The Whole Point Should be to Learn HOW to Think, not WHAT to Think.

Reaching one’s own conclusions through the use of critical thinking skills is the opposite of what any government educational system wants its students to learn.

Warren Smith

I just have to share these brilliant ideas, from one of my favorite people, Warren Smith.

Warren Smith was fired from his job as a teacher because he is far too dangerous to the educational system. He wants students to be critical thinkers. Oh, the horror of it—that students should learn to think for themselves!

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You can listen to me read this essay here:

In the video below, Smith displays his dangerous teaching technique. When a young man asks him, “Do you still like JK Rowling’s work, despite her bigoted opinions?” Smith tries to help the young man reach his own conclusions on the matter.

“She has a history of being extremely transphobic,” the young man insists, referring to what other people have said about her.

Whereupon Smith asks him to read the actual tweet, which he does:

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”

When Smith asks the young man what he thinks after reading Rowling’s words for himself, he has trouble doing that. He responds that he doesn’t really have an opinion, but other people have said—-

Upon which Smith again prompts him to use his own mind to reach his own conclusions.

This creates a kind of epiphany for the young man. Finally, he acknowledges that after reading Rowling’s tweet, he doesn’t think she’s bigoted at all. In fact, he agrees with her.

This learning experience is beautiful to witness. Smith does not browbeat the young man, rather encourages him to reach his own conclusions without fear that he might be “wrong” and thus retaliated against.

Reaching one’s own conclusions through the use of critical thinking skills is the opposite of what any government wants its citizens to do.

Which is precisely why we all need to do it. Why we need to ensure that our children especially learn this skill in school—and from us at home. We should encourage discussion of varying points of view. We shouldn’t fear free thought.

Just this morning I read a tweet from the absolutely cringeworthy “journalist” Kim Iversen that personifies the aggressive indoctrination being used to stifle free thought:

To all of the privileged “anti-woke” white people who think homeschooling is the best path to protect your kids. Your kids are going to get TROUNCED by the Asian kids in America and around the world. Asian parents ignore the woke bullshit and they focus their kids on math and science. Their kids come home and guess what they do? More math and science.

This is exactly the type of browbeating Warren Smith advocates against. These are statements meant to numb the mind by leaving no room for disagreement. You simply must agree, without any proof, or risk being ridiculed and ostracized from the mob.

Iverson’s 193.5 followers hang on her every word because it validates their own fascist extremism. Like the Jew hatred she spews, with this ignorant tweet as an example:

Rather than stop Germany other countries should have just taken all the Jews instead. Let the Nazis have their Aryan race.

I guess she doesn’t know history, how after WWII, Jews returning to their homes experienced a second genocide. Historical accounts describe this pogrom in Poland:

Women grieving over the coffins of those killed in the Kielce pogrom as they are transported to the burial site in the Jewish cemetery. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Leah Lahav

Jewish men and women were stoned, robbed, beaten with rifles, stabbed with bayonets, and hurled into a river that flowed nearby. Yet while other Kielce residents walked by, none did anything to stop it. It wasn’t until noon that another group of soldiers was sent in to break up the crowd and evacuate the wounded and dead. In the afternoon, a group of metal workers ran toward the building, armed with iron bars and other weapons. The residents of 7 Planty were relieved; they thought these men had come to help. Instead, the metal workers began brutally attacking and killing those still alive inside the building.

The violence went on for hours. As Miriam Guterman, one of the last remaining survivors of the pogrom, put it in the 2016 documentary film Bogdan’s Journey: “I couldn’t believe that these were humans.”

“[Kielce] really is a symbol of the exodus of Jewish survivors from Poland, and a symbol sometimes that there is no future in Poland for Jews,” says Joanna Sliwa, a historian with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

These are facts. But facts don’t matter if they remove people from their comfort zone. Intellect has lost the war with emotions. People see questions as an attack on their feelings rather than a sincere desire to know if something is true or not. Lies justify horrible actions. If what they believe is proved to be lies, they will have to admit the horror of what they believe or of even what they are doing. And that’s not going to happen. Thanks to influencers feeding their followers a constant stream of lies as truth, the mob grows ever bolder.

Thank God for teachers like Warren Smith. But no wonder he got fired. He wants people to think for themselves. And that is far too dangerous, especially in this age when mass indoctrination is proving so successful.

Do you know of a school that teaches critical thinking? What were your experiences in school and the experiences of your children.

I hope you will watch more of Warren Smith at his podcast Secret Scholars.