By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-503503.mp3
Dallas, TX –
In Aurora, Colorado, a teacher named Jay Bennish is back at work after more than a week on paid leave for saying in class that some of George W. Bush's State of the Union address sounded like Adolf Hitler. According to a press report, administrators at Overland High School felt compelled to investigate whether Bennish had violated a policy that requires "balancing viewpoints in the classroom." His troubles began when one student recorded parts of a discussion he led on the president's speech and gave it to a radio talk show and his father, who then turned a copy over to the school principal. That's when the principal urged Bennish out the door, and close to 150 students also left, in protest.
Before long they returned, but more than one issue awaited them when they did. First there's the question of "balancing viewpoints," which Bennish's lawyer has said he will provide, "minute-to-minute...then and there." But that's not as easy to achieve as some might suppose. The problem lies in what is meant by balance. The most pertinent definition from the Oxford dictionary is "an even distribution of weight or amount." So a classroom discussion of a speech by Bush might include responses both favorable and unfavorable.
But when this is attempted and sometimes accomplished, why are some people still disappointed? It's because to them balance means conservative, in the style of the "fair and balanced" offerings on Fox News. So if anything else appears, it feels offensive. The truth is that Americans don't want to collide with points of view other than their own. They have grown so accustomed to seeking out their own avenues for news, on cable television or the Internet, where things are pretty much to their liking, that they have no tolerance any longer for other voices from other camps. This is the case both left and right of center.
It leaves teachers in a bind when it comes to classroom discussion. And Bennish is not the first to have a student record his remarks and use that tape against him. The same thing happened to a professor at Columbia University, trying to teach Middle East studies, and the fallout was much worse than that suffered by Jay Bennish. The best approach, it seems to me, is to try for mastery of material rather than diversity of opinion, though the latter, of course, is always desirable and can't be overlooked.
This is not to say that Jay Bennish is blameless. Of course, it's out of line to compare the president to Hitler. This is not only absurd, it's a serious dilution of the horror of the Hitler years. Susan Sontag called the Holocaust the "crime of the Twentieth Century." To draw analogies between the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the current war in Iraq, however disturbing it might be, is to bring Hitler in from the cold of his own unspeakable creation.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was equally off-base when he called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez another Hitler. Chavez is a thug and a threat to the Western Hemisphere, but he has not committed genocide. To put him in the same category with Hitler is to suggest, however subliminally, that Hitler didn't either.
As for Aurora, Colorado, I hope that student stops snitching on his teachers, and that Jay Bennish develops something more profound to say about the agonizing era of George W. Bush.
Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning News and to KERA.
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