An “award winning teacher” has compared a classroom questioning technique with the Holocaust in a debate on X / Twitter about pedagogy.

Phil Beadle said that "cold calling” children – picking on a child in a classroom to answer a question without giving them prior warning – is akin to “a final solution".

Beadle was responding to a tweet from another educator who said, “Being opposed to Cold Call and No Opt-Out is lowering expectations.”

The teachers were debating the methods of instruction outlined in Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion teacher guidebook.

Beadle replied to the tweet: “I teach children. I know how cold call makes children feel. They hate it and take it as bullying. And look at the totalitarianism of the language – 'No Opt Out'. It leaks dehumanisation.”

He went on: “It's a totalitarian solution. A final solution, if you will.”

Beadle has since told the JC that the analogy was “clumsy” but his tweet remains on the social media platform.

Beadle is a vocal member of the EduTwitter community and has over 20,000 followers. He has written several books on education, has been published on the subject in the Guardian, and hosts training courses for teachers. He claims to be an “Expert in literacy, behaviour management, cultural capital, [and] white working class achievement.”

Responding to criticism, Beadle rejected claims that his post was antisemitic as “utterly ridiculous”.

When asked if he realised his “reference to the Holocaust is... misplaced”, Beadle seemed to agree, writing: “Yeh, it was.”

This was at least the third time that Beadle used such a comparison, however. In June he described Lemov’s guidebook as “a final solution” and last October he referred to teaching methods using the same phrase.

Phil Beadle (Photo: philbeadle.com)

Several other teachers supported Beadle’s comments.

Headteacher adviser Raj Unsworth said that any teachers who disagreed with Beadle’s phrasing were “hypocrites” if they failed to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Unsworth tweeted: “Educators up in arms about the use of a phrase associated with the holocaust. You are hypocrites if you have failed to call out the genocide and slaughter of children we have seen on our screens for nine months. You can’t call out a phrase but ignore real time reality.”

Several other teachers condemned Beadle. Religious education teacher Daniel Hugill posted on X that the problem was wider than Beadle alone: “EduTwitter has an antisemitism problem. Folks throwing around Zio/Zionist as a mask for their antisemitism. Folks using the Final Solution as a device in their arguments about pedagogy. Disgusting.”

Meanwhile, primary school teacher Nick Hone tweeted: “A blogger with a sizeable following using language to compare teachers to Nazis and the questioning of kids in lessons to check understanding to the mass murder of Jews. This isn’t debate. It’s offence for the sake of offence, aimed at both teachers and the Jewish community.”

Claudia Lewis, a science teacher, said on X that Beadle was a “ghoul” for comparing asking children to answer questions with the Holocaust.

When approached by the JC for comment, Beadle said: “I am an utterly committed anti-fascist and my admittedly clumsy analogy was to point out the historical precedents between assuming that human bodies do not belong to those humans and can be the subject to external control from a ‘higher’ authority.

"For me, Teach Like a Champion is totalitarian and, whilst this is clearly not its intent, is also borderline fascistic. I have spent the whole of my professional life committed to social equity in all its forms and pointing out that fascism exists and we have to be constantly alive to this fact and constantly wary of it is not fascism itself. It is its opposite.”