Eton
I'm concerned about the fact that an employee can be dismissed by their employer for putting forward reasonable and credible arguments. I appreciate that many people on this forum will disagree with Mr Knowland, but do you really agree that it should be okay to terminate someone's employment because they argue that gender is not socially constructed? One of the first thing that the despicable Nazis did when they gained power was to prevent Jewish people from working in certain jobs. Access to a chosen career is a key freedom. Of course the difference between Eton and the Nazis is that the latter were in control of the government. I appreciate that this makes a difference but it still seems to me that the hurdle ought to be very high for an employer to terminate someone's employment based on an opinion they've expressed (it is certainly not liberal to do so).
Link to story here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7eDqaI1Zo
Link to story here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7eDqaI1Zo
Comments
I believe in stronger employment protection, do you ?
The facts appear to be these:
1. Mr Knowland sought permission from his employers to present his claims about gender to the pupils.
2. He was refused permission
3. He published the claims as a lecture on youtube, identifying himself as a teacher at Eton
4. A barrister hired by the school claimed that the lecture, when presented by a school teacher in an educational context, was in breach of the law.
4. He refused multiple times to remove the video
5. He was fired.
I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea, as expressed by Mr Knowland, that orthodoxy can be radical.
YouTube has not.
I don't generally treat YouTube as reliable information on any topic more contentious than funny things cute kittens did. (I reserve judgement on whether they're staged.)
A teacher or other person in charge of children should not express any views more contentious than it is good to listen supportively and without judgement, and refer to a trained and accredited counselor if appropriate.
Yes. I believe that two years to bring an unfair dismissal claim is too long and that legal aid should be expanded to cover more employment tribunal claims.
What source would you engage with? I've put a link to the Metro:
https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/30/eton-defends-sacking-teacher-over-sexist-lecture-as-pupils-call-for-his-return-13675338/
Apologies I couldn't find a Guardian article but I guess this is a sensitive, lose-lose topic for them.
No, because there is no credible evidence in favour of the belief that the holocaust did not occur. There is credible evidence in favour of the view that gender is not entirely socially constructed. I'm sorry of that offends you but I believe its a reasonable point of view.
Please. The Guardian hosts TERFs, FFS.
If I or one of my colleague did what this pillock did we'd be risking our professional registration with the GTCS nevermind our employment. If you feel so strongly about affirming sexist, deterministic narratives about gender that you have to speak you can publish your views anonymously. You don't get to try and use the prestige of your employer to give credence to your nonsense while complaining about the consequences of doing so.
What is it that you find sexist about what he said?
Answering on my own behalf and just going off the Metro article you linked to:
Claiming that there's a biological necessity to have men running everything and that women should shut up and like it seems pretty sexist to me.
Just out of curiosity, what do you consider to be the "credible evidence" for male superiority when it comes to leadership?
That video is not a good advert for Eton.
Yet again, the game of the moving goal posts: There is credible evidence in favour of the view that gender is not entirely socially constructed.
I'm concerned about the fact that an employee can be dismissed by their employer for putting forward reasonable and credible arguments. I appreciate that many people on this forum will disagree with Mr Knowland, but do you really agree that it should be okay to terminate someone's employment because they argue that gender is not socially constructed?
From what I've seen of the video the problem is that he isn't putting forward "reasonable and credible" arguments, but the extremely poor quality of the arguments he is putting forward.
I haven't watched it all. However, one section (starting at 30:30) gives Andrew Dworkin as an example of a feminist who promotes paedophilia. He then adds
It is worth noting here that Simone de Beauvoir , author of "The Second Sex" and founder of modern feminism, signed a petition calling for paedophilia to be decriminalized. By contrast the core of masculinity, the protector role, makes it the antithesis of paedophilia. This is why, in prison. child abusers are the most despised offenders."
Where to start? The petition that de Beauvoir signed in 1977 was also signed by many men, including Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes. To use this document, without mentioning any of the male signatories, to claim that feminists in 2020 support paedophilia suggests a total lack of ability to use primary sources critically.
Furthermore the prison comment is odd too - it is true that in prisons child abusers are despised - but is he suggesting that's only in male prisons? They are despised in female prisons, too. "Despising child abusers" isn't a gender-specific or sex-specific attribute, even if Knowland wants to imply that it is.
Why not include some statistics about which sex commits most sexual offences against children? - presumably because that would blow his "feminists are in favour of paedophilia, but men fight to protect children from it" argument right out of the water.
His use of primary source material is very, very poor. If I was marking this as an essay by an 18 year old, it would have comments all over it about use of primary sources. I'd be giving this a "C"
I would not want my child taught by someone who uses primary sources without understanding them. I definitely wouldn't want to pay hard cash for them to be taught by this man.
Should a teacher have been sacked for - as @Leorning Cniht explains - disobeying a ruling from his superiors and misrepresenting them publically? Well yes, as in any other field of employment.
If I were to produce a video saying that my employer was not working to the highest ethical standards, I would be fired. If I produced a video identifying myself as an employee of the business and spouting rubbish, I would - at the very least - expect to be asked to remove it and face disciplinary action if I refused.
I would expect no less from an educational organisation that is seen as one of the top schools in the country, where costs to attend are astronomical. They have a reputation to hide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTHgMxQEoPI
Here's another doozy: Witchcraft - (starting at 10.50)
Most accusers were women; Mary enacted the Scottish witchcraft laws and persecution reached its apex under Elizabeth, who re-instated all the (can't make out this word) against witchcraft that Edward VI, sixteen years earlier, had repealed, acting on the advice of his all-male entourage. Furthermore, the fewer women involved in the trials, the fairer the treatment the witches were likely to receive.
Firstly, this is factually incorrect; the persecution of witches reached its apex under James VI and I, who was famously obsessed with witches. (Knowland, as an English teacher, should know this as Shakespeare 's inclusion of the witches in Macbeth pandered to the king's interests.)
Secondly, what does the remark that Edward VI repealed witchcraft laws on the advice of his "all male" entourage mean? Is he suggesting that if Edward had had female advisors they would have suggested differently? Pretty much all royal advisors were male in the C16th and C17th. Do we blame men for every bad decision made in the C16th and C17th, or do we only draw attention to the sex of those behind "good" decisions?
And what does "the fewer women involved in the trials, the fairer the treatment the witches were likely to receive" mean? Women weren't involved in trials as judges or jurors - their only role was either as accused or witness. Is he suggesting that if women weren't involved as the accused, but the accused was a male witch, the trial was likely to be fairer? Or that judges and jurors took the evidence of male witnesses more seriously than female witnesses - or what?
Though if that's representative of the quality of teachers at Eton it would explain a lot when it comes to the performance of politicians educated at Eton.
If one of my students used a recent photo of four girls wearing jeans to illustrate a point about C16th witchcraft trials I would be baffled by the choice. It's not clear what "female relational aggression" has to do with the topic. The claim that most accusers were women is true - one alleged witch would be arrested and tortured to give up more names, and they in turn would give up more names. Describing this as "female relational aggression" is akin to saying that Guy Fawkes exhibited "male relational aggression" when, under torture, he named his co-conspirators.
Is he really suggesting that Bloody Mary and Mary Queen of Scots were the same person (and, incidentally, that England and Scotland were ruled by her), or merely guilty of incoherence? (Or both?)
Further proof, if any were needed, that Eton should be in special measures. And would be, if it were an inner-city comprehensive.
Edward was a man, with male advisors, but Mary, Queen of Scots was a lone capricious woman enacting bad laws apparently.
The worst horror stories of awful teaching I've heard of or witnessed have been in private or selective schools. When I was doing work experience prior to teacher training I happened to observe a Divinity lesson in a prestigious state grammar where the teacher chose to highlight to a year 7 class that Moses would have known he wasn't Egyptian growing up because of his "Jewish characteristics". Being 21 and a visitor to the school I decided not to enquire what characteristics these might be.
He's done a nice graph (you can see it at 11.59), showing a timeline from 1600-2000 which illustrates that the section of time in which some men but no women had the vote was quite small, from the Reform Act of 1832 to 1918. He could have started the graph at 1500, and reduced the section still further!
Well, that's ok then! What are female rape victims whinging about?? They should be counting their blessing that they aren't a man in prison.
Do you really think that in this video he is putting forward "reasonable and credible arguments." ?
Not that I want to know the answer, not badly enough to ask anyone to watch the video again.
That claim makes absolutely no logical, psychological or sociological sense - also it is objectively untrue.
Frankly I wouldn't expect too much from someone who appears to be unaware that England and Scotland were governed by different people in the 16th century. I gather he has also ignored the persecution of witches during the Commonwealth. Of course he has, the Witchfinder General was just as male as James VI and I, so mentioning that would destroy his argument.
I assume it's the latter, because presumably he has a degree and a teaching qualification.
If I was marking that video I'd give it a "C" if it was submitted by a first year, but by second year of uni that would be a fail. From this I deduce that he is capable of producing better work, but has become obsessed and gone down a rabbit hole.
Well, that's useful. Young men in Eton now know to avoid holidaying in the Island of Truk.
I'm not sure that I understand the bit about failure to procreate though. Is he suggesting that women can't fail to procreate and infertility isn't a thing for us, or that female failure to procreate is less of an issue for women because it's less "visual"
Or does he need to look up "procreate" in a dictionary to see that it involves reproduction, and not just sexual intercourse?
Plus the fact that the gendered hunter/gatherer division is nowhere near as absolute as he pretends.
I would hazard that not only should this guy not be employed at Eton, he should also go on that list of teachers not to teach anywhere.
Teaching qualifications are optional in private schools.
From what you've said about the content of this video, a C grade is more generous than I would be, even to a first year. They're supposed to know about checking sources and verifying facts by GCSE level nowadays. Certainly by A-level (Highers) they should know.
He provides this as his source:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=139657
It refers to American prisons and states in the abstract there are no precise, objective data on the incidence of sexual assault in U.S. prisons, anecdotal and suggestive data indicate that it is a serious problem of inmate security and safety.
The fact that the abstract states there are no precise, objective data seems to be used by him as an opportunity to create his own data. Alternatively he might be comparing figures from America (population 331 million) with figures from the UK (pop 68 million) But who knows? Interpreting data doesn't appear to be his strong point.