Opinion
A teacher’s YouTube channel clip has gone viral on social media as a master class in the ancient art of critical thinking. In less than five minutes, the teacher helps a young student through a simple critical thinking exercise using the alleged transphobia illustrated by acclaimed children’s author J.K. Rowling.
Without giving his own opinion on the possible transphobia of J.K. Rowling, the teacher asks basic questions that eventually lead the student to admit the unfortunate reality that he’s a willing victim of groupthink. Let’s dive into the quick lesson and what it means for our society.
I’ve heard it, so it’s true
Teacher and host of the YouTube channel The Secret Scholar Society Warren Smith conducted a thought experiment with a student who wanted to discuss the public opinion of J.K. Rowling, given comments she’s made about the gender ideology movement.
The student asks Mr. Smith:
“Do you still like her work despite her bigoted opinions?”
Mr. Smith challenges the student to prove that J.K. Rowling has bigoted opinions, given that he boldly asked his question as if it were a statement of fact.
The student replies:
“She has had a history of being extremely transphobic, I’ve heard.”
As any good educator, Mr. Smith forces the student to provide actual proof of said “extreme transphobia.” After a few moments, the student produces as evidence a tweet from 2019 when J.K. Rowling wrote:
“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?”
Mr. Smith asked the student to critically analyze the tweet without considering what other people claimed about the tweet. This is when the clip gets comical.
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Relative reality
The student starts by admitting:
“I don’t really have an opinion on it, but I’m just going with what a lot of other people have said.”
Uttering the above statement should be enough to snap an individual back to reality with an accompanying feeling of shame for being so vapid. However, it takes a bit more prodding for this young man to realize how mindlessly he has been following the masses.
Mr. Smith says gently:
“Let’s not go with what other people are saying. Let’s try and learn how to critically think.”
It doesn’t take too long for the student to admit the following:
“So to me no stating that sex is real is not transphobic, it’s just a fact of life.”
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It’s important to note the student’s attempt to hold onto the fact that J.K. Rowling’s statement could be transphobic with three little words: So to me. This caveat puts a foot in the door known as “perceived reality,” where if someone else thinks it’s transphobic to state sex is real, then it is.
Unfortunately for the left-wing progressives, truth is truth, not their truth, not my truth, or perceived truth. It’s just truth.
Foolishness
The student tries one more time to provide another example of Ms. Rowling’s transphobia, providing what he called an “apology” from 2020.
Ms. Rowling wrote:
“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
Mr. Smith provides his analysis of this tweet, explaining that J.K. Rowling is trying to say with this tweet that it’s OK to live your life as you wish. Still, it’s also OK to live her life as she wishes; freedom to be transgender does not equate to extinguishing her liberty to state the reality of sex.
To which the student admits:
“I feel like an idiot now.”
The student continues to admit freely to his credit:
“Until today I haven’t really thought about it because I just believed, like, oh there’s five people saying it, it must be correct.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up the dismal state of our education system and culture.
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What’s the point
Higher education should teach critical thought in all aspects of study. Unfortunately, this particular case study, courtesy of Warren Smith and his students, illustrates this is not the state of affairs.
Mr. Smith tells the student:
“The whole point is to learn how to think, not what to think.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t the reality of higher education and not at all the goal of the progressive left that has control over institutions of higher learning and our culture. The goal is to indoctrinate society to think the way they want us to think. That has always been the purpose of government education.
Exercising our freedom to question what we are told and what we see is viewed as a threat to their power. Controlling our thoughts and silencing those who don’t fall in line with the approved “groupthink” is the strategy of the left and our society’s elite class.
While I think Warren Smith’s lesson on critical thinking for this student was brilliant, I would’ve liked it if he had explored if the student knew what instigated J.K. Rowling’s first tweet he used as “evidence” of “extreme transphobia.” For those who care (and all of us should because context matters), the tweet was in response to researcher Maya Forstater losing her job at a think tank for tweeting criticisms about gender ideology.
Of note, Ms. Forstater won her court case after a long legal battle. Ms. Forstater said of her win:
“My case has exposed institutionalized discrimination against, and the routine abuse and smearing of, people with perfectly ordinary beliefs about the material reality of sex.”
Indeed, her case and this particular student’s ignorance both expose institutionalized discrimination against people with ordinary beliefs about sex. Until society stops drinking the group-think Kool-Aid, people like Ms. Forstater, Ms. Rowling, and countless others will continue to be falsely labeled as bigots.
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