I was interviewed by Will Knowland, who was sacked from his teaching position at England’s prestigious Eton College over a Woke-controversial lecture. Our theme: Educate or Indoctrinate?
Here’s a two-minute excerpt: Is everything just power?
And here is the full interview (list of questions and topics is below):
(Here are two pieces of journalism on the context and results: Will Knowland was sacked from Eton College over video ‘The Patriarchy Paradox’ and Mixed race wife of Eton teacher sacked over ‘toxic masculinity’ lecture slams the school’s ‘wokery’ – saying ‘we’re the sort of diverse family woke-ness is supposedly defending’. Here also is my earlier mention of Knowland and posting of the online lecture that generated the controversy.)
Questions we covered:
* How did you discover your passion for philosophy?
* Why is your view that the great battles over education have always been philosophical?
* What philosophical battles over education in the past had the greatest impact?
* What is the main battle over education today and what is its philosophical basis?
* It’s a fashionable view today that, as Nietzsche claimed, ‘there are no facts, only interpretations’. What are the philosophical roots of this idea and how influential has it been?
* How does the idea of different narratives vying for power relate to the Marxist concept of oppression?
* Why are postmodernists averse to debate? Why don’t they answer speech with more speech?
* In his book The Language of The Third Reich, Viktor Klemperer said that ‘words are like tiny doses of arsenic, swallowed unnoticed, and then after a while the toxic reaction sets in.’ Do you think we are witnessing a weaponisation of language?
* What distinguishes education from indoctrination?
* The internet has the potential to transform education perhaps even more than the printing press did. What are you hopeful about?
Directly related: My journal article, “The Postmodern Critique of Liberal Education,” published in this issue of Reason Papers.