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Teacher Who Went Viral For Teaching Critical Thinking Gets Fired

Warren Smith Used Socratic Method To Break Down JK Rowling Debate

Warren Smith went viral (after a retweet from Elon Musk) at the beginning of the year when he posted a discussion with a pupil about the Harry Potter author, JK Rowling.

The pupil asked Mr. Smith whether he still liked Rowling’s work despite her “bigoted opinions”. ...

I admire Rowling for standing up for what she believes in and for championing free speech. She is fortunate to be rich enough to be able to do so but, even so, most people in her position would not and do not raise their heads above the parapet.

Mr. Smith’s viral video used the Socratic Method to guide his pupil to think critically about the author. It was a masterclass in asking and answering questions to try to establish the truth.

“We’re going to treat this as a thought experiment. I’m not going to say what is right or wrong or which way to think. The whole point is to learn how to think not what to think.”

A week ago, Mr. Smith was fired from the same school in which the viral video took place. He had been teaching there for four yours. Whilst we don’t know the exact reason he lost his job, in a recent update, he suggests it was because of the backlash to his videos. ...

If Warren was fired purely based on his opinions and way of teaching, this is a disgrace. So long as he didn’t violate any terms of his contract or bring the school into disrepute, then going against the herd and thinking critically should be encouraged. In fact, it should be the norm.

then going against the herd and thinking critically should be encouraged. In fact, it should be the norm.

That would be true if he was really teaching in a school. But it's not because he was hired to indoctrinate in a government propaganda institution.

All those new institutions that had been built by right-wing progressives to uplift the masses, to educate and train them to high intellectual and physical standards for example, were gradually repurposed by left-wing progressives into institutions for the prevention of Hitlers. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that the graduates, especially the white males (judged most likely to become Hitlers), are as unfit, untrained, weak, incapable, ignorant, and neurotic as possible. Over many decades the schools have gradually become institutes of exquisitely refined psychological tortures designed to do just that on an industrial scale.

Finally, enjoy some more great news in the conservative counter-revolution. Florida is leading again. Politico ran the story yesterday headlined, “‘Microschools’ could be the next big school choice battle. Florida is on the cutting edge.” The sub-headline explained, “Florida just enacted a little-noticed provision that would make it much easier for these schools — which typically have less than 30 students — to get established.”

A concept developed during the pandemic, which we were calling “pods” or “co-ops,” this homeschooling alternative involves a pack of parents banding together and hiring a full-time teacher to teach a small, multi-age group of kids at places like someone’s house, business, church, or rented movie theater.

Politico called the new Florida law referenced in the article “quiet” because it was just a zoning change. It pre-empts local government zoning regulations, allowing small private schools to use existing spaces at places like movie theaters, homes, and churches without having to get local permits or approvals.

Two years ago, Florida passed laws transferring state public school funds to parents, to use for private school tuition and expenses. The funds can also be used for pods, now widely called “microschools.” Politico reported that participation in these state-funded scholarships boomed to an estimated 217,000 students since Florida opened the new voucher program to all students regardless of income.

In a micro-school scenario, parents hire their pod teachers based on merit, not diversity. Microschool teachers reportedly earn +25% more on average than when they worked at comparable public school positions, with less work, fewer students, better students, no unions, and zero politics.

At least in Florida, public schools are being forced to compete. They may soon have to start hiring better teachers and treating them well.

The Empire has not been idle in the face of this new free-market threat. Local governments across the country have weaponized zoning regulations against homeschoolers to defeat homeschool pods, making it illegal to operate them anywhere. But Florida and Utah have both now deleted that tool, leading the nation in re-establishing the country’s original school format, the one-room schoolhouse.

Florida’s just-passed law would also allow private schools to expand, growing into alternative locations to allow more students, bypassing local regulations.

It would be an understatement to say this one new law could finally trigger the long-awaited revolution in education. Progress, and lots of it.

May 3, 2024

Imagine a mother getting ready to send her daughter to kindergarten. She asks the school for information about the curriculum planned for her little one, but the school stonewalls her. So, the mom tries again, and the school responds by demanding $74,000 in public records fees to access the information. Then the nation’s largest teachers union sues the mom for filing those records requests, even though that’s what school officials had asked her to do.

That’s the shocking backdrop of Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas’ latest battle for transparency—this time involving the South Kingstown School District’s decision to first withhold records from Nicole and then bar her from attending secret meetings of the taxpayer-funded Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Advisory Board, where the board developed policies for the district.

Nicole wasn’t about to back down—and as attorneys with the Goldwater Institute’s American Freedom Network of pro bono attorneys, we were honored to stand up for her rights and take the school district to court over its violations of Rhode Island’s Public Records Law and Open Meetings Act.

This week, we won.

In today’s politically charged environment, where schools around the country are turning their classrooms into breeding grounds for bias and discrimination, Nicole wanted to know if she was sending her daughter into a den of Critical Race Theory, gender identity, hate, and racial bias. And for good reason: In 2020, the South Kingstown School Committee established the BIPOC Advisory Board to determine if school district policies did not promote “inclusivity” and “equity,” for a more “inclusive and antiracist” district. After the board denied Nicole’s requests to open the meetings to the public, she sought transparency though Rhode Island’s public records law—only for the district to deny the very existence of public records regarding the board meetings when officials had those records in their possession.