Students at several Jefferson County, Colo., high schools walked out to protest the school board’s recently proposed curriculum review committee that seeks to promote patriotism, respect for authority, free enterprise, plus the positive aspects of U.S. history. The teachers union, whose members forced two high schools to close by calling in sick, is against the implementation of performance-based pay. The union has encouraged and applauded student protests against what it’s calling academic censorship.

The average parent and taxpayer has little idea of what is being taught to our youngsters. In February 2006, I wrote a column titled “Indoctrination of Our Youth,” followed in March with “Youth Indoctrination Update.” Both columns focused on rants that a student secretly had recorded of a geography teacher at another Colorado school — Overland High School in Aurora. The teacher was Jay Bennish. He told his students that President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address sounded “a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say.” He continued, “Bush is threatening the whole planet.” He then asked his students, “Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?” He shouted the answer, “The United States!” During this class session, Bennish peppered his 10th-grade class with other ridiculous statements, saying the U.S. has engaged in “7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba” and telling his students capitalism “is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion … [and] at odds with human rights.”