I’m sure some student may be offended if the teacher went on a rightwing rant. Unfortunately, it’s been the rightwing that’s engaged in the academic witch hunt against liberals lately - one example off the top of my head was the UCLA alum soliciting students to bring tape recorders in to professors they felt were subversive. Since it seems to me that it’s the right that’s been engaging in these behaviors lately, I find it extremely likely that this issue never would have come up if it was a conservative ranting. It certainly wouldn’t have come to national prominence without the right-wing media machine to give it national attention.
I’m aware. I know lots of folks in the biz, so to speak - including my mother. But that doesn’t stop many teachers from giving extremely slanted lectures. To be fair, there’s probably just as many on each side of the aisle and most probably never have much done to them in terms of getting it toned down.
I can provide an anecdote, but it is just that, and dated. When I was in 10th or 11th grade, I had a teacher of civics who had a sign on the wall saying something to the effect that the solution to illegal immigration and nuclear waste was to build a canal of nuclear waste along the border between US and Mexico. I recall that he had several similarly great signs. He was a laugh riot. A real hoot.
Well, what about George Bush’s professed statements to spread his ideology of “freedom” (read: unfettered free market capitalism) around the globe? Is that a “worldwide conspiracy to enslave mankind”? As I recall, the Communists didn’t talk about their totalitarian doctrine sweeping the globe but rather phrased it as their fight against the tyranny of the bourgesoise over the proletariat. Now, you might not buy into this point-of-view (neither do I), but someone looking at the income and wealth distribution in the U.S. might not be so enamored of our brand of “freedom” sweeping over the whole world either.
As a Bush hating, left wing, ivory tower intellectual, I have to say that this teacher sounds like a moron. His comparison of Bush to Hitler is idiotic and his claim that capitalism is at odds with human rights is simplistic, misguided, and in many respects just plain wrong. I don’t have a problem with him being placed on leave pending an investigation of his behavior in the classroom. If he rants like this all the time or intimidates and belittles students who disagree, fire him.
If he does this once a year, then it’s not a big deal. I think that it is important for students to be exposed to ideas, even, nay especially, unpopular ideas like these. And yes Bricker, the comparison of Bush to Hitler is a very unpopular idea in the United States, even on the SDMB. My guess is that you couldn’t get 10 percent of the people on this board agreeing that this comparison is valid. From what I heard (I am local and I listen to talk radio), this rant followed the State of the Union address and the entire days’ lecture was devoted to the speech. Was the teacher inappropriate? Maybe. Does the teacher give a balanced viewpoint? Doesn’t appear he did this time. Does the teacher do this all the time? Completely unknown. Was the material appropriate for geography? Yes. The only other class that it might be appropriate for is civics.
Finally, Bricker, your comments in this thread are pretty offensive. From this and many other recent threads I’m thinking you may want to back off those right wing blogs a bit. They are clouding your (normally admirable) objectivity and rationality. Just my NSHO.
Bush has been compared to Hitler on these boards many times, and well before I quoted a Colorado high school teacher doing so. If your view were accurate, you would think that such comparisons would have roundly denounced; I don’t remember that being the case. I remember much more lukewarm rebuttals and deafening silence in response to such claims.
This point is, of course, very tangential to the main point of my thread.
When I was in high school, one of the two best-known history teachers in the school was Mr. Hickman. He was the teacher who gave students extra credit if they dressed up every Friday: he had very particular rules about what constituted dressing up. He was the teacher who told a friend of mine (who was secretly lesbian) that homosexuals should all be imprisoned. He was the teacher who came up to my environmentalist leafleting table during lunch and mocked me as irrational. He was the teacher who, when subbing for our Africa/Middle East class, told us that slavery was the best thing that ever happened to Africans, inasmuch as it civilized them and introduced them to slavery.
My lesbian friend wrote a paper for his class in which she discussed being lesbian; she got an A on it. I mocked him right back for being irrational in his antienvironmentalist ways, and eventually he conceded that my viewpoint was defensible, even if he disagreed with it. He welcomed controversy, thrived on provoking students.
I’ve defended him before on these boards before; even in my most radical high school days, I would have been appalled if he had been suspended. I never knew a student in all my uber-left-wing crowd who didn’t appreciate his class.
For the same reason I’ve defended him, I’ll defend this teacher. The student who taped him sounds like a spoiled brat to me.
Let me put this comparison into play: there was much more fevered attack, much more debate, and much more effort against my initial claims in the Christmas thread than I’ve ever seen against the Bush-Hitler analogy.
Not for sophomores. This is the Social Studies class for this grade level in Colorado, IIRC. Any discussion of politics or current events would take place here.
I have to admit, I made some similar comments about Bush’s rhetoric to my Speech class. They thought it was funny.
Can I have a link for a Great Debates thread in which the OP (1) compared Bush to Hitler and (2) spent the rest of the thread strenuously defending that comparison?
Bricker, I don’t recall seeing someone that I remotely respect making this comparison seriously, and as the central theme of a thread, on these boards. If someone did, I’d lose respect for them. This is not a legitimate criticism of people, that they don’t respond as vociferously to driveby snidisms as they do to meaty incorrect posts.
Name names, Bricker. Out with it. Who, of the people who have replied in this thread, do you believe privately cheer this teacher for his cogent analysis of Bush’s similarity to Hitler?
'Cause either you have some magical power to read minds over the internet, or else you’re just flinging mud everywhere to see what sticks. Which is it, Bricker?
I think Bricker was wrong in the quote of his in your post, but I’m pretty sure I could find a GD thread in which the OP strenuously defended a Bush/Hitler comparison. Especially if you relax the req’t a bit and said a Bush/Nazi comparison. Wanna place a little wager?
And don’t such comparisons routinely get more challenge and ridicule than support?
You thought you’d get a certain response, and when it didn’t come, you starting weaseling and dodging (you “expect” you know what views are “privately” held?). Sure, we have a handful of rabid Bush- and capitalism-haters, but their views aren’t common around here, let alone a majority.
Fortunately, your views are also uncommon, else this board would be drowning in bullshit.
Because that “simple and obvious fact” stopped being true with the death of Trotsky and became a deliberate lie with the creation of HUAC. Why do people on the Right attempt to pretend that the very diverse activities of the U.S.S.R., China, Yugoslavia, and half a dozen other “communist” nations who were often at odds with each other were part of a “conspiracy” extending through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s where there was no single driving force behind “communism” but simply an extension of the 19th century’s “Great Game” carried out by new players?
The problem is probably the superficial nature of your familiarity with history.
