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Tennessee Principal on Leave After Warning Kids about Twitter Censorship
Townhall.com ^ | January 14, 2021 | Todd Starnes

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.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; US: Tennessee
KEYWORDS: arth; bigtech; educationschools; freespeech
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To: brownsfan
Despotism (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaWSqboZr1w
“A community is low on a ‘Respect’ scale if common courtesy is withheld from large groups of people on account of their political attitudes.”

“...in a downright despotism opposition is dangerous whether the despotism is official or whether it is unofficial...”

“A community rates low on the ‘Information’ scale when the press, radio, and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people and when citizens have to accept what they are told.”

“See how a community trains its teachers”
“...these students are being taught to accept uncritically whatever they are told. Questions are not encouraged.”

“And if books and newspapers and the radio [and facebook and youtube and...] are officially controlled the people will read and accept exactly what the few in control want them to. Government censorship is one form of control. The newspaper that breaks the government censorship rule can be suspended. It is also possible for newspapers and other lines of communication to be controlled by private interests...”

Democracy (Encyclopedia Britannica film, circa 1946)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx25aMPvbJo

“The newspapers of a real democracy meet these tests...”

Newspaper checks.
1. Balance of coverage
2. Disclosure of source
3. Competence of staff


41 posted on 01/14/2021 10:02:25 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: photodawg

Stalinist

or in modern lingo NANZIsm


42 posted on 01/14/2021 10:02:52 PM PST by a fool in paradise (Who built the cages, Joe?)
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To: Kaslin

Jerica Phillips
Chief of Communications

CONTACT INFO
160 S. Hollywood St. Suite 208 Memphis, TN 38112
Phone:  901-416-5628
Fax:  901-416-5472

Email:phillipsjm@scsk12.org


43 posted on 01/15/2021 1:44:00 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Gene Eric
Whatever caused his suspension needs to be reviewed.

Whomever caused his suspension needs to be FIRED!!

44 posted on 01/15/2021 1:45:18 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: qaz123
If all the parents got involved.

Like the 'involved' voters of Joe Biden?

45 posted on 01/15/2021 1:47:25 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Revel

Sorry; but most kids around me CAN figger this crap out!


46 posted on 01/15/2021 1:50:00 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: nicollo
Not ALLOWED to?

Where are the punk, anti-authority teens that were the subject of countless high school themed movies when I was growing up?

Have we gone too far with circumcision at infancy and removed their gonads as well?

47 posted on 01/15/2021 1:54:01 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: a fool in paradise
“And if books and newspapers and the radio [and facebook and youtube and...] are officially controlled the people will read and accept exactly what the few in control want them to. Government censorship is one form of control. The newspaper that breaks the government censorship rule can be suspended. It is also possible for newspapers and other lines of communication to be controlled by private interests...”

1946; eh?




 



 
Eerily familiar...
 
 

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.


 



16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

 
 


48 posted on 01/15/2021 1:59:01 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

Hello, Elsie.

“whatever” was deliberate.

Originally, I had “whoever”, but not “whomever”. ;)


49 posted on 01/15/2021 2:05:56 AM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: Gene Eric

Noted.

WHAT was four letters.

I just used another (wrong) four letter replacement.

I wanted to indicate that ‘policies’ are not conjured up from thin air; but that some individual start them.


50 posted on 01/15/2021 2:31:45 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

What does that mean?

I’m talking about actual parents. Not one pedophile allowing another drug addicted pedophile to run rampant over the years.


51 posted on 01/15/2021 3:51:54 AM PST by qaz123
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To: Kaslin

Stalin, where ever he is would be proud.


52 posted on 01/15/2021 3:53:46 AM PST by sport
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To: Elsie

exactly - when I was a kid being told I can’t do something was gold!


53 posted on 01/15/2021 1:36:32 PM PST by nicollo (I said no!)
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To: qaz123

Actual parents are few and far between in some segments of our society!

I had dinner last night with two teachers.

You should hear the horror stories they tell; and how they are NOT allowed to correct the little brats under their care they way WE were set on the straight and narrow in OUR youth!

I can tell you that RIOTERS begin at SCHOOL; by not having to obey the RULES!


54 posted on 01/16/2021 4:00:46 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: qaz123

Between dealing with the punks and the ‘special’ needs; there is not much time for teaching.


55 posted on 01/16/2021 4:02:53 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: 2Jedismom; 6amgelsmama; 100American; AAABEST; aberaussie; AccountantMom; Aggie Mama; agrace; ...

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)

The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.

56 posted on 01/17/2021 6:06:06 PM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.....)
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To: jazminerose

Cordova is in Shelby County, not the city of Memphis. The county is nothing like the city. Most residents are upper middle class and above and conservative. Apparently the school leadership does not reflect the values of the parents.


57 posted on 01/18/2021 5:44:36 PM PST by OrangeDaisy
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