E276. Are We Still Teaching Critical Thinking To Kids? - Warren Smith

Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy

Conversations with people from all walks of life.

Society & Culture, Comedy Interviews, Comedy, News, News Commentary

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2024

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Warren Smith is a teacher who went viral for a critical thought exercise he did with a student. The topic? JK Rowling. He sits down with Bridget to discuss what life has been like since Elon Musk retweeted his video. They talk about why the video made such an impact and resonated with so many people, the power of questions in the pursuit of objective truth, the application of critical thinking and whether kids are being taught these skills in school, and why the subject of JK Rowling in particular is such a charged and interesting topic. They also discuss what brought Warren to teaching, what he'd like to do with the opportunities this moment has given him, his responsibilities as a teacher, the lessons Bridget has learned from being in media, the learning curve of being a voice in the culture wars, Warren's perspective on the kids these days, his concerns about the state of teaching, the dangerous lack of innovation to keep up with technology in our classrooms, and why there's something uniquely strange about the culture war itself. Check out Warren's YouTube page Secret Scholar Society. Sponsor Links: AG1 - https://bit.ly/AG1-WiW I Survived… The Podcast - https://bit.ly/WiW-ISurvived Pluto TV - https://bit.ly/WiWPlutoTV

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh right, I am with Warren Smith everybody. Welcome to Watkins welcome.
0:06.4	It's good to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
0:11.2	What is it like to go viral Warren?
0:14.0	I don't know. I don't really...
0:18.0	I don't even really know how many people have seen. I mean I know it has a view count on it but there's
0:28.0	no concept really of where those people are or it's not it doesn't which it doesn't feel any different in my day to day life so
0:39.0	Yeah, I mean you're doing podcast and people are talking to you and you're been you know you're you're in the you know welcome to the culture wars a little bit so did you have any inkling that something like this would happen when you were
0:57.3	So for people who are listening who don't know Warren why don't you why don't you tell us about the video?
1:03.3	You'll do a better justice than me.
1:05.1	Sure, sure.
1:06.5	So we were doing, I was working with two students
1:08.8	to do a newscast at the school.
1:11.6	And one of the student that was going to be on camera was feeling a
1:15.4	bit nervous so to do a warm-up. Let's just have a conversation pretend it's a
1:19.2	podcast so to like that so let's just talk about something that interests you what's something that interests you. What's something that interests you?
1:24.0	And he said, oh, I'd like to talk to you, I'd like to ask you about J-K rolling.
1:28.0	All right, I hit record. So these guys want to talk about J-K rolling. So what's up?
1:32.0	And you saw the rest on video. So these guys want to talk about Jake Roling. So what's up?
1:33.0	And you saw the rest on video.
1:35.0	Do you still like her work despite her bigoted opinions?
1:40.0	So let's get specific though.
1:42.0	Let's define bigoted opinions opinions what opinions are bigoted
	...

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