Fast Times At Overland High

From IBD:

Posted 3/9/2006

Academia: Tests show most high school seniors lack basic knowledge of U.S. history. But the Ward Churchill wannabees teaching them think it's OK to equate Bush with Hitler and put Dubya on trial for war crimes.

We have often noted that many of our major universities have morphed from citadels of higher learning into virtual re-education camps of the loony left, providing sanctuary and tenure for such nutty professors as Churchill of the University of Colorado. But at least college students can choose the school they wish to attend.

High school students are more of a captive audience. And thanks to sophomore Sean Allen, who takes geography at Overland High in Aurora, Colo., we have an insight into how leftist indoctrination of future generations has seeped down to the secondary school level.

Seems that young Sean had a hard time convincing his father that his world geography teacher might be a little over the top. So, in a bit of warrantless surveillance that indicates he might have a future at the National Security Agency, Sean took the MP3 player he got for Christmas to class and taped a rant that sounded more like an Al-Jazeera editorial than a geography lesson.

On the recording, Sean's teacher, Jay Bennish, told his class that there were "eerie similarities" between what Bush said in his Jan. 31 State of the Union address and "things that Adolf Hitler used to say: 'We're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards and our job is to conquer the world and make sure that they all live just like we want them to.' "

We don't know how many teachers there are like Mr. Bennish, those who call the United States "the single most violent nation on the planet," declare the invasion of Iraq illegal, insist that capitalism is at odds with human rights and assert that America created Israel to control the Middle East. But with several teacher-education colleges requiring their students to express a commitment to "social justice," we'd wager more than a few.

As it is, our students have a woeful knowledge of what has really happened in American history, much less Mr. Bennish's Orwellian version of it.

Testifying before a Senate education subcommittee last year, Charles Smith, executive director of the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, said that just 10% of high school seniors had an adequate grasp of important people, events and concepts in U.S. history. Few, for example, could identify America's allies and enemies in World War II.

Not to be outdone, teacher Joseph Kyle at Parsippany High School in New Jersey, not far from where terrorists killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, is having his class conduct a mock trial of President Bush for war crimes in the war on terror.

Mr. Kyle says he's teaching his class how to conduct research, critically examine issues and formulate persuasive arguments. So how about conducting a mock trial of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in the course of which students might actually learn something about real American history, not The New York Times' version of it?

Mr. Bennish said on NBC's "Today Show" that his comparison is not out of line since a teacher's job "is to challenge students to think critically about issues that are affecting our world and our society."

Excuse us, Mr. Bennish, but your job as a geography teacher is to help your students find Afghanistan and Iraq on a map. And how about starting your class with, gee, the Pledge of Allegiance?