TLDR; There are people with platforms that have opinions and views of the school systems that are factually incorrect, and when shared across wide platforms without further investigation, will build animosity towards teachers and students. This animosity will lead to policy changes and governance strategies that are counter to the humanization of people as they develop within both public and private institutes. Noting the monstrosity that is “the people on the internet”, none of my faculty members meet these concerns. I am reorienting to accept their views more readily.
The story: It’s spring break and I finally have an opportunity to catch up on my favorite Youtube channel, Wisecrack. In this episode, the host Michael is discussing where all the intellectuals went? We no longer seem to have universally generous or climate conscious intellectuals such as Dawkins, Sagan, and Hiegel, but instead we have people such as Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro. The people who seem to identify as intellectual are often right leaning, misinterpret their counterparts and often speak from the hip. For example Joe Rogan invites almost anyone onto his platform to seek better understanding but does nothing to vet his guests or investigate their ideas, allowing the guest essentially free reign to push their ideas onto Rogan’s audience.
The left isn’t without it’s inarticulate champions either, Bill Nye and Neil Degrass Tyson are brilliantly science minded individuals, but they often find themselves commenting outside of their realms of understanding and often end up saying nonsense just to maintain the intellectual high ground.
Okay the old guard is gone, the current intellectuals are bunk so let’s look at the up and coming. Wisecrack slams this “modern intellectual” Lindsay, during an interview with “mom’s for liberty podcast”. Lindsay accuses the education system of having been “Marxist” leading to it’s downfall, and claims that systematic thinking never addresses the root of the problem. In his clear, and well articulated speech he misinterprets Paulo Ferreira’s work in “Paradigm of the Oppressed” and provides an example (that was not an example) of systematic thinking.
Lindsay make several wild accusations about school structure, the effectiveness of education and even blames schools for school shootings (yikes). I wanted to investigate some of the groups in my home town, and have discovered several alarming reports by groups like the Fraser Institute and concerning minutes from school board meetings. It’s clear that the ideological principals that govern schools will shift and flow as time marches on, but it’s seriously concerning some of the ideas that are being actively shared.
Noting the monstrosity that is “the people on the internet”, none of my faculty members meet these concerns. I am reorienting to acccept their views more readily and consider the features that they espouse.
