Eton teacher sacked for controversial lecture cleared by TRA

[Aparallaxia]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/15/free-speech-victory-eton-master-cleared-teaching-watchdog-sacked/

He has a rather old-fashioned idea of "radical feminism"! I haven't heard the world-without-men meme since about 1975. Nowadays we just want men to stop hurting us and discriminating against us.

Also, he does look a bit of a tw*t.

I lost about an hour of my life watching his videos. While he had passion, some of his info was plain old wrong and v cringy.

Following on from indub’s post above, this is the Triggernometry interview where Will Knowland talks about the lecture and what happened to him.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6yohTYJ8w0

@NiceGerbil

Wiki-

Horticulture is the art of cultivating plants in gardens to produce food and medicinal ingredients, or for comfort and ornamental purposes. Horticulturists are agriculturists who grow flowers, fruits and nuts, vegetables and herbs, as well as ornamental trees and lawns.

See women would be unable to grow crops cos of getting distracted by the desire for a nice shrubbery a la the Knights who say Ni.

Obviously.

And flowers for our hair.

Eww, wouldn't that mean having to dig around in the mud and getting dirt under our fingernails? 🥺

I too was a bit freaked put that the TRA had cleared him.Wondered if there had been some Taliban style takeover of academe.

He had done plenty of controversial topics prior with no problems.

There's controversial and there's controversial, isn't there?

On the one hand, Brexit, the abolition of the monarchy, privatising health care are all controversial but within the parameters of reasonable debate.

On the other hand, saying that (for example) we should reintroduce slavery or Jewish people should be made to wear yellow stars are not within the parameters of reasonable debate.

IMHO, saying that women are so useless and incapable that we couldn't even manage to feed ourselves falls into the second category rather than the first.

And this is a school that positively reeks of male entitlement. The boys need to see views other than their own, not the same old patriarchal misogynistic bullshit.

@Thelnebriati

One argument in the video is that women can't operate large machines, as the machines are too big. I think women would be smart enough to build machines to fit us, but thats probably just my inner misandrist coming out.

That was the reason for women not being employed at the steel works until the war came along and there were not enough men to take the jobs. There's some excellent aural history on record at the steel mills in Sheffield, elderly ladies talking about how aged 17 they were employed to drive the cranes lifting molten steel around the workshed, where one mistake could mean killing all the men on the floor.

The women - teenaged girls in actual fact- turned out to be better than the experienced men drivers had been, with a lighter touch on the wheel.

However it didn't stop them all being sacked as soon as the war was over. T

I actually know of this teacher (although I don't know him personally) and a bit about the situation.
Eton masters have tried for a long time to stir debate amongst the boys about views on feminism, about their role as young adults, and to get them to challenge and question traditional male role models which are no longer helpful in today's society.

As I understood it, the video wasn't what the teacher believed, it was a collection of views which were to spark (heated) debate and actually make the pupils think....

I am not sure why he made the video public in the way he did. Eton wanted the video taken down but he refused, I understand (but I am open to correction here) that he felt Eton were dictating rather than allowing free speech and therefore free debate.

He seemed to get sacked (again, others may know better) for disobeying Eton's orders rather than the debate itself. He was cleared by the TRA because he hadn't actually done anything which prevents him from teaching, like being abusive or safeguarding issues etc. Disobeying Eton's edicts aren't a reason for not being able to teach elsewhere as far as I'm aware....

If you want to challenge ingrained views you need to do it in such a way as you don't accidentally support them.

If he really wanted to challenge their thinking why not use some materials from feminists?

@Thelnebriati

If you want to challenge ingrained views you need to do it in such a way as you don't accidentally support them.

If he really wanted to challenge their thinking why not use some materials from feminists?

Woah, steady on! He wanted to provoke debate, not be issued a fatwa from the Wokiban.

These are children. You don't provoke debate amongst teenaged boys by reinforcing the worst of their views with misogyny.

Any more than Prevent training gets you to show good reasons to fight against the West.