That amazing teacher who was teaching a student how to think

[mrbigstuff]

Janit wrote:
Hopefully more will come out. He is still teaching part-time at Emerson, so he's in the Boston area. I would really like to know where he got fired from.

I took a look at his youtube channel. His small films are intriguing but basically incoherent. And something about his vibe is off for me.

Yes, my bs detector also registered at his video although I didn't watch the whole thing. He's clearly acting out a role to me. Not to dismiss his teaching skills.

[$tevie]

I don't know a thing about this story but I started the video and it looked like an audition tape for a high school of the arts, so I bailed.

[sekker]

I’ll add that there does seem to be far more to this story.

I’ll post if I hear a decent summary.

But I suspect I’ll be moving to the ‘too good to be true’ view.

[$tevie]

Oh, my, I just read what started all this. So he was being celebrated for not going along with The Woke Mob. Screw him.

[Janit]

$tevie wrote:
Oh, my, I just read what started all this. So he was being celebrated for not going along with The Woke Mob. Screw him.

Please elaborate, or link please?

[dk62]

https://www.freepressjournal.in/educatio...critically

[dk62]

It includes the original video that seems to have started everything. And right, he is not even getting into whether JKR is transphobic, he is just telling his student to not take something as axiomatic just because a loud group of people say it is so (if Stevie wants to call them The Woke Mob, let it be so as they do sometimes seem to be that). And then makes the student find the evidence of the axiomatic statement, which the student fails to do. Seems to me like championing critical thinking over blindly echoing passionate views. Most of us accuse the MAGA crowd of this, but they are not the only ones.

[Acer]

"Teaching how to think" sounds good on paper. But ultimately the teacher curates what raw data is provided to the student. As they should, really, given the firehose of unvetted information available--but therein lies a potential to introduce bias.

[$tevie]

dk62 wrote:
It includes the original video that seems to have started everything. And right, he is not even getting into whether JKR is transphobic, he is just telling his student to not take something as axiomatic just because a loud group of people say it is so (if Stevie wants to call them The Woke Mob, let it be so as they do sometimes seem to be that). And then makes the student find the evidence of the axiomatic statement, which the student fails to do. Seems to me like championing critical thinking over blindly echoing passionate views. Most of us accuse the MAGA crowd of this, but they are not the only ones.

I don't want to call them the woke mob. The fact is, the right wing on social media fell in love with this guy because THEY believe he is defying the woke mob. They don't give a damn about Socrates. They see this as a teacher proving that J.K.Rowling is right. Regardless of what he meant to do, that's what they see. And I am so sick of this transphobia that even just guilt by association makes me reject the guy. And frankly, he gives off a James O'Keefe vibe, physically. He talks like someone who doesn't mean a thing they say.

[dk62]

$tevie wrote:

I don't want to call them the woke mob.

And I am so sick of this transphobia that even just guilt by association makes me reject the guy.

He talks like someone who doesn't mean a thing they say.

I know you don't. I was being facetious.

Guilt by association making you sick is a kneejerk result of the same type that, on a bigger scale, resulted in him losing his job. Your personal emotional reaction is yours to have, but when it translates to calls for actions affecting others' livelihoods simply based on an uncomfortable feeling it does become mob-like behavior.

And he does not have to mean anything he says - he started by saying that he does not espouse any value judgements on the matter at hand - as a matter of fact, he could and should hold thought experiments arguing for both sides of an issue.

I am basing all of this on the linked article and the original video. I did not watch the "reaction to firing" video for more than a couple of moments, enough to get sick of its theatricality.