re "Johnson: Teachers who dare are taught a political lesson" (Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News, 3/11/06)
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4533504,00.html

To the Editors:

Bill Johnson is too smart to have so completely missed the point of the Jay Bennish controversy unintentionally. But he did miss wildly, so I will clarify for him.

Jay Bennish is a geography teacher, teaching a class of high school students. He is not speaking at a political forum, nor even a class on politics or rhetoric. While I personally find his anti-American, anti-capitalist views repugnant, that is not the complaint. The issue is that he is being paid to teach geography, not propagandize to our children while being paid with our money.

If Mr. Bennish compared Bush to Hitler in his private life, I would just think he was another clueless socialist; sadly we still have many of them. But he would certainly have the right to his views. Instead, he did it in a classroom where the problem is that we know his political views at all.

Yes, Mr. Johnson, teachers were taught a political lesson by this: That they can get away with inappropriately bringing their politics into the classroom. It is yet another great reason to support educational competition and another example of the intellectual destructiveness that the powerful teachers’ union brings to bear against our children.

Ross Kaminsky is a fellow of the Heartland Institute (Chicago)