god forbid a teacher makes the kids think...

a denver teacher is on unpaid leave for choosing the wrong method to ask his kids to think critically about history and it's connection to the present and to look at the world and current events with an equally critical eye. apparently after the latest state of the union address he told his kids the speech sounded somewhat hitleresque...and went on a short tirade of examples of american abuses of power. in this day and age that can cost you your job...one of the kids recorded it on his mp3 player...and now the teacher is on unpaid leave.

i think the method was probably not the best choice, and that it could have been approached in a much less abrasive and confrontational manner, especially in a high school setting where kids may not understand what is going on and feel personally attacked by comments like that. i think the point could have been made in a way to get the kids to think about things without doing it in such a way that he probably lost a bunch of the kids right off the bat. speaking from experience, when someone starts talking like that...even if you don't agree with the other side, you can get overly defensive and stop listening to what they have to say. which is always a shame.

that being said...i am still appalled that this teacher is not on unpaid leave. i think he had a very valid point...and those kids probably thought about things that they hadn't...and maybe some of them even began to think of arguments to refute what their teacher said. either way, i'd be willing to bet that it was the first time in a long, long time that any of their teachers took the chance to step out of the box of standardized tests and make them think critically...and now they've lost that teacher.

that, and i wonder if the teacher would be subject to unpaid leave if the comparison to nazi germany was made with the plo or al queda. big brother baby...all the way.

i think this might have been the worst day of my life...really testing the limits of my sanity and sobriety tonight.

there's no blame for how our love did slowly fade...and here i rest, where disappointment and regret collide, lying awake at night...