Jay Bennish and 1973

Townhall.com ^ | 3/12/06 | Mary Grabar

[Racehorse]

Teaches what? Mythology?

What is your problem with her?

The debate about Jay Bennish, the Colorado high school teacher who confused a diatribe against the Bush administration with a lesson in geography, is not about free speech, but about the meltdown of Western civilization.

Jay Bennish, the product of baby boomer teachers and parents . . . was denied the opportunity for an education.

But come to think of it, baby boomers like me were denied educations.

The teacher, Mr. U, the ur-Bennish, opened up the discussion on "love."

Having made these rather ambitious claims, she then misuses her space by giving too much of it to the cutest cut-up in her high school, skips over her undergraduate schooling, leaps to a late arrival at graduate school, and somehow expects me to believe the postmodernists she hasn't talked about are responsible for it all, including the meltdown of western civilization, because she had a bad day at class back in 1973.

I have a problem with that. Don't you?

. . . teachers like my Mr. U have moved up in the educational chain and have taught the teachers of Bennish.

But, who and what produced Mr. U, the ur-Bemish?

The Greatest Generation produced him.  Mr. U. may even have been a member.

At #29 I stumbled about speculating how Mr. U. may have come to be, and through him the educational system which may have produced Mr. Bemish.  That, in turn, got me this insightful and helpful comment from Clairsolt:

 The GI Bill had its good points, but it also created a demand for faculty that exceeded the supply of qualified scholars. Also, we have had too many seats in an overbuilt college system ever since. Two reasons for nonsense on campus. Read Horowitz's list of 101 Professors who are teaching bogus subjects like 250 Peace Studies departments, ethnic studies etc.

Anything you might add, in whichever direction?

[Racehorse]

You are better off at a used book store. The books in the library generally reflect current philosophies. Sometimes you can catch the older texts as they are offered for sale as discards. Either way, they are fairly cheap.

If folks can access it, there may be another alternative, one which costs nothing or very little:  interlibrary loan.

In addition to reading out of print books and books not readily available on the stacks, I use it to read books I would likely never buy.  An example of the latter is Gary Clayton Anderson's The conquest of Texas:  ethnic cleansing in the promised land, 1820-1875.

[beyond the sea]

Thanks for that!

[Kenny Bunk]

President Kennedy

I was just getting out of a very good college when JFK was "elected." As I look back on that era, it seems that the stolen election of 1960, the overlooking of which also began a long decline of the GOP, was a cultural watershed for all of us.

On a visit about 5 years later, I found my college undersiege by dirty, dope-smoking pseudo-radicals, with many fewer required courses, and about 40% fewer students in engineering and the sciences. BY 1970, the siege had turned into a complete rout.

The "Camelot" Mania marked a turning point away from reason and responsibility, starting us down a path at the end of which half the American electorate could vote for a John Kerry, and 70% of a constituency can continue to keep a Ted Kennedy in office.

The cynically manufactured icons of this era proved so successful, that the Democrats are reviving them now, complete with an änti-war" movement and attacks upon members of the Armed Forces and their relatives.

[ontos-on]

Read this article which is related but better articulates the issue:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1595006/posts

[ontos-on]

This article is related and better:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1595006/posts

[CatoRenasci]

Nice article. And, having just finished seeing two daughters through high school and now into college, I agree that the problem is worse in elementary and high schools.

[Racehorse]

Thanks.  That was rather helpful.

I think I'll read Stern's book.

From a little book I read yesterday:

The ethnic upsurge .  . began as a gesture of protest against the Anglocentric culture.  It became a cult, and today it threatens to become a counter-revolution against the original theory of America as "one people," a common culture, a single nation.

Some regard Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as a leftist himself, but it appears that in The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a multicultural society, he anticipated precisely what Stern describes in his article.

[Racehorse]

The "Camelot" Mania marked a turning point away from reason and responsibility, starting us down a path at the end of which half the American electorate could vote for a John Kerry, and 70% of a constituency can continue to keep a Ted Kennedy in office.

I have always thought it bizarre that so much ill could come from a presidency which inspired a nation with:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Didn't quite work out that way . . .

[Kenny Bunk]

Horse, JFK wasn't for real.

He was a fabrication of a media uncannily manipulated by his father. He was not a hero, he didn't write the book, he was deathly ill, he was a lousy, lazy Senator (like Kerry), who never supported civil rights, and he didn't win the election. He got us into VietNam, changing a miniscule "advisory" force into a full scale invasion, then withdrew support. His mistakes guaranteed Castro a free pass for 50 years. The Berlin wall was built on his watch. And of course, he wrote not a word of the speeches that so inspire you (and me).

He had the idea that he could run this country in a couple of hours a day, at most, and spend the rest of the time screwing around. This theory damn near brought the world down around our ears, making mistakes we are still paying for. JFK, LBJ, and Jimmy Jerk were an epocal low point in our history. Coming to office so close to together, the terrible effects of their mistakes could have sunk us. Frankly, IMHO, Bill Clinton was better at it.

[Racehorse]

So, the difference between us is you don't find anything particularly bizarre about it.  :-)

One of the things I enjoy about FR is that the comments made by others, much like the ones you just made, remind me by association of other things I want to look at.  The talk does not fit this thread, so I won't pursue it here, except to let you know there is a lot of very useful material online at the State Department website concerning foreign policy events during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Ford administrations.  I mean . . . a lot!

The material ranges from declassified reports to the historian's summaries.  If you care to browse through it, visit Foreign Relations of the United States

[ontos-on]

go back to "beyond the melting pot" a book by a guy named Harrington in the 60's. It was used in college classes and possibly high school classes as well to initiate the trend towards ethnic identity [and ultimately what you cited as: "ethnic upsurge . [which] . began as a gesture of protest against the Anglocentric culture" ] by claiming that there was not an essential unity or identity in the American Experience of immigration. I never accepted the basic claim of the book and have always felt that this was an early example of agenda driven "social science". It was this type of "cooked-up" research adn supposed empirical findings which justified so much of the left's policy agenda both in the federal agencies and in the state, local and academic arena of the 60's and 70's.