Parsippany
teacher wages 'war on ignorance'
Sunday, March 12, 2006 • BY AL
FRANK • Star-Ledger Staff
Joe Kyle has never avoided controversial
topics in his history classes at Parsippany High School.
There have been debates on President Andrew Jackson's
treatment of the Cherokee and President Bill Clinton's
personal life.
But the 37-year-old chairman of the
1,000-student school's social studies department said he was
shocked by the media and political storm over his classroom
trial of President Bush's policies in Iraq.
"It's fair to say I'm surprised and I
never expected it to be so big," said Kyle, who holds a
master's degree in history from Montclair State University
and has been at the high school for eight years.
After a week of being disparaged across
the country on talk radio and in hundreds of e-mails, Kyle
said he had no regret in his first interview over the
trial.
"Being a teacher is waging a war on
ignorance," Kyle said. "You have to want to put in all those
hours every day to grade, to plan an interesting lesson to
have 100 kids ask a million questions. But, in the end, if
you have kids leaving school, being critical, asking
questions, reading the newspaper -- then you've
won."
Despite the controversy, the last thing
Kyle can be called is anti-American, as he was labeled on
many talk radio shows. When he became head of the social
studies department, Kyle allocated $1.50 in his book budget
for every sophomore to cover the cost of a text that
contains the Constitution and other fundamental documents
such as the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine's
"Common Sense."
"Half of my class is going to be voting
in November," he said. "I want people who are voting for the
first time to be thinking when they're pulling that lever.
Doesn't everybody?"
That's Joe Kyle, said his longtime friend
John Capsouras, the president of the Parsippany-Troy Hills
Education Association. Kyle is executive vice
president.
"It's very, very hard for him to separate
himself from his teaching," Capsouras said, noting Kyle is
at work by 7 a.m. and frequently is still in school 12 hours
later. "Joe literally has to put a 'do-not-disturb' sign on
to make time for his personal life."
Capsouras said Kyle's politics are
neither Democrat nor Republican. He is a registered voter
without party affiliation.
"He's not an ideologue," Capsouras said.
"He's more practical and skeptical and that's what he wants
his kids to be: skeptical, not cynical."
That is the dynamic that holds many
students enthralled as Kyle engages them. They sit "in the
round" with desks in a circle to encourage
discussion.
Vivien Sun, The Star-Ledger Scholar for
Morris County in 2004, named Kyle as her most influential
teacher. "He encourages me to challenge the status quo,
question accepted beliefs and raise new issues," she said at
the time. "He demands of me not only to think outside the
box, but to pitch a tent and live outside the
box."
Today's students are equally effusive.
Erica Deutsch, a junior, has already had Kyle for two
Advanced Placement U.S. history classes and is eager to take
the government course next year.
"He may be hard but he's one of the best
and everyone learns in his classes and they're fun," she
said.
Kyle is the son of parents who served in
the military during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. His
father was an Army sergeant in Germany and his Marine
corporal mother used to bounce a quarter to make sure his
bed was properly made.
"I was raised in a fairly conservative
house," said Kyle, who is married with no children, and
wears khakis and a tie to school every day.
As a youth, he took particular delight in
visiting an elderly couple next door. Born at the turn of
the century, they filled him with stories of the past and
World War I.
He was spellbound but, through school,
said he was shocked so many history teachers were boring.
Kyle knew he could be different. While at Rutgers
University, Kyle combined his love of history with a passion
for the feisty debates that are at the heart of the
democratic process.
He started his teaching career at
Montclair High School 13 years ago and quickly found that
the students who took Advanced Placement courses were also
ones eager for hard work and spirited
give-and-take.
Because of the exhaustive preparation,
most teachers shy away from leading more than one or two of
these advanced courses a year but Kyle teaches four,
including the 27 seniors in this year's government
course.
The idea for a trial began to take shape
last June and, by fall the students were zeroing in on the
theme of American foreign policy. The students focused on
Iraq after learning about the use of depleted uranium in
artillery shells and the possibility that this causes
cancer.
Although he was a "witness" -- played by
senior Xiaoyuan Jiang -- President Bush was never the focus
of the exercise, Kyle and students said.
"I used the word 'trial' because for kids
who know 'Law and Order' and these court shows, it excites
them into framing a discussion," Kyle said, noting
enthusiasm can be lacking in students who already have been
admitted to college and are battling "senioritis.
"
Moreover, where a debate could involve
only a handful, the format of defense and prosecution teams
plus numerous witnesses permitted the entire class to become
involved in the extensive preliminary research.
Even so, by mid-February some of the
seniors were becoming leery that the concept of a trial with
a verdict might be misunderstood by others in the
1,000-student school.
"Since the point was exploring evidence,
not a verdict, we began calling it a debate before it
began," Kyle said. The court format, however,
remained.
On March 2, a snow day that closed
school, the Daily Record of Parsippany reported that Kyle's
class was trying President Bush for war crimes. The
following day, television station crews swarmed the school's
parking lot with their dish-topped vans.
By then the "trial of the President" was
a hot topic on conservative talk shows, online blogs and
newspapers. E-mail was pouring into the mailboxes of
district administrators and board member. By Wednesday, the
Morris County Board of Freeholders voted 6-1 to condemn the
classroom exercise.
As a result of the frenzy, the rendering
of a verdict by a five-member faculty panel was modified.
Instead of deciding which side won, the students would only
be graded on their presentations.
Toward the end of the week, the tide of
public opinion began to change. While almost 200 people
converged on Brooklawn Middle School for a regularly
scheduled school board meeting, the crowd was overwhelmingly
made up of students and faculty who turned out to support
the student project and Kyle.
"Mr. Kyle tries his very hardest to come
up with assignments that challenge us to learn -- a quality
so rare and needed in a teacher," said Jiang, the senior who
played President Bush, told the gathering.
"I feel very proud of my students," Kyle
said. "It's not easy seeing your name mentioned negatively
in the press, but I'm quite pleased and happy with the way
it all ended."
On Friday, Bush himself weighed in,
telling reporters who asked about a similar controversy
involving a Colorado teacher: "Yes, I think people should be
allowed to criticize me all they want. And they
do.
"The freedom of people to express
themselves must be protected," the president said. "The
right for people to express themselves in the public square
is a freedom."
Al Frank covers Parsippany. He may be reached at
afrank@starledger.com or (973) 539-7910.
© 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
|