TORONTO – Former University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson has agreed to take social media training in order to keep his license to practice psychology from the College of Psychologists of Ontario, to the extreme chagrin of every instructor who might have to teach him.
“Pretty much everyone I know who teaches in this field was praying he’d just give up his accreditation,” said Larry Young, who teaches a course on social media use for professionals. “You know how they say doctors make the worst patients? The opposite is usually true of teachers, who love to learn new things because it makes them better educators.”
“Except Peterson seems to have spent the last decade doing everything in his power to not only not learn anything new, but to forget everything he’d already learned about basic humanity. And when I say basic, I mean basic, like the stuff the rest of us learned in kindergarten.”
Peterson, who retired from the University of Toronto in 2021 after successfully parlaying his braying lack of respect for anyone who isn’t a cisgender white man into a lucrative position in the right-wing media sphere, has spent years in court challenging the CPO for insisting he undergo social media training after a series of offensive and professionally damaging tweets. Now that his legal options are exhausted, Peterson is expected to participate in the training with the same level of aggrieved whininess he brings to every online interaction.
“Can you imagine trying to teach this guy why it’s unprofessional to comment on women’s bodies online or imply someone should kill themself?” said Professor Diane Perkins, who teaches media ethics at York University. “He’s like 60 years old, if he hasn’t already learned that, he’s probably not going to learn it now because he’s being forced to. And oh my god, think of how annoying he’ll be during class. He’s like if the phrase ‘debate me’ was a person.”
“I really don’t know what the point of this is. This plan feels less like it’s designed to teach Jordan Peterson how to behave online and more like its designed to torture some random teacher.”
At press time, Peterson and the CPO were having trouble scheduling his social media training because everyone who provides that service are all going on indefinite vacations at the exact same time.
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