There were no surprises in the resolution of the Bennish affair. He kept his job and Cherry Creek Schools paid lip service to the virtues of balance and fairness in a platitudinous official statement issued last Friday by Superintendent Monte Moses."When leftists speak of social justice, it's a buzz word for socialism, connoting forced income redistribution, excessive regulation of business, price controls, racial and gender quotas and preferences, nannyism, politically correct censorship, subordination of U.S. security and sovereignty to international organizations, etc. The whole leftist agenda."
In fact, I offered my radio listeners a near-verbatim prediction of it several days earlier. I was wrong in one element. I thought Bennish would at least get a slap on the wrist. If he did, Moses refused to disclose that when asked during his news conference. He finessed the issue with this bit of fancy footwork: "Some think Mr. Bennish should be fired. Others think he should be praised. In my judgment, the answer is neither." This is known as a false dilemma: firing or praise. There was another alternative: He gets to keep his job, on probation, with a formal letter of reprimand placed in his file for violating the district policy requiring a balanced presentation to students. Furthermore, his classroom behavior is to be closely monitored in the future.
If anything like that happened, Moses refused to divulge it, citing the district's "personnel policy." Why such a policy should be allowed to defy the public's right to know wasn't addressed. What can you expect? Public education is a government monopoly far more responsive to the teacher unions than to parents, students or taxpayers. The outcome was both unsatisfying and inevitable.
Bennish, himself, was smugly remorseless, refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part. When asked if he regretted comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler, he smiled and arrogantly replied, "I think next time I would've said Mussolini." Ironically, if Bennish truly lived in a country run by a dictator, he'd be at risk of losing much more than his job. Nevertheless, we owe Jay Bennish a debt of gratitude. His classroom diatribe, recorded for posterity by Sean Allen, brought this issue to the attention of many in the public who were unaware of the nature and scope of this problem.
Bennish is a political activist. He proudly admits that his mission as a teacher is to "promote social justice." When leftists speak of social justice, it's a buzz word for socialism, connoting forced income redistribution, excessive regulation of business, price controls, racial and gender quotas and preferences, nannyism, politically correct censorship, subordination of U.S. security and sovereignty to international organizations, etc. The whole leftist agenda.
Peggy Raines, a Bennish mentor at Northern Arizona University's College of Education, where he got his degree, took pride in saying that, "he may have got some of that left-wing orientation from me." Boasting about many of her former students, Raines said, they were taught to be "change agents." "They care about social justice issues. They care about making the world a better place." Well, so do I and other conservatives. We just have a different belief as to how to do that. Bennish and Raines want to remake the world to fit their utopian socialist vision. We heard Bennish's contempt for capitalism. He declares it to be at odds with human rights. I think it's the economic dimension of liberty, and I think socialism is forever doomed to failure because it's at odds with human nature.
This conflict of visions, as Thomas Sowell describes it, is at the heart of the war of ideas. The Bennish affair is about the battle to influence impressionable young minds. Liberals now control that turf in K-12 public schools and colleges. They don't want to yield it to conservatives. Bennish justifies his classroom political proselytizing under the pretense of developing "critical thinking" skills. Baloney. A critic can be one who makes judgments based on reasoned evaluations of facts. But Bennish is a hostile critic, one who finds fault, a severe judge. He confuses critical analysis with ideological criticism, subjecting his captive student audience to simplistic, doctrinaire left-wing rants.
Bennish is a disciple of leftist activists like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, committed socialists who share his disdain for capitalism and his jaundiced view of American history, obsessing on our faults and minimizing our virtues. This is the direction increasingly taken in our public schools, with many teaching from Zinn's "textbook," a leftist screed titled, A People's History of the United States. My preference is to celebrate our history, on balance. Yes, expose students to our historical shortcomings and injustices, but emphasize our overwhelming virtues. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick puts it, "We have to admit the truth about ourselves, no matter how good it is." And our public schools should be instrumental in teaching our kids why America is worth fighting for.
I'll apply my critical thinking skills and offer a remedy for this conflict next Friday.
That sums up most of what drives leftist moonbat Bush haters. Anyone want to vote for that agenda? So why do we continue to let loons like Bennish use taxpayer dollars to promote that religion of leftist lunacy in our public schools?
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