It's free, but you can't be bothered...

So nobody else's got anything to say about Bennish. I do, however.

Insofar as I can tell, he's shockingly far from the norm. Of Pup and Spud's teachers over these many years I'd bet that 95% have never even considered voting for a Republican and there's only one I know of that has forthrightly claimed to be one, but the kids have never once reported anything vaguely close to the crazed outburst recorded.

One of Spud's favorite teachers, in unguarded moments, lets fly with his personal opinion that 9/11 was a conspiracy at the highest levels, but spends almost all his teaching time mightily belaboring his charges into using their brains for something other than holding their ears apart, constantly challenging them from every direction. Spud loves him and so do I. God bless'im.

Of the teachers I've managed to steer my kids away from (by bullying whichever principal, who without fail opened the discussion by stating categorically that there would be no "teacher-shopping" and always ended by acquiescing completely) there was not one that was skidded for political reasons.

Soapbox nutbars like Bennish have nothing at all to do with my dissatisfaction with the pubic school system in my town. It has everything to do with the brazen incompetents who get up every morning, suit up, look at themselves in the mirror and go to work at a decent wage and a fabulous benefit package who simply can't do their job. I've met too many.

They don't know how to think. They don't know how to speak. They don't know how to write. And they sure as heck don't know how to teach. The woods are full of them.

If this seems ungenerous, be assured that it's just experience. I've met with tenured teachers that couldn't spell common words in basic English. I've met with tenured teachers that couldn't discern between basic arithmetical signs. I've met with tenured teachers that I wouldn't trust to take out the garbage in the cafeteria. I've gotten my kids away from these mutts, yet the mutts still flourish. And they will be gumming their zwieback fifty years from now on my nickle. And your's.

It's obvious from listening to Bennish that he's incompetent. What we don't and won't hear is those many teachers who express their incompetence in more acceptable ways.

The current Bennish folderol is a dead end in the question of the fitness of any of our public school teachers. For every sui generis like Bennish there is a whole flock (my guess -- 15%) of incompetent timeservers who can't be shifted from the trough.

If Bennish moves on to greener pastures, I'll be pleased. If there is a tiny handful of other nutbar teachers like him who are chastened into avoiding his mistakes, I'll be pleased. But the mass of deadweight won't be moved. The problems of public schooling, and they are monstrous and manifold, are being nowhere addressed by this frenzy and likely never will be in my life.

Go figure.