the best way to make them think.

Oooh, tricksy kid got him to speak his mind only to publicize the interview. I like that.

Too bad the teacher wasn't on his toes and didn't hold his tongue when perhaps he should have.

You have entirely too much faith in our youth.

To quote the great Tommy Lee Jones:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.

Here's something to ponder:

If the teacher had admiringly compared Bush to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, would he be suspended for not offering a balanced negative viewpoint?

Here is a video of an interview that Matt Lauer had with this Geography Teacher.

I'm ambivalent. I actually drove home from work pondering this and thought perhaps I was way off in my earlier comments. My own personal experience with a really great and somewhat stifled high school social studies teacher says "let them teach in however is most effective" but I guess I can't really make an informed decision one way or another about this without knowing this teachers background.

Though, I certainly don't see that the suspension and investigation that is to follow is out of line for the complaints that are registered.

I've talked to a few teachers about this sort of thing, and it seems that it's usually the case that the discussions that are just run by students primarily don't really end up going anywhere usually because most students will have a fairly narrow view of the world.

The discussions seem to usually degenerate into overly simplified conclusions that would probably be more depressing than anything. Given the role of mediation would lead to a more passive role in which you aren't really leading the discussion in any interesting way.

Though they could just be bad teachers.

But I would think challenging peoples' beliefs would help a lot more than trying to comfort peoples' beliefs continuously while only occasionally interjecting small bits of opinions.

Actually, this issue has been on the back burner of political debate for some time. While I'm not an avid listener to political talk radio (I actually started by listening to Air America to get that viewpoint then started swapping between that and other stations to get a bigger picture), I have certainly seen a trend in call-ins and complaints on the conservative shows about overly Liberal teachers in many schools.

There's certainly no way to know how balanced this is, since it's not like Liberal callers are going to call into those shows to complain about conservative viewpoints being pushed down liberal student's throats. However, when the topic is broached, there are a *lot* of students who call in and talk about experiences they've had and the degree to which our education system and the teachers within it tend to bias teaching to a liberal viewpoint.


Haven't been a student for over a decade (aside from the occasional university class taken for my own enjoyment), so I can't say personally. But this wasn't something the student did on his own. This is a reaction to these reports. The general consensus going on the various conservative shows is to advise students that when they feel a professor/teacher has crossed the line in terms of bias, to record the lecture and get it out on the radio so more people can become aware of the problem.


Looks like this is just the first student to do so. Whether this will turn out to be a bunch of whiney kids cherry picking taped bits of conversations to make it appear biased, or whether this is legitimate student action to fight against what they see as unfair practices in our education system remains to be seen.

As I understand it, the student tried to get the school board to go over the contents of the tape for more than a week, they refused until it was released to the local talk show. I had no objection to his remarks in comparison of Hitler/Bush, I did however bristle a bit at his comments about commerce and business.

Seems the kid and his Father had an appearance scheduled on the Today Show with Matt "The Skinhead" Lauer and had their invitation pulled. One can surmise the reasons, I choose to believe it is the natural tendency of NBC to present only one side of a story rather than to present the facts and let the viewer decide.

Since 2000.


Well, since 1988 if you want to get technical.