Arab woman and professor in Canada cancelled by woke white mob

This story is insane and I really really feel for the poor woman. It's just so ridiculous, don't they see the irony?

It reminds me of the reaction to the report in the UK that said that systemic racism isn't the cause of inequalities as people thought. Same response.

I feel like one of the problems is you're expected to have an opinion on everything, even if you're not well informed about a particular subject. So people take shortcuts of looking at what others who they agree with on X think about Y and then become intransigent.

I've had people get really irate because my answer to "what do you think about x?" was to admit I hadn't got a good enough understanding of the situation to make a judgement. Equally when I do understand a situation, I get really frustrated by someone on "my side" intentionally misrepresenting the opposing argument and will correct them which then leads to accusations of disloyalty as though its like supporting a football team.

There a couple of funny books that do this by an author called Yvonne Morrison, Little Red Riding Hood ( Not Quite) and The Three Bears ( Sort Of) where a kid asks questions about everything, particularly point out the illogicality of these fairy tales.

I don't think it even has to b anything so deliberate. But the stories have to be good, and substantial.

I remember reading a story book as a little girl, The Story About Ping. It was about a duck who doesn't want to be spanked by the duck-keeper, so he runs off from the boat where he lives with his family. He goes out on the river and sees a few disturbing things and finally is almost eaten. He finds the boat at the end and goes back, puts up with being spanked for being late, and stays safe and warm with his family.

It was a compelling story, well written, and it raised so many questions. Was it unjust to spank the ducks or did it keep them safe? Was Ping better off taking his chances free on the river, or safe with his family in captivity?

The story gave no real direction about these kinds of questions, I had to think about them and come to my own conclusions. I don't think it would be read to school children today, or given to them by most parents, because the messaging would be seen as wrong or unclear. And too serious and scary. Books without clear answers upset the parents.

And when the attempts to put another side etc come from groups who are supposed to be on your side, on message. Then it's really disturbing. And needs to stop.

storytime.rnz.co.nz/book/little-red-riding-hood-not-quite/

“So her parents named her after her clothes?!”

storytime.rnz.co.nz/book/the-three-bears-sort-of

“Are you saying this chair could support the weight of a baby bear but not a 30kg girl? Come on!”

And so you don't want to hear. You don't want to discuss. Hearing all this stuff and thinking about it is, in the current global context, overwhelming.

If it's sort of their fault but they have good reasons and sort of your tribes fault and they have their reasons then the anxiety is back. There is no certainty. Awful things happen and you can't do anything.

So I think this knee jerk thing is not just the 'woke'. It's the right it's the left, it's the extremists it's the men who can't get a girlfriend. It's the people who worry about job security and climate change and their children's future and everything and everyone. Well not everyone. But lots.

I think intolerance in general is rising and that feeds into this approach, and so it spirals.

Anyone challenging your 'safe space' ( I hate that term) is challenging the thing that gives you comfort in a world that is scary and now beamed at us 24/7 with no downtime and no limit on where things are happening or a limit on showing the full horror.

I think in general that the 24 hour media, being exposed to all the horror that is going on all around the world. The risks. Things people can't do anything about.

Wars overseas pics of children dying. Environmental risk. North Korea Russia etc. Economic threats. More exposure to lots of parts of the world where the whole society feels alien.

I think it's freaked a lot of people out and in response they are taking comfort in becoming more closed off. It's easier to say I'm in this group and I'm one of them. These are the people we don't like. And sort of put all these fears and lack of control into tribalism.

Had a squiz through the article.

I'm more wondering if these reactions are part of a wider behaviour pattern.

In general views seem to be becoming more polarised. Across the board. EG trump supporters not believing trump had lied, even in the face of irrefutable evidence that trump had lied.

The internet allows for echo chambers and exposure to really off the wall ideas which go unchanged. And a tribal approach- with us or against us.

I am sure the same people cancelling Dr Azar kept schtum about their serial black facer PM Trudeau.

The Canadian Tourist Board must be delighted that the official position of the white majority is that Canada is a hostile and racist country

Wanda that reminds me of a school I know who are super smug about their black history month but failed to stop pupils being appallingly racist to a member of staff who then left.
People are such wankers at times...

Yes, I'm very aware of the problems with the Chinese system as I used to work in an international school and we regularly got transfers from the local Chinese school where they hit children with books and rulers.

Like I said, the British system was working until the government started messing with it without consulting educators.

This doesn’t surprise me in the least. The diversity push isn’t about diversity at all, it’s about constructing boxes for people who aren’t white and then attacking everyone for saying the box is ridiculous. I’m currently a diversity hire in a place where guess what? I’m paraded around as a diversity hire, the brown monkey for pennies. And guess what happens whenever I step out of my diversity hire box and talk about anything that isn’t to do with being brown?
Back in the box brown girl!

Meanwhile everyone I work with has diversity meetings where they sit around self flagellating and congratulating themselves on “growing” and “learning”

You can encourage critical thinking from an early age, just by questioning little things, eg in a story.

If you talk to Chinese people, they're critical of their school system. With students just learning information and not being allowed to discuss things and think for themselves. They have very large classes, too.

No my point was they try to do everything rather than sticking with what works for us. Trying to apply either model on our system is unworkable without serious money.

But yes, yields poor results for creating critical thinkers.

It's not like kids in the Nordic countries can't do math though!

I think it's the testability they are seduced by.

But in any case, it doesn't produce children who can spot a coherent argument, much less understand the nature of bias, or notice factual historical inaccuracies.

The problem was that people that know nothing about teaching Gove cough cough drive these changes and targets.
They want the free play based learning of the Nordic countries. They want the high achieving maths skills of China. These Sims do not mesh so you end up with children being taught in a patchy, mismatched and inconsistent way.

There's no time. No time for discussion about the world around us. No time for addressing misconceptions. No time for fostering a love of learning.

It's a mess. And likely to continue as old hands are leaving or passed over for inexperienced nqts.

I don't understand it really, we can see this approach has done no good for the American schools.

And the Asian schools just work on a totally different basis and I think you can argue their results are not all they are cracked up to be.

It's not something that's on individual teachers really though I think a lot of younger ones are missing out on critical thinking skills themselves. So they don't really understand what they are supposed to be imparting.

I think the loss of storytime is a big loss in primary, but unfortunately, with the focus on sats and league tables it's considered expendable.

I sort of agree with primaries tackling skills too early.
But primary schools are between a rock and a hard place. The government has pushed skills earlier to compete with education systems like China, so teachers have to teach skills early as it's on the curriculum. Early fractions moving to Eyfs being s good example of this madness.
But the other factor is that children have access to concepts far too early now due to the internet and accessibility of information. Porn, extreme views and people are just accessible in a way they weren't before and hence the need to tackle it.
To go back to basics, as it were, we'd need to make a concerted societal effort to delay introduction to such topics until children are ready for them.

And actually - I think what is being displaced for primary students is following a connected narrative, and then on from that, following a connected argument. Which mostly comes from listening to stories, in the earliest years - good, and morally complex ones ideally.

Talking about bias isn't helpful if you can't do that at the most basic level.

I would have expected that critical thinking and analysis of source to be a big thing. We start it in primary in ict, but to be honest it's probably a bit early for them to really comprehend it.

This may be part of the problem. People sometimes seem to think that by pushing skills down to a lower level, the kids will learn them better, but what more often happens is that it displaces other more foundational skills, and they aren't able to really understand the higher level skills.

Bias isn't actually that difficult to understand if you are old enough. But to me it's telling that for many, the assumption is that one side is biased, or biased in the wrong way. It's not really about the distortions of viewpoint which are universal. Understanding that requires some ability to abstract however, and insight into one's own thinking processes, the ability to stand outside them to some extent. That's higher order thinking - not the highest, but not for ten year olds.

But I think the other element is that if you want to really teach and allow critical thinking, there is a real possibility that a student will come to a conclusion other than the one you want them to. Maybe about racism, or sex, or same-sex marriage, or anti-semitism, or some other hot-button topic.

People are scared of that possibility which is in itself revealing - they think that reason is dangerous.

The people criticising her made a big thing out of apparently knowing better than her about racism despite the fact that they are white Canadians. Never enters their head just to think about that a bit. A lot of this seems to be that cancelling people makes you feel righteous and powerful, just by writing a couple of twitter posts or whatever from the comfort of your nice middle-class sofa.

I really wish people would stop using “cancelled” in this way. People cannot be cancelled. She wasn’t cancelled. Stop using it. Let it die out as the ridiculous thing it is.