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The last Global Geographic Literacy Survey, assessing the geographic knowledge of 18-24-year-olds in nine different countries -- Canada, France, Mexico, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Germany and the United States -- was, at best, a disappointment. It found, for example, that only 17 percent of young Americans could locate Afghanistan on a map; 29 percent could not correctly identify the Pacific Ocean; and 11 percent were unable to find the continental United States.

If high-school geography classrooms around the United States are anything like that run by "teacher" Jay Bennish, at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, the results are understandable. Though Bennish is charged by his school board and principal to instruct his young charges in geography, he chooses instead to use his pedagogical perch to preach hatred -- of Israel, George W. Bush and the United States.

After the State of the Union Address in January, Bennish told his students that the president's speech "sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say." He went on to accuse Mr. Bush of "threatening the whole planet," while describing the United States as "the most violent nation on the planet" and a country seeking to "keep the world divided."

"My job as a teacher is to challenge students to think critically about issues that are affecting our world and our society," Bennish said after his anti-American diatribe was exposed by one of his students. Apparently, "critical thinking" is more highly valued in the classroom than say, teaching the location of the Mississippi River to students who couldn't find the Mississippi River if they fell into it.

In New Jersey, "teacher" Joseph Kyle of the Parsippany-Troy Hills school district decided to put the president on the stand and hold a "war crimes trial." A student played Bush while others played his defense team. A group of five teachers sat as the "international court of justice." The president was charged with "crimes against civilian populations," as well as "inhumane treatment of prisoners." Not only did the teacher's union approve of this, it also said Kyle was completely justified.

Ann Landenberger, a "teacher" in Newfane, Vt., has "informed" her students of her support for a local resolution calling on the state's lone U.S. Congressman, "Independent" socialist Rep. Bernie Sanders, to file Articles of Impeachment against President Bush. Her salient explanation: "I can't say to my kids that what happens on the national level doesn't affect us at the local level," she said. "Would that we could all be in a cocoon, but that is not the case."

As might be expected in this age of political correctness, teachers' unions and local chapters of the ACLU have rushed to defend these "educators'" "constitutionally protected right to free speech." But this is neither educational independence nor an exercise of free speech. It is instead a gross abuse of power by adults who are subjecting children to political polemics every bit as insidious as that delivered by a commissar.

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