Dawn Renniger Gives Teachers a Black Eye

The Huffington Post’s exposure of Dawn Renniger’s partisan teaching style is bad news for Mifflin County’s teachers. For those not reading the article, Renninger is accused of showing the film, Obsession, distributed by the McCain campaign on the dangers posed to the U.S. by Muslim extremists and implies that Obama would be sympathetic to them and would threaten our national security.

Showing the film as an example of how political parties try to sway the electorate through propaganda is certainly proper. But using it to get students to endorse a political candidate is not, even if the endorsement is implied, not directly stated.

It is clear from the comments by her present and former students that she is a staunch Republican who strongly supports the neo-conservative views of the Republican party. In other words, she verbally presents both sides of an issue but lays out the issues in a manner that leads students to believe that her Republican viewpoint is right and the Democratic viewpoint is wrong.

For example, she could have had students watch Obsession, along with another film expressing a liberal viewpoint, then have students figure out for themselves how each party used propaganda techniques to get viewers to believe their particular viewpoints.

Unfortunately in our society, the misdeeds of a small number of teachers like Dawn Renninger undermine the good work and professionalism practiced by the great majority of others in the profession.