The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
504. Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith
Thu, 5 Dec 2024
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with teacher, filmmaker, and YouTuber, Warren Smith. They discuss his unexpected virality after Elon Musk retweeted a video of him teaching critical thinking. They also walk through the aftermath, Warren’s run-ins and eventual firing by administrative bureaucrats, why asking permission to take on the unknown is not needed, and how the choice to live a safe life or accept an extraordinary adventure is ultimately yours to make. This episode was filmed on November 21st, 2024 | Links | For Warren Smith: On X https://x.com/WTSmith17 On YouTube www.youtube.com/@SecretScholars On Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/Secret_Scholars
Chapter 1: What sparked Warren Smith's viral video?
Hello everybody. I had the opportunity to sit down in person today with Warren Smith. Warren was a teacher and he recorded himself having a discussion with a student about a rather contentious topic. Turned out to be JK Rowling's reactions to the trans propaganda insanity that plagues our culture in 15 different ways.
Do you still like her work despite her bigoted opinions?
So let's get specific though. Let's define bigoted opinions. What opinions are bigoted?
She has had a history of being extremely transphobic, I've heard. And you've heard, so what, can you give me an example? In 2019, she said, live your best life in peace and security, but force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real. So you find that bigoted? What do you find about bigoted? It was...
the video, which was remarkable, I would say, for the good sense that Warren brought to it, the calm demeanor, the intelligent questioning of the student, really the professional way that he handled the discussion, which is now so rare among those who purport to be teachers that the mere fact of its professionalism was remarkable in and of itself, enough so that it went viral.
Do you find that transphobic yourself?
I don't really have an opinion on it, but I'm just going with what a lot of other people have said.
So let's pause it. Let's not go with what other people are saying.
Let's try and learn how to critically think. So let's analyze the tweet ourselves. So that statement, do you see anything problematic?
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Chapter 2: What led to Warren Smith's firing from teaching?
And so I've been reflecting on those conversations because I often, I found myself kind of feeling like I was trying to live up to something from that video. So this idea of what suddenly I was labeled this kind of like this critical thinking Socratic method guy. And I wasn't intentionally doing that at all. I have no background in Socratic method or critical thinking.
I was just doing what I thought was sensible in the moment.
You don't necessarily know who you are, you know, that's the thing. it wasn't exactly chance that made the video go viral, right? You obviously touched on a nerve and in a manner that people admired. Tell the story of the video and talk about your work too. You were working as a high school teacher when you released that video.
Tell people the story of the video and how it came to be and why it was recorded to begin with. Sure, sure.
So after graduate school, I found myself as a public school teacher right up before COVID, the year leading into COVID, just teaching what I majored in. And my plans are always to be a college professor. And I teach some courses, but I'm not tenure track or anything. And perhaps one day I... But...
I found myself in this unlikely position, and I enjoyed it, teaching the same subject matter, video technology, what we're doing right here. Two high school kids. Two high school kids.
19, 2019.
2019. And then you were looking, what kind of jobs were you looking for? In education. In education. And you landed a job as a high school teacher. As a high school teacher.
just by pure kind of just chance. And I really enjoyed it. COVID hits, everything goes ape crazy. The school shuts down. They make cuts because of the teacher's union. All first year hires are gone. So that kind of left a taste in my mouth about unions. One of my first experiences with unions.
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Chapter 3: How did COVID-19 impact Warren's teaching experience?
I interviewed well. I'm going to strive to be as honest as I can throughout this. So I interviewed well. I think they saw potential. They were... I think they were looking for young teachers that could weather that kind of storm. Were they mostly boys in the school?
Yes. What proportion? I would say 80%. Yeah, well, that's what you'd expect if you brought behaviorally challenged kids together because they'd be much more likely to be boys. How old?
High school age, whether there are some middle school. It was interesting the way the building is divided to where a subset of middle school specialized with one group. But because of COVID, it was divided up into pods because they were worried about cross-contamination of COVID. So there was 10 students approximately to one site.
And I was assigned to one site as the multimedia teacher, teaching the same thing I've always taught. And there was no crossover. And then there was three teachers assigned to one site to manage those 10 students, which ratio of teacher to student is quite high. That's what their needs were. How long did you teach at that school? Up until losing my job, so four years. Four years.
Okay, so you stuck it out too. Well, I remember when the first speech they gave, the principal that hired me, I'm very fond of, and the assistant principal, they are no longer there. They were dismissed a year prior to me, but they are the ones that hired me. So when you ask why they hire you, he's the only person that could answer that. I remember I was in the interview.
And this assistant principal walks in and he's like dressed, there was really no dress code. And he walks in and he's like, blow my mind in eight seconds. And then I forget what I said. And then he just walked out and didn't say a single word. And I left thinking, I just blew that interview, but I got the job.
So anyways, we're there on the first day and he's like, look guys, if you're still teaching at this school in four years, Something's probably wrong with you, or you have some sadomasochistic, or you just have some, I think he was alluding to, there's some reason you have that, like, this is not your typical pathway for educators. He's trying to...
illustrate the reality that most times they get traditional educators that realize where they are and it's too late at that point and then they just vanish and they're like i mean they last a week if that we've had teachers come in and last a day one day and just get in their car and leave what happens to them they just they're like this is chaos this is I can't survive this for a year.
We were walking around with walkie-talkies so that you can respond quickly. We're trained in safety care so that you can go hands-on if needed. I mean, fights breaking out. It's not juvie, but it's one step away from juvie. Though you also have students that are not headed to juvie, but they're the ones that get bullied. Or for whatever reason, they have an IEP plan that... And what's that?
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Warren face in a school for behaviorally challenged kids?
No doubt. And a different type of staff and professionalism even, because you can't afford a mistake. It's life or death. And I began to work with those students as well. And you're always going to have inner politics, office place politics and whatnot and certain clicks form. And I mentioned the principal and assistant principal both just got fired in the middle of the day, same day.
And they put out a reason, you know, they're like, oh, they just, they keep it vague. And it was clearly, it was kind of a, in the first year, the school tried to unionize. There was a movement to unionize. And that principal that hired me was very against it. And I voted against it because my previous experience with the unions was starting to wake up to the reality of the drawbacks.
I understand the motivation behind unions, but. So there was, my point is that interplay is politics and it took them out. but I was able to, this new principal arose who was a very nice guy. There was originally two assistant principals and one was the kind of the guy who
in my mind, almost positive, kind of led that formation of what caused them to leave, and he ascended in power, became the only assistant principal, and his good buddy, who was 30 years old at the time, became the principal. Which is pretty young to be a principal. He was a very nice guy, though.
For whatever reason, I got moved across the street into a separate building though, which I actually liked because it gave me more room to grow. And so the students would, when the teachers, I had all the students would rotate. The teachers would bring them across the street. I had this great lab, multimedia lab with a 3D printer. We were investing in new equipment, camera technology, Photoshop.
I had 11 iMacs. running Premiere Pro and Photoshop.
How are the kids responding to this? Well, you're describing a program. It sounds to me like you're describing a program that was successful and that grew. Is that the case? And the kids, were they responding well to what you were teaching?
I think that it was really interesting to notice the difference. The students downstairs, behavioral versus physical challenges, the students upstairs were the ones that resonated the most. With Photoshop, video editing, there was an enthusiasm. So a student with autism, something about some of these skills, they just love, you get them going on video editing. That's very detail-oriented.
Yeah, and so I just loved working with those students, and I didn't get to do that until my last two years here. So, but it was the first two years with those other students, I still think I was making progress with them, like bringing in digital.
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Chapter 5: How does Warren define critical thinking in education?
Let's try and learn how to critically think. So let's analyze the tweet ourselves. So that statement, do you see anything problematic?
Force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real.
So when I hear that, I'm interpreting that as meaning...
If a woman says that, you know, saying that there's a difference between men and female and then being attacked as transphobic, I think that's what she's saying by attacking someone for stating that sex is real. That is exactly what she's saying. Is that transphobic to you?
So, to me, no. So is there anything you disagree with in that tweet? Uh, in that tweet, I can't really see anything that I myself disagree with.
So now that we're looking at it like, oh, there's not much difference between me or her, do you think it's fair that she's being attacked by a large group of people and people are calling her?
Like you said at the beginning of this conversation, you said, given the fact that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, how do you feel about Harry Potter?
Now, retroactively looking at that statement, do you think that that was the best way to phrase it?
no i feel like an idiot now it's okay though but this is why we do this to learn to learn how to think i discovered 2017 a video of a professor low quality video in this classroom that looked like mine you're standing from the classroom talking about archetypes of harry potter it was you and i was like that's cool and this is 2017. that was the first video i saw of you and i went down the rabbit hole cafe and all that classics but that
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Chapter 6: What role did J.K. Rowling's opinions play in the discussion?
Not too much. I mean, I would not, I would, it was more projects like the Queen's Gambit review and I had a colleague, the music teacher, had a passion for camera technology as well. And he was my closest collaborator because we were voc teachers, vocational teachers, meaning we worked with the whole building. We were the only ones that everyone else worked with just their sites.
There was like a culinary teacher, landscaping, and they were always experimenting with the vocations, but music and multimedia always remained consistent. How big a school? Only downstairs, 50 students. Upstairs, about 50 students. Okay.
And how many teachers?
Well, the ratio was... You said it was three to one, about, eh? That's what they strive for, but they're constantly battling understaffing because teachers just vanish often.
Mm-hmm. Had you done a lot of videos in the build-up to the video that got so much attention?
I had been posting little things, just like I was mentioning, like reviews and things, but no one was watching them and no one cared. It wasn't, you know... And working with the music teacher, we would do the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence in music, things which are still up there. So if you're curious to dig into that, you can, if anyone's watching this.
But to answer your question about how this video came about, so they asked me to do a news broadcast. We're not equipped to do that, but we tried anyways. And they're like, we want this kid to... to be the person on camera and just go through, this is what happened in the school this week. So we go in the room, we go to set it up and he's getting stage fright, camera shy.
He's just, and I think it's very important in teaching to lead by example. So let's just treat, let's just do a warmup. I'll sit on camera, you operate it. Let's just have a conversation. Treat it like a podcast real quick. Let's do like a five minute warmup. Just ask me something that you wanna, that would interest you. Okay, he hits record. Alright, so how have your views on J.K.
Rowling changed given her bigoted opinions? Or how have your views on Harry Potter changed given J.K. Rowling's bigoted opinions? Well, first we need to address that and then just walk through it. And I thought, that's interesting. Maybe I'll try something new with this YouTube thing. I just uploaded it. I was like, that's interesting enough to post. I didn't think anyone would watch it.
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Chapter 7: How can video creation enhance student learning?
Well, that's especially relevant with regards to editing because you want to clip and cut so that you get to the gist of the matter. And that means there has to be something there to focus on.
So if you're watching, if a student is watching, they shoot a music video and they're watching themselves playback dancing and they're editing that, okay, but when you watch yourself speaking... debating or just... You're learning those oratory skills. You're getting over public speaking right.
There's more utility, I believe, than simply... There's nothing wrong if a student wants to do something like a music video. You could do something creative too, but even then it's got to have a point. Why not encapsulate as much as possible if our objective is to use what we have to help students as best we can?
Well, obviously also the technique that you were using, so to speak, insofar as it's a technique, is asking pertinent questions. There isn't any difference between that and teaching people how to think, because if you're thinking, you're asking yourself pertinent questions, and you're certainly not going to learn to do that without an example, right?
the whole point of being a teacher is to, or at least one of the main points of being a teacher is to teach people how to ask themselves pertinent questions and to model that. So, Why do you think... So it's interesting that it was the conversation about J.K. Rowling that went viral.
She certainly caused an endless stream of political upset in the UK and turned into quite a stunning advocate for free speech. And she has, in fact, focused on this trans issue, which is... likely the most bizarre issue that's ever dominated the political space, as far as I can tell. And I guess one of the things that your video demonstrated was the pertinence of that issue to students who
have questionable reasons for being concerned about it to begin with. Like, why do you think that this particular student was possessed by the belief that transphobia was a thing to begin with?
Because that's also a bastardization of words in the most manipulative possible way, to take a clinical terminology, phobia, and then to append it to objection to anything that the person who's objecting, or what would you say? I can object to something. If someone's irritated about that, they're going to medicalize my objection and describe it as a pathology.
That's what happens when you use the term phobia. It's unbelievably manipulative. And I would say the radical leftists are stunningly good at that manipulation of language. But now you have a student who... is objecting to JK Rowling on the basis of transphobia. And you're asking questions about it. Now, is that part of what also got you?
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of a false consensus in education?
I mean, the fact that that issue even arose in a school is ridiculous under anything approximating normal times. And yet you handled it
carefully and thoughtfully and you did it in a way that was obviously of educational benefit to the students and that none of that should be surprising actually like the manner in which you addressed it but it's also the fact that that same response to that question is surprising in the education system that made it go viral and so because we're so accustomed to seeing
17.
17, okay. So that's just an indication of the state of the school system in general.
I don't think he was even accusing her. I think he was just repeating what he thought was reality.
Of course, of course. Of course, exactly. Well, you said that as you investigated with, you know, some relatively... elementary, but also eminently sane questions, that revealed itself very quickly. He was just spouting the cliches of the moment, right? The radical cliches of the moment. And was he doing that because he thought he should?
Like, what was your impression of the reasons for his questions?
He genuinely believed that that was what the truth was. He thought that was reality. He articulates that. I've heard many classmates state this, so it must be true. In the same way, you hear this often. I just made a critique video with Barry Weiss doing this, I was a little hard on her, on Joe Rogan, and she's saying, it's the same pattern.
She's applying this to Tulsi Gabbard, and he presses her on it slightly, and it dissolves. And we all are capable of doing, we all do do this in our lives. I'm not above it.
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