[lbo-talk] a teacher in trouble, reply to Nathan

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Mar 5 15:55:36 PST 2006


Nathan wrote:


> -What is propaganda, though? If Jay Bennish compelled his students to
> -subscribe to his view, on pain of failing the class or getting a
> -lower grade or getting humiliated in the classroom, surely what he
> -said would count as an effort to force them to accept it as dogma (or
> -else). He did no such thing.
> -He presented facts and viewpoints that
> -are decidedly excluded from mainstream US political discourse and
> -probably rarely included in US K-12 public education and asked
> -students to think about them.
>
> That's a naive view of power, as if a teacher who can undermine or
> even
> destroy a student's college prospects with a bad grade has to
> explicitly
> threaten anyone. Even if Bennish would never personally use such
> power,
> students can't read a teacher's mind to k now whether they will
> retaliate
> against an opposing view.
>
> And the fact is that propaganda is as much in the facts selected as an
> argument made.

In a broad definition of propaganda, selection of facts itself constitutes propaganda, but, by that definition, all teachers, curricula builders, textbook writers, etc. are propagandists, so there is no reason you should single out Jay Bennish as one.

As for power, in this case, it is the student who is abusing the power of the right-wing media over the conservative school board management and the power of that management to penalize workers like Bennish -- all in order to impose his view -- that teachers like Bennish are bad because of their thought (note that the student in question did not complain -- nor did he present any evidence -- that Bennish discriminated against him for his opinion) on the rest of the student body, regardless of many students who appreciate Bennish's work.

And the student did so by surreptitiously taping classroom remarks, as David Horowitz, etc. have recommended. If that's gonna be the normal student behavior, few would want to become teachers.


> Another propagandist would want to include the "facts" of
> intelligent design or whatever facts support their political views,
> and since students have a relatively low base of knowledge, those
> facts will have a disproportionate effect on forming their own view
> of the issue.

"Intelligent Design" is not a fact.

Many of the things that Bennish brought up in his classroom remarks, in contrast, are facts. Right-wingers don't dispute that Washington bombed that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, the CIA tried to sabotage Cuba and assassinate Castro, etc. Where they differ from leftists is not on facts but on moral and political judgement about them and whether or not such facts ought to be brought up in classrooms.


> Most towns don't exercise that power completely and give teachers
> some flexibility, but if teachers think their purpose is to slip in
> information outside "mainstream US political discourse", they
> should be campaigning for education curricula reform, not becoming
> teachers.

Surely many teachers can and do both, sometimes to the benefit of students, other times to their detriment. Changes happen in various ways, not just in a way that you approve. You can't have it otherwise, for teachers aren't robots.

Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org>



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