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So, according to the teacher (whose interview I just saw on the Today show), he teaches a World Geography course, and was doing a basic overview of some new geography terms when students started asking him about the State of the Union address, which had taken place the previous night. He basically just went along with the questions the students asked--which, according to Matt Lauer, who has heard the whole tape--make it sound like the teacher was being baited.
Notably, he also gave a HUGE disclaimer AFTER the Hitler statement that the Today Show played.
All in all, I think the circumstances of this--the student not reporting it to the principal but taking it to talk radio (and evidently they shopped it around to a number of stations before finding one that would play it), the disclaimer the teacher gave, the line of questioning the students posed--make it one shady suspension. The school board needs to seriously take a look at all of the evidence and realize that this guy is doing what teacher SHOULD do--cause students to think critically. As the teacher said on the Today Show, he encourages his students to think for themselves, and he hopes that that is one thing they can all take away from this.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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