My Jay Bennish

From Michelle Malkin and about everywhere on the web now is the story of Jay Bennish, a Geography Teacher who decided to “turned his world geography class into a cell of MoveOn.” (as Don Surber aptly put it.)

Sean Allen actually caught Bennish on tape, getting the teacher put on suspension. He’s filing a first Amendment lawsuit-but that’s absolutely baseless. He has a free speech right away from work. Bennish has no right to depart from the purpose of the class, anymore than if he’d began talking about the need to elect Republicans and the greatness of Bush. Teachers like Bennish are what’s wrong with the education system.

I have to admire the courage of Sean Allen in revealing this. Its so intimidating to take on a teacher whose turning the classroom into a political game. I’ve been there.

Dr. Jon Moses at Flathead Valley Community College taught Montana History. Moses could be funny at times. I’ll never forget the Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving, he put in a video and headed to his office. The unattended classroom emptied out except for yours truly. Dr. Moses walked in and looked at his sole remaining student. He brought in a piece of paper and said, “Write your name, here. I’ll give 25 bonus to you and we’ll screw the rest of them on the curve.”

Dr. Moses had a bad habit. At the beginning of about 80% of classes, he’d take 5-10 minutes to comment on whatever political news story of the day. As we were studying Montana History, this had absolutely nothing to do with the class.

His routines was pretty predictable. He kept attacking then-Governor Bush as the stupid candidate in the race and claimed that women only made up 2-3% of the Senate. One day, I got tired of the Bush bashing and raised my hand, “Dr. Moses, if President Bush is the dumber candidate, why is that Al Gore flunked out of Graduate School and Bush has an MBA from Harvard?” Moses stumbled and suggested I was reading biased material and needed to balance out my reading. (As if attending his class didn’t balance my conservative reading on the side.)

One day, a whole class was devoted to the discussion of a Presidential Debate which had nothing to do with the history of Montana. I thought about reporting him. I thought of telling the dean, but I didn’t. On one hand, I liked him somewhat, when he wasn’t utterly grating.

The truth was I was scared. I could barely work up the courage to say something in class. I made the choice a lot of Conservative students make. I didn’t want to make waves. I hadn’t come to give people a hard time or turn the institution upside down. I was going to be gone in 2 years for crying out loud.

One professor compared to Christians to Fundamentalist Muslism, and I gave her an angry note and she backpedaled a little bit. Another dropped the F-bomb in class, dedicated extensive class time in Criminal Justice to talk about why she was mad that Montana had its anti-Sodomy law still on the books (even though it wasn’t in force.) Let me add that 90% of my FVCC professors I loved. They were great people and good instructors. I’ll never forget my Algebra Teacher who wrote a work problem that began, “Cheech and Chong were harvesting some crops…” he turned to the class and said, “And I think we all know which crops.”

I hope that none of my FVCC instructors (other than Moses and the Criminal Justice Teacher) are offended if they happen upon this article, but I’ve spent enough years being scared of speaking out.

So much is on the line for High School and College students who say something because the teahcers and Professors literally has the power of life and death over their future. It is the ultimate power relationship, which is why its so wrong for a rogue teacher or professor uses the classroom to preach politics. The captive audience can’t say anything without taking incredible risk.

Thank God for students like Sean Allen. May the breed multiply. I look back with some regret, that I didn’t possess that courage five years ago. I did what I could in saying something in class, but sometimes more is called for and I hope that teachers like Jay Bennish and Jon Moses will be called for misuing their authority.