Parents: if you're looking to school choice to deliver your children from "woke" curricula and activist teachers, my guest wants you to understand these problems aren't a function of a given school as much as they are a function of the teachers in the classroom, how and why they came to teaching in the first place, and the pedagogy they bring with them.
Dan argues that "Inactivist" teachers, or those who do not see themselves as organizers and liberators, adoptive parents, or therapists, not only aren't "made" in Ed school, they can't be "made," period. Instead, they are "born" and have a completely different mindset about education, the craft and responsibility of the teaching profession, and the role of parents in their children’s lives.
Dan Clemens is a Canadian-born international teacher. As an undergraduate in Philosophy, he was a Marxist atheist. He is now in ‘recovery.’ He initially gravitated towards critical theory and The Frankfurt School and did his Masters thesis on Marcuse and Fromm. He went to teach in South Korea for two years then returned home to enter a PhD program but found it to be “woke” that is, focused on (Critique and Social Transformation, Ways of Knowing). He became disillusioned and had a different kind of political awakening. He lost faith in the program and several options. That exploration led him to voluntarily withdraw from the program. He went to Ed school, then back to teach in Asia. He is now in his fourth year teaching in China.
Inspiration for this show comes from his two recent articles on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/unchang... https://open.substack.com/pub/unchang... Follow Dan on Twitter @Rieffian and on Substack at Unchanging.substack.com
Inactivist Teachers are Born, Not Made