Saturday, October 6, 2007

Dave Warwak:The gift that keeps on giving

The saga of fired vegan-evangelist art teacher Dave Warwak just continues to get more and more bizarre. As expected, Warwak filed the appeal of his firing. As one might of guessed, his appeal contains some real winners, and his grandstanding continues to get more and more outrageous. In his appeal, Warwak accuses the school district of violating a Federal Trade Commission ban on false advertising by refusing to remove posters promoting milk from the cafeteria. This is nothing but a transparent red herring. The content of the posters is irrelevant to Mr. Warwak's own personal conduct in the classroom, which is the real issue here. Even if the posters are misleading advertising, and I highly doubt he can prove that, it still doesn't excuse his reckless propagandizing in the classroom. Once again, Warwak is trying to shift the responsibility away from himself and trying to blame someone or something else for HIS actions, and it just doesn't wash.
Warwak goes on to claim that his decision to teach veganism to his students was made to educate them about how the meat and dairy industries use their "influence to shape and guide the values and morals of society through indoctrination". What? The hypocrisy of that statement is so outrageous that it blows the mind. Here we have someone who is indoctrinating children to his own, personal ideological views, without the knowledge and consent of their parents. To compound his wrongdoing, he instructs his students to keep it secret from their parents and other teachers, a clear indication that he knew what he was doing was wrong. For this guy to feign indignation about indoctrination while he himself was knowingly and intentionally engaged in the most vile form of indoctrination is so beyond the pale that one is at a loss for words. The fact that he would have the audacity to make such a statement is indicative of just how irresponsible, disconnected, and self-absorbed this individual is.
I don't think the state Board of Education will take Warwak's appeal seriously. He is clearly trying to avoid personal responsibility for his actions, and his "arguments" ( term used lightly ) to defend those actions are, at best fallacious, transparent, and feeble, but I'll continue to keep on eye in this story.

6 comments:

VegArd said...

LOL! This is a put-on, right? A teacher talks about the virtues of veganism to his students (which should be unquestionable to anyone with a molecule of common sense), and he's fired?! A school district is so scared of a vegan that it persecutes him?! What state do you live in? Remind me never to move there. Sounds like something right out of the novel 1984: being punished for advocating good nutrition and sane politics. I'm guessing you live in the kind of state where he wouldn't have been fired if he had decided to teach creationism to his students, with or without the
BOE's permission. They probably would have given him a raise for that. ;)

BTW, it's not "might of", it's "might have". Learn your grammar, young man. That way you might be a tad more believable.

-one of those wacky "vegan evangelists" ;)

Grizzly Bear said...

"LOL! This is a put-on, right?"

Uh, no. It's quite true as evidenced by the stories that I link to. As you say, that "should be unquestionable to anyone with a molecule of common sense".


"A school district is so scared of a vegan that it persecutes him?!"

How is he being persecuted? If you had actually been following this story, you would know the following facts:

1. Mr. Warwak is paid to teach middle school students art, not to preach his own personal beliefs to kids.

2. Mr. Warwak is paid to teach within a certain curriculum, specified by the the school district.

3. Mr. Warwak was warned by administration to stop his proselytizing.

4. Mr. Warwak asked his students to keep his vegan/AR discussions secret from their parents and from other faculty members.

5. Mr. Warwak sidestepped parental rights by choosing to indoctrinate other people's children to his own ideology without parental consent.

6. Mr. Warwak has chosen to not accept personal responsibility for his own actions.

Given these facts, how can this possibly be considered "persecution"? It "should be unquestionable to anyone with a molecule of common sense" that he has failed in his job duties and is deserving of termination.


"What state do you live in?"

Colorado. I think that was made clear on my profile on the sidebar of this blog. Reading isn't your forte is it?


"Remind me never to move there."

Gladly. I'd like it to be as much of an ARA-free zone as possible.


"Sounds like something right out of the novel 1984: being punished for advocating good nutrition and sane politics."

No. He was punished for the reasons I stated above. As far as good nutrition, that is a matter of constant scientific and medical debate. "Sane politics"? What is, and what is not, "sane politics" is a matter of personal opinion.


"I'm guessing you live in the kind of state where he wouldn't have been fired if he had decided to teach creationism to his students, with or without the
BOE's permission. They probably would have given him a raise for that. ;) "

A strawman argument. The subject of creationism is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Having said that, if I were a parent I wouldn't want my children indoctrinated to either veganism or creationism, both ideologies that I'm opposed to, in a public school, that I, a taxpayer pay for.


"Learn your grammar, young man."

I'll make you a deal. I'll work on my grammar if you work on your critical thinking.


"That way you might be a tad more believable."

ROFL! I have backed up everything I've said in these posts on this subject with links to factual reports. Have you read those reports or do you lack the intellectual courage to do so?


"-one of those wacky "vegan evangelists" ;)"

As is evidenced by the quality of your post.

BTW, I noticed you submitted the same comment 9 times under 2 different names. Nice touch. Nine times and absolutely zero substance.

Anonymous said...

Ouch. That's a great scathing response to a trollish nonsense comment, Grizzly. "Ardeth01" has been mauled by the bear!

Anonymous said...

Thought you'd enjoy the following comment I left at AP (which will surely get removed, since it's factual and exposes the bald hypocrisy of Ms. Moral Perfection):

Sorry to hear about your dog, but I find it interesting that you feel that hogs can be killed so that your dog may live.

I took the liberty of doing some calculations, and estimate that it takes about 29 doses of vetsulin for your greyhound to equal the amount of insulin that can be created from one hog. Since the per capita pork consumption is about 0.32 hogs per person, your dog consumes the equivalent of 40 average American's pork eating in a given year.

And doesn't one dose of vetsulin cost $28? That's over $10,000 per year. How many chickens could be purchased and rescued with that much money?

I guess some are more equal than others, aren't they?

Enjoy your glass house.

http://www.animalperson.net/animal_person/2007/01/of_diabetes_and.html

Grizzly Bear said...

Hi there anonymous

I saw your comments on AP, and I must say, well done! You really had them scrambling like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on, there. Notice that not a single one of them makes any convincing justification for their hypocrisy. Not one of them. And Mary was in actuality the worst of them all. At least a couple of the others at least tried to make an argument. This is a person who is an intellectual coward, who, like most ARAs, refuses to contemplate her own complicity in that which she claims to hate so much.

HipsterVacuum said...

Gee "ardeth" I realize in your holier-than-thou, smug put down and strawman arguments your sense of self-importance might get in the way of finding out the facts.

"Warwak was fired by a unanimous vote of the school board, after he claiming he wouldn't return to the school until the cafeteria removed all meat and dairy from the menu. Apparently Warwak asked them to not report his evangelizing to their parents or to school administation."
Why do people like you always fancy yourselves persecuted heroes living in some totalitarian fascist backwater? The Orwell reference - ahh fake victimhood 101! Seriously, try some books that are assigned to people older than high school age to draw parallels to your plight. Oh you poor suffering vegans, your fate is on par with that of the refugees of Darfur in this Orwellian society now isn't it?