Posted on 01/14/2021 11:54:43 AM PST by Kaslin
A Tennessee high school principal is on administrative leave after he told students they should be alarmed by the recent crackdown on free speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Barton Thorne, the principal of Cordova High School, told students during morning announcements that they needed to be aware of the censorship happening on social media.
“I’m not going to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think,” he told students on a video that was later posted on YouTube.
“This isn’t about Trump,” he said. “This is about speech.”
Principal Thorne asked the young people to consider what happens when other groups filter and decide what you can hear and know about.
“There have been times even in American history when a small group of people decided what you can hear,” he said. “Think about totalitarian government. Think about North Korea. Think about China. What makes those types of systems possible is the restriction and elimination of the free exchange of ideas.”
Imagine that – a public school administrator who is teaching kids to think for themselves.
“What happens when the marketplace of ideas becomes a forced monopoly? What happens when you do not have dissenting opinions, when you do not have an exchange of competing ideas?” he told students.
Apparently, defending free speech is a big no-no in Shelby County Schools.
“The principal at Cordova High School has been placed on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of the review of the comments that were made,” spokesperson Jerrica Phillips told television station WREG.
The school district’s Office of Equity and Access (whatever the heck that is) also weighed in on the situation.
“Emotionally charged situations, we have to sometimes temper back, recalibrate, think about the message we’re sending to our student,” spokesman Michael Lowe told the television station. “Because Cordova is like the City of Memphis, it’s made up of a salad bowl of many different students of all areas of Memphis.”
What sort of fruit salad nonsense is the Office of Equity and Access? Lowe seems to believe it’s a crime to encourage young people to think critically about the big issues of the day.
“We have to be aware and at a heightened sense. We have to be culturally aware and also have our students have an outlet so they can express themselves and feel value,” Lowe told the Fox 13 in Memphis.
Culturally aware? I think we all know what that’s code for.
Instead of punishing Principal Thorne he should be given a pay raise and a certificate of merit. He should be saluted for educating the kids at Cordova High School instead of indoctrinating them.
The taxpayers and parents in Memphis should be celebrating the fact that Principal Thorne is running Cordova High School as a place to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids.
We need more principals like that in America.
“I’m not going to tell you what to think, I just want to help you think,”
That is a high crime in the leftist world.
What’s the problem? As long as the schools are ‘free’, I’ll keep sending my kids there!
Sounded totally appropriate and unbiased to me. Simply challenged the students to think instead of the liberal tactic of telling students what to think.
He’s guilty of both wrong speak and a thought crime. The result should be re-education, failing that the final solution.
Whatever caused his suspension needs to be reviewed.
He wants to challenge the children to the possibility of censorship and then is censored. Probably the best lesson those kids will ever learn.
Because schools are actually government organizations, this might actually verge into legit First Amendment violation territory.
America, no longer the free....
A little time in Room 101 and he'll decide that he really loves Big Brother.
Great. I said something similar to my students this week. Been nice knowing everyone.
The principal said a viewpoint that us conservatives would agree with.
However this type of information shouldn’t be coming from public schools in my opinion .
We all know the vast majority of this type of messaging is far left .
Stick to science, math and English .
Principal Thorne asked the young people to consider what happens when other groups filter and decide what you can hear and know about.
“There have been times even in American history when a small group of people decided what you can hear,” he said. “Think about totalitarian government. Think about North Korea. Think about China. What makes those types of systems possible is the restriction and elimination of the free exchange of ideas.”
—
...and then the principal was disappeared, proving the point.
If all the parents got involved. Swapped out the school board and fired the school superintendent this wouldn’t happen
The left is making a strategic mistake. They are waking people to their thought-tyranny.
After years of “tolerance preaching” they will create their own “little bubble” as they push people out.
Remember, they are not the majority in this country. Trump really did win. They will continue to diminish because their ideas destroy.
Gab CEO reports that he’s receiving “thousands” of resumes from people working in Silicon valley. They’re fed up with Twitter, Facebook, etc
The Commucrats: All your children are belong to us.”
I guess they taught that cracker a lesson.
This is exactly the type of clamping down on free speech in schools that’s been going on for the past decade or so. The further left the libtards in charge of the schools are, the greater the hypocrisy.
“What happens when the marketplace of ideas becomes a forced monopoly? What happens when you do not have dissenting opinions, when you do not have an exchange of competing ideas?”
Who could find this objectionable?
Orwellian
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