The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 458. Strictness Absent Tyranny Leads to a Great Education

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00:01:13.140 Hello, everybody.

00:01:14.740 I had the opportunity today to speak with Catherine Burblesing,

00:01:18.340 who has a reputation as being the strictest headmistress in all of Great Britain.

00:01:22.140 I went to her school, the Michaela School.

00:01:25.860 It's an inner-city school in London.

00:01:28.060 I went there about a year ago, and it was really memorable and really quite moving.

00:01:32.880 What she has done with that school is,

00:01:36.380 well, it was really something to see.

00:01:39.300 Those kids were alert and learning at a rate that I'd never seen in any educational institution,

00:01:45.620 even at the highest levels of graduate seminar, let's say.

00:01:48.500 So that was remarkable to see.

00:01:50.980 And the kids were secure and happy there, and it's a very disciplined and structured place.

00:01:56.820 And the teachers were as engaged in the educational enterprise as the children.

00:02:02.840 And also, the results of her school are stellar.

00:02:06.520 Her students, even though they're not selected, regularly graduate in the top echelons of the standardized testing results

00:02:18.840 that are universal across Great Britain, and they're much more likely to be admitted to high-level universities

00:02:26.200 than the graduates of virtually any other school that exists in that country.

00:02:31.020 She's quite the force of nature, Catherine Burble saying that's for sure, as well.

00:02:37.260 So she's a very compelling and interesting person.

00:02:40.020 And so I think, like, seriously, more power to her.

00:02:43.720 Now, she invited me to that Michaela School and then took a picture with me and put it on Twitter

00:02:49.140 and just got more flack for that than you can possibly imagine.

00:02:52.720 And her response to that was, well, to decide, at least in part, to speak with me further on the YouTube channel.

00:02:59.520 So that gives you some insight into just how much force of character she has.

00:03:04.960 So a remarkable school.

00:03:07.040 Truly, you'd be fortunate indeed to have your children attend it.

00:03:12.180 And an equally remarkable woman who runs it.

00:03:15.980 She's like a character in a Harry Potter novel.

00:03:19.540 Seriously.

00:03:20.040 So join us.

00:03:22.600 Why don't you talk about what you are doing at the Michaela School in London?

00:03:26.540 Tell everybody, start right from the beginning.

00:03:28.460 Tell everybody what it is, how it operates, and why it works so spectacularly well.

00:03:36.080 Yeah, well, we're in the inner city.

00:03:38.580 We opened in 2014.

00:03:40.400 We're a free school, which is the equivalent of, say, a charter school in America.

00:03:43.520 We had to fight for three and a half years in order to open because free schools only started in Britain in 2010 with the then new conservative government.

00:03:54.400 And there were a lot of people who tried to stop us from opening.

00:03:57.840 We had people protesting outside with banners insulting us every time we tried to have a parents evening in various parts of London to tell the local parents.

00:04:10.740 And these are inner city parents, remember, so they're poor brown and black parents from the inner city.

00:04:16.240 People from outside London, white people from outside London would come in on buses in order to stand outside with their protest cards insulting us, in particular me, because I had spoken at the Conservative Party conference in 2010.

00:04:31.100 And I had said that the education system was broken.

00:04:34.480 And so they really hated me for that.

00:04:37.260 And they were determined to stop us from setting up this school because, obviously, I was evil because I'd spoken at this conference.

00:04:43.680 Not that I'm even a member of the Conservative Party, but, you know, I had spoken there.

00:04:47.720 And I think as a black teacher from the inner city who, you know, state-educated myself, you know, I'm just not allowed to go to the Conservative Party and give my views.

00:04:59.180 You know, if I'd been at one of the teacher unions saying what I thought, I think that would have been acceptable.

00:05:05.220 So people would protest.

00:05:08.020 I don't know.

00:05:08.520 I don't know if what you have to say would be acceptable even at a teacher's union.

00:05:14.220 That's true.

00:05:14.860 That's true.

00:05:15.700 Well, you know, people would come in.

00:05:18.440 They'd storm the events for parents and they would put themselves amongst the parents.

00:05:23.660 And then when we would try and speak to the parents, they would stand up and start shouting and saying things like, you betrayed us when you spoke at the Conservative Party conference.

00:05:31.700 And I'd be thinking, how could I betray you?

00:05:33.620 I don't even know who you are.

00:05:34.640 This is ridiculous.

00:05:36.360 And so it took us three and a half years.

00:05:38.940 We had to move from different parts of London, trying to find a building.

00:05:43.420 Eventually, we managed to open in 2014.

00:05:45.440 But even then, there were protesters outside handing leaflets to the children, telling them their lives were in danger in our building.

00:05:53.700 It's actually quite an extraordinary story that we ever managed to get off the ground, but we did.

00:05:58.200 And then we had, so there's an inspectorate called Ofsted here in Britain.

00:06:03.160 And they came to see us three years in and gave us the highest score possible and said that we were very good.

00:06:09.180 People really didn't like that.

00:06:11.460 And then we, a couple of years later, had what we have in Britain, GCSE exams.

00:06:19.200 These are national exams that children take at age 16.

00:06:22.300 And they then track the progress that the children make from when they join us in year seven, which is the American equivalent to grade seven.

00:06:32.280 And then they do these exams when they're in grade 11, year 11.

00:06:35.780 And at that time, our first year, we came fifth in the country for our progress that is tracked, you know, by government.

00:06:44.820 And we were all celebrating.

00:06:46.780 Of course, our detractors very much didn't like that.

00:06:49.200 Then there were a couple of years of COVID.

00:06:50.820 And so it was impossible to track progress for the whole country.

00:06:55.960 In the last two years, we've come top in the country for our progress.

00:07:00.700 And again, you know, our detractors very much don't like that.

00:07:04.960 They especially don't like when I explain why it is we're doing so well.

00:07:10.320 I mean, we have had over 7,000 visitors come visit the school in the last 10 years from all over the world.

00:07:16.140 And people can just go onto our website and sign up, you know, from Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, America, all across Europe.

00:07:25.260 And lots of British teachers who then take ideas from our school and they implement it into their own schools.

00:07:32.220 And I think we have very much changed the debate around education about what works.

00:07:35.860 And some of the things that I say very much annoy our progressive detractors because I say that small C conservative values work, that a small C conservative school is what's best for children.

00:07:49.400 Values like personal responsibility, a sense of duty towards others, self-sacrifice on a personal level for the benefit of the whole.

00:07:58.360 These are all things that don't sit well.

00:08:01.260 We are obviously very much anti-critical race theory, anti-gender ideology, anti-division of children according to their gender or race or sexuality.

00:08:11.700 We sing God Save the King, our national anthem, which is basically unheard of in Britain.

00:08:18.740 In America, you know, you're, I shouldn't say yours because you're Canadian, but your viewers might a lot of be American.

00:08:26.900 And I know they're used to hearing their presidents say, you know, God bless America at the end of their, you know, speeches.

00:08:34.660 That doesn't happen here in Britain.

00:08:37.440 There seems to be quite a big, you know, quite a lot of shame around British historical past, the slavery, colonialism and so on.

00:08:49.000 The guilt kind of rests there.

00:08:51.060 And it's, we don't sort of celebrate that.

00:08:53.760 We might in a football match, you know, definitely we sing the national anthem then.

00:08:57.760 But journalists have come to our school and find it quite shocking that the children sing God Save the King.

00:09:03.600 And why do they do that?

00:09:06.120 Because it is a multicultural school with children from a whole variety of races and religions.

00:09:11.600 And I believe very strongly that for our school to succeed, it is very much the case that the children need to belong together under one umbrella.

00:09:20.180 So we are Michaela, but we are also British.

00:09:24.680 And being British and being Michaela, we are one together.

00:09:29.320 We are a team.

00:09:30.020 And I think in other schools where they divide you, you're African, you're, you know, you're Caribbean, you're Muslim, you're Hindu, you're LGBT.

00:09:40.780 LGBT, all of these different groups means that children identify as part of that group as opposed to identifying as part of the whole.

00:09:49.560 And those groups are extremely divisive.

00:09:51.960 And that when it comes to a country succeeding, when you do that, your country is very unlikely to succeed because they don't see what they have in common.

00:10:01.080 Well, there's no country.

00:10:01.240 Indeed, indeed.

00:10:31.220 And that's why, you know, we're also very strict.

00:10:36.500 I'm considered to be the strictest headmistress in Britain.

00:10:38.600 That's what people call me.

00:10:40.180 And it's not people imagine that I'm marching up and down the corridors with whips and chains.

00:10:44.720 Obviously, I'm not.

00:10:46.140 I love children.

00:10:47.220 I get to school at 645 every morning, not because I hate children, but because I love them.

00:10:50.940 But it is a more traditional, disciplined approach that works with children.

00:10:56.560 And that is where they thrive.

00:10:57.700 And you saw it yourself, how happy they were, how joyful they are, and how excited they are about learning.

00:11:03.420 And relieved.

00:11:04.800 Yes.

00:11:05.300 They were relieved to be there.

00:11:06.720 I talked to lots of the kids who had come from other schools and have been, well, subject to the kind of bullying and, well, general chaos and idiocy that's characteristic of those schools.

00:11:18.740 And they were, I think, part of the reason, apart from their excitement about being at the school and the fact that they were being rewarded for progressing and learning in a manner that was genuine, and the fact that they were being attended to by, like, competent adults.

00:11:35.180 They were also super relieved that they weren't being hurt and tortured, and also they were proud to be, in the right manner, to be part of that community.

00:11:48.000 And they certainly regarded themselves as capable and upward-oriented, and it was lovely to see that confidence.

00:11:56.140 So, okay, so I have a bunch of questions from what you raised already.

00:11:59.340 So, well, let's delve into the opposition that you encountered when you first began this endeavor.

00:12:08.980 Now, you said some things that were very striking.

00:12:11.340 You said that as an inner-city school, you had been communicating with people who were mostly black and brown, but the people that were objecting to you were mostly non-local people, mostly white, and mostly bust-in.

00:12:27.500 So, then the question is, you know, who were these people that were bust-in, and why did they think they got to speak for the local community?

00:12:38.600 That's a good one.

00:12:39.660 And then, allied with that, you said that as a brown person, I guess, yourself, you're not allowed to be a conservative.

00:12:48.840 And so, I presume that that's something associated with the same cabal of ideas that animated the people who came to protest.

00:12:56.140 So, let's start with, who were these people, and what the hell did they think they were doing?

00:13:02.400 Yeah, well, exactly.

00:13:03.860 So, lots of brown and black people in the neighborhood who desperately wanted another choice of school.

00:13:08.240 And all these white people, they were actually all white who were bust-in from outside of London in order to protest.

00:13:14.100 Now, it's interesting because, you know, there's always this debate with the right and the left.

00:13:17.960 The left believe in racism and in institutionalized racism, and the right don't believe in it.

00:13:21.720 I firmly believe in institutionalized racism, and I think this is an example of it, where there's a whole bunch of white people on the left who very much believe that they have the right to dictate to brown and black people how they ought to think.

00:13:33.840 So, they get very angry with me for thinking my own thoughts.

00:13:38.760 You know, there's a sense of I owe them.

00:13:40.760 So, the left has done right by black and brown people, and there's some truth to that.

00:13:46.100 I don't deny that.

00:13:47.760 But as a result, we then owe our votes to them.

00:13:52.880 We owe our thinking to them.

00:13:54.700 And if we dare to stray and have our own ideas for ourselves, they're going to make us pay.

00:14:00.140 So, I think one of the reasons why we had such trouble trying to open up, there were other white school groups trying to set up who were Big C Conservatives.

00:14:09.220 There's one guy I know, Toby Young, Big C Conservative.

00:14:13.360 He never got the negativity that I got when we were both setting up at the same time.

00:14:17.260 He never got protests.

00:14:18.720 So, why did they hate me so much?

00:14:20.340 Well, because I believe, as a brown person, as you say, I am not allowed to think as I do.

00:14:29.820 And I certainly wasn't allowed to speak at the Conservative Party Conference.

00:14:32.220 And all of those brown and black people who we were getting into our parent evenings who wanted another choice of school, I think the white people who were protesting felt that they were protecting them.

00:14:45.320 It is this condescending kind of noblesse oblige.

00:14:51.280 We're going to look after you.

00:14:52.920 You aren't clever enough to figure out what you want for yourselves.

00:14:55.700 So, we are going to stop these evil people.

00:14:58.800 You know, it was quite funny.

00:14:59.680 At one of our open events, they were handing out leaflets about me to stop the parents from coming in.

00:15:08.480 And the leaflets said the only reason why this school was going ahead was because I knew the then Prime Minister, David Cameron.

00:15:16.240 Now, the fact is I've never met David Cameron.

00:15:18.360 I still don't know David Cameron.

00:15:19.580 But that was what they were telling the parents.

00:15:22.340 And the parents would read it and say, oh, wow, she knows the Prime Minister.

00:15:26.800 This is really great.

00:15:28.320 And so, it didn't really work for the detractors, you know, because they don't understand that normal, ordinary people don't think like them.

00:15:36.600 And what they want is a good school choice for their children.

00:15:39.960 And because they're in the inner city, go on.

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00:17:20.820 Well, let's zero in on that.

00:17:23.760 So, I did a fair bit of research 30 years ago, let's say, on educational aspirations among the poor.

00:17:31.020 And one of the things that was absolutely stark evident was that poor people have this—and poor and uneducated people, let's say—have at least the same desires that their children become literate and successful as rich and literate people.

00:17:47.620 Now, part of the problem is that, especially for people who are less literate, is they don't exactly know what to reward with regard to their children's developing literacy behaviors.

00:18:00.900 You know, their houses aren't often full of books.

00:18:03.100 They don't know that their kids should be dragging books around by the corner of the book when they're, like, 18 months old, like, because it isn't a literate culture.

00:18:11.580 But that doesn't mean they don't want it.

00:18:13.380 And so, then we could have a bit of a discussion about the fact that these people that you were talking to did want a choice.

00:18:21.300 And so, why do you think—why do you think that you had faith in their knowledge, that they had sufficient knowledge to make a good decision about their children's education if the opportunity presented itself?

00:18:35.920 Why did you have faith in that, whereas the protesters felt that, well, the intermediation of professional agitators was necessary in order to ensure the safety and progress of the children?

00:18:47.220 I also take issue, too, to this idea of owing, because whatever the minority communities might owe to the left, I would say that was pretty much all accomplished in 1965.

00:18:57.680 And there's been precious little done since then that the minority communities need to feel beholden to the left for accomplishing.

00:19:06.160 So, the people who are now looking for fealty aren't the same people who were, let's say, leading the civil rights charge bravely in 1965.

00:19:16.200 So, okay, so back to the parents.

00:19:18.740 Yeah.

00:19:19.300 Well, I mean, look, I know what works in schools.

00:19:21.760 And I believe in what we're offering families.

00:19:25.540 I also believe in families having freedom of choice.

00:19:30.200 There are some families—so it's interesting, we've been going for 10 years now, and white middle-class people do not choose our school.

00:19:39.420 The families who choose our school are ethnic minority, brown and black kids in the inner city.

00:19:45.580 The white families just don't choose us.

00:19:48.480 Now, I say white families.

00:19:49.420 There are white kids at the school, but they tend to be of Eastern European descent of some sort.

00:19:53.640 It's very rare to find a middle-class white child who comes.

00:19:58.180 And, you know, every now and again we get one, but it's quite rare.

00:20:01.620 And that's not what they want.

00:20:03.080 They don't want the strictness that we offer.

00:20:05.120 They don't want the drive.

00:20:08.280 The progress.

00:20:08.940 The progress.

00:20:09.740 I mean, they just don't like—they don't like the silence, you know, there's silence in the corridors.

00:20:13.740 We are very strict.

00:20:14.740 I am the strictest headmistress.

00:20:17.180 So, yeah, they like things to be a lot more relaxed.

00:20:21.480 You know, I didn't find your school strict.

00:20:24.040 Yeah.

00:20:24.520 That isn't how it struck me.

00:20:25.920 Go on.

00:20:26.200 No, what I saw, and I was watching, what I saw was that all the kids knew very, very clearly what the rules were.

00:20:35.020 Yes.

00:20:35.340 But more than that, they understood why the rules were there, okay, which is a major—so that's very much distinct from it being a tyranny.

00:20:44.300 I never saw any use of force or compulsion to keep the rules in place.

00:20:49.120 Yeah.

00:20:49.460 So that's absent tyranny.

00:20:51.080 And then I saw the fact that you set up a reward system in your school, which is a very difficult thing to do properly.

00:20:58.900 At least people don't do it.

00:21:00.220 And I inquired in relationship to the children how it was that they marked their progress forward, their little badges and so forth that they carried with them quite proudly and without cynicism, I might add, which indicated to me that they knew perfectly well that they were being rewarded for the sort of behavior that was in their best interests and that that's what everyone was aiming for.

00:21:25.920 And so because of that, they understood the reason for the structure of the rules, which also protected them and gave them security.

00:21:34.200 And so I didn't see a bunch of kids that were cowed by Ms. Trunchbull, you know, cowering in the hallways because they were afraid to open their mouths.

00:21:43.200 I didn't see any of that, you know.

00:21:45.480 And I also didn't feel—you can feel an atmosphere of fear and oppression in a tyrannical institution.

00:21:52.820 You can—I don't know if you can smell it, but it wouldn't surprise me.

00:21:57.240 But you can certainly detect it.

00:21:58.780 And you detect it, you certainly wouldn't see the walls covered, for example, by the brilliant artwork of creative children.

00:22:07.380 And then also, you know, I spent lunch there and I watched the kids.

00:22:12.120 So the kids all discussed a topic when they were eating.

00:22:15.560 Quite efficiently, they were eating too.

00:22:17.240 And they were actually eating, which was good to see.

00:22:19.440 And they were in their groups focused on the topic at hand.

00:22:23.660 And you asked them to nominate someone from the group to stand up and speak to the entire group.

00:22:30.560 And that also—I found that also startling.

00:22:34.460 And, you know, I taught my kids when they were about seven or eight to speak in a manner that was—would be accessible and appropriate to a public audience.

00:22:45.900 To stand up, not to squirm around, to figure out what the hell they were going to say, to say it forthrightly, to use a certain amount of volume.

00:22:54.420 You can train a kid to do that in about half an hour if you do the work.

00:22:58.360 But it never happens.

00:23:00.180 And so usually what you see in a school, a school performance, is you see these kids that no one has ever paid attention to,

00:23:07.480 kicking their feet and looking at the floor and mumbling something so dull that no one with any sense could listen to it for more than about four seconds,

00:23:15.540 embarrassing themselves, turning red, being catcalled, everyone talking around them, and everybody pretending that this is acceptable.

00:23:23.540 And I saw zero of that at lunch.

00:23:25.780 I saw kids stand up, and everyone listen, and them speak, like, very clearly, and in a volume that made everyone listen.

00:23:33.900 And I saw everyone listen, and I saw them say something that was a summary of what they discussed,

00:23:40.220 and to say it in a manner that indicated that they understood it and had processed it.

00:23:45.100 And so that ethos was—permeated the school.

00:23:48.440 And I'm certain from my observation that that was reflected in the children's respects for the rules.

00:23:56.140 See, your rules aren't restrictions, and they're not jail cells.

00:24:05.460 They're the rules that you need to play a game.

00:24:08.680 Right.

00:24:09.160 And games have rules, and everyone wants to play a game, and you people are playing a very good game.

00:24:14.840 And so if people are so stupid that they think that you're a—what would you call it?

00:24:19.600 A rule monster of some sort, all that means is that they either refuse to see or that they're too blind to see,

00:24:26.000 because that is not what's going on in your school.

00:24:28.180 And you also have evidence, you know, the fact that your school is performing so highly.

00:24:33.220 We should delve into that a little bit, because I want to tell everybody watching and listening,

00:24:36.800 the Michaela School is not a selective school, and that means anybody can go there.

00:24:43.340 And see, usually schools perform well if they hyper-select their students,

00:24:48.440 because it's easier to teach, let's say, kids that have been screened for IQ and conscientiousness.

00:24:53.740 But you take everybody, and yet your students hyper-perform on their examinations.

00:25:00.840 And so explain that in a little more detail, because that really pulls the rug out from underneath your detractors,

00:25:09.580 except the ones who don't believe in objective merit.

00:25:12.580 Yeah.

00:25:13.220 I mean, it's interesting, because you hear strict, and of course, it lies with lots of people.

00:25:17.360 People think tyrannical and unhappiness and so on.

00:25:19.820 I always say that strict is immersed in love.

00:25:22.520 And when you're strict with children, it means you love them enough to keep your standards high for them.

00:25:27.460 And I would say that most teachers and parents nowadays want to be friends with children,

00:25:33.640 and they don't know that their duty is to have children rise up and meet them where they are,

00:25:40.540 and to demonstrate to them over and over again what virtuous behavior is,

00:25:46.920 so that they too can learn to be virtuous.

00:25:49.660 And that when grandma's looking a bit sad, you say to the boy,

00:25:54.540 go and bring her a cup of tea, you explain that that is what kindness is.

00:25:59.180 And every little moment of kindness in the particular, the child is able to do over and over again.

00:26:05.480 There's no point in telling children, be kind.

00:26:08.520 I mean, you can tell them, but they won't understand what that means.

00:26:11.120 They need to see examples and non-examples.

00:26:13.560 So the cup of tea is an example, but then their brother hits them because he wants to take the toy,

00:26:18.360 and that's an example of unkindness.

00:26:20.140 And you would say, well, that was unkind, and this is kind, over and over and over again.

00:26:24.720 And over years, I know you're interested in evolutionary psychology.

00:26:28.940 This is what we are as humans.

00:26:30.720 You know, other animals, within a few weeks or a few months in the jungle,

00:26:35.200 they get sorted and off they go.

00:26:36.980 Whereas human beings take many, many years to be able to survive on their own without their parents.

00:26:42.000 And the role of the parents and the role of the teacher should be to show them the particular

00:26:47.520 over and over again, whether that's about gratitude or about duty or about kindness and so on.

00:26:53.200 And then, eventually, they can move that to the abstract, and they'll understand what kindness

00:26:58.580 is, having seen the particular of examples and non-examples so many times.

00:27:03.400 But sadly, I think that people generally don't understand that about children.

00:27:08.340 And so, for instance, I know I've often said to you, when you came to the school,

00:27:13.460 you know, I said to you, you never talk about schools.

00:27:15.740 And you said, oh, it's true, I don't really talk about schools.

00:27:18.960 And I said, yeah, well, you should talk about schools,

00:27:20.340 because they are the most important institutions in any country.

00:27:23.360 Because children are the future.

00:27:25.560 And so, when all of you guys, and when I say guys, I mean, they're women too,

00:27:28.700 like Barry Weiss or Megyn Kelly or John McWhorter or Glenn Lowry,

00:27:32.200 and all these people who I have huge admiration for, huge admiration for all of you,

00:27:36.240 nobody ever talks about schools.

00:27:38.280 Nobody ever talks about the importance of our education system.

00:27:41.280 And then what you all do is you talk about what's going on in the universities,

00:27:44.320 and you say, oh, my goodness, how come these young people think as they do?

00:27:48.140 And how come we've got all of these marches and so on and so forth,

00:27:50.940 things that are happening?

00:27:51.700 And we think, how come they're not thinking about stuff in the way, you know,

00:27:55.240 why don't they, why haven't they developed critical thinking?

00:27:57.720 And this is where I sort of have a bit of a bugbear with you.

00:28:00.580 And I want to say to you, you know, I want to explain why I think, not just you,

00:28:05.020 all these people I have huge admiration for, Jonathan Haidt, Abigail Schreier,

00:28:08.940 I read all of your stuff and I love it.

00:28:11.080 But when it comes to children, I think you're all wrong.

00:28:14.340 Elon Musk, the other day, I saw him, you know, on some video,

00:28:17.460 he was talking about how to teach children, and he's wrong.

00:28:21.220 You're all wrong.

00:28:21.840 And let me explain why.

00:28:23.680 The fact is, you're all wondering why it is these students at university

00:28:28.400 don't think in a critical manner.

00:28:30.640 And then what you all say is, what we need to do is teach them how to think,

00:28:35.180 not what to think.

00:28:36.480 But you're wrong.

00:28:37.940 We need to teach them what to think, okay?

00:28:41.240 If, as, because what's currently happening is we are teaching them how to think.

00:28:45.620 And what does that mean?

00:28:46.380 In fact, I should ask you, when you all say things like that,

00:28:49.920 teach them how to think, what do you mean?

00:28:51.840 Well, we mean with this Peterson Academy that I'm putting forward is that

00:28:58.300 we don't want a university, and I'm speaking specifically of universities,

00:29:04.060 to be an ideological propaganda factory.

00:29:07.400 And so, really, it's a dig at the radical left.

00:29:10.320 Okay.

00:29:10.720 And so, and then I would also say,

00:29:14.960 I'll say two things in response to the other things you said.

00:29:17.640 Um, I have talked privately with any number of government officials,

00:29:24.100 especially on the Republican side, about the absolute catastrophe that's unfolding

00:29:27.960 in the K-12 system.

00:29:30.160 And one of my dreams, and you can tell me what you think about this,

00:29:33.660 is that I think that the right to teacher certification should be taken away from the

00:29:39.040 faculties of education.

00:29:40.600 Okay.

00:29:41.100 Because I think they have done a job that's so abysmal that it's almost indescribable.

00:29:45.500 And I've talked to plenty of Republican governors about this,

00:29:48.900 and it's one of my lifelong ambitions.

00:29:51.480 Yes.

00:29:51.880 No, I agree.

00:29:52.600 We'll 100% agree on that.

00:29:54.280 Teacher training institutions are a disaster.

00:29:56.320 But, okay, and it's really interesting what you said.

00:29:58.880 You don't want this ideology just pumped through kids.

00:30:01.360 And I 100% agree with you.

00:30:02.420 Not at universities.

00:30:03.280 Yes.

00:30:03.580 That's not the same as K-12.

00:30:05.760 Okay.

00:30:06.280 You know, I also agree with your approach from the particular upward with regards to children.

00:30:11.480 I know.

00:30:11.840 So, that's crucial.

00:30:12.900 I know.

00:30:13.440 It's just that when you all talk about this business of teaching them how to think,

00:30:18.640 what that looks like in a classroom, in a high school, is that, okay,

00:30:23.700 so what that is, is the standard discussion between knowledge and skills.

00:30:28.240 Should we teach them knowledge or should we teach them skills?

00:30:31.160 How to think is a skill.

00:30:33.380 And it can only be done within a particular domain.

00:30:37.620 So, I don't know how to think about cars.

00:30:40.680 Okay.

00:30:40.920 You told me, you put a car in front of me and said,

00:30:43.220 create a different kind of car, Catherine.

00:30:44.880 Be creative.

00:30:45.580 Think outside the box.

00:30:46.680 I wouldn't know what to do because I don't know anything about cars.

00:30:49.420 But if you tell me to turn education on its head, I've done exactly that.

00:30:52.860 I've been very radical.

00:30:54.200 I've thought outside the box and I've done things very differently.

00:30:57.140 Why?

00:30:57.660 Because I know education inside out.

00:31:00.120 The only way you can think in a creative manner or think outside the box and have independent

00:31:05.320 thoughts about anything is to know it really well.

00:31:09.040 And so, that means children at school level need to be taught loads of knowledge.

00:31:15.620 So, when you all say things like, we need to teach them how to think, I disagree with you.

00:31:20.460 When I say we need to teach them what to think, what I mean by that is we need to give them

00:31:25.780 knowledge about the world wars, about slavery, about colonialism, about all of these ideas that if

00:31:33.540 they don't have historical knowledge, they're unable to make a judgment that is well-informed

00:31:41.420 and that isn't just going to go down an ideological route.

00:31:45.300 You know, all children are communists.

00:31:46.880 Okay?

00:31:47.260 They're all communists.

00:31:47.920 When you talk to them, they're all communists because when they hear about communism, they

00:31:51.320 go, you mean everybody's going to have equality?

00:31:54.820 You mean everybody's, we're going to share?

00:31:57.360 And then, you know, everybody poor and rich doesn't happen anymore.

00:32:01.800 Everybody's just the same.

00:32:03.200 That's lovely.

00:32:03.980 And the reason why children are all communists is because they're naive.

00:32:08.380 They're vulnerable.

00:32:09.700 And it sounds nice to them.

00:32:12.100 And so, that's what they go for.

00:32:13.360 They don't have enough knowledge or enough wisdom to be able to make correct decisions.

00:32:18.960 That's why, for instance, we ban alcohol, we ban cigarettes.

00:32:22.760 I believe we should ban smartphones.

00:32:25.220 We ban sex.

00:32:26.420 We ban marriage.

00:32:27.260 We ban driving.

00:32:28.520 There are all kinds of things that we ban from children.

00:32:30.760 And the thing about the libertarian right, while I myself believe in freedom and I believe

00:32:36.000 in freedom of speech and all of that, when it comes to children, I don't believe in any

00:32:40.220 of it.

00:32:40.800 I believe that children need their freedoms restricted so that later in life, they can

00:32:46.880 be truly free.

00:32:48.380 And when I say their freedoms need to be restricted, that doesn't mean that they're unhappy.

00:32:51.820 You saw at my school just how happy they were.

00:32:54.100 So, let me ask you a clarifying question.

00:32:56.980 Yeah.

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00:34:06.900 Do you mean that their freedoms should be restricted, or do you mean that the domain within which they

00:34:13.940 have freedom should be restricted?

00:34:15.920 No, I would say both.

00:34:18.040 Right, because those are different, right?

00:34:19.340 Yeah.

00:34:19.480 Because the one tilts more to, in some sense, conceptually towards control.

00:34:24.720 See, let me give you an example.

00:34:26.580 You tell me what you think about this.

00:34:28.140 This is a very concrete example, so it brings it down to earth.

00:34:31.220 So imagine you have a four-year-old child, and he has a closet full of clothes, like 40 outfits

00:34:37.520 to wear, and they're all hanging on hangers, and maybe he's a little hungry and a little

00:34:43.540 tired, and you open up the closet and you say, which of those outfits do you want to

00:34:48.300 wear?

00:34:48.980 And he has a meltdown.

00:34:50.760 Okay.

00:34:51.160 And so imagine that instead you take three of those items of clothing off the hangers,

00:34:57.540 and you put them on the bed, and you say, which of those three pieces of clothing would

00:35:01.900 you like to wear?

00:35:02.700 And then he can point to one with no problem.

00:35:06.000 So there's a consumer choice literature, for example, that shows you that if you have four

00:35:12.360 shampoos to choose from on the shelf and you pick one, you're happier with your purchase

00:35:17.220 than you are if you have 200 on the shelf to pick from, because you drown in complexity

00:35:22.080 and you've probably made the wrong choice.

00:35:24.560 So with children, my sense is that they need that play that enables them to decide, but

00:35:34.360 adults are supposed to be wise enough so that the domain of choice that's presented to them

00:35:39.840 is commensurate with their actual emotional and cognitive ability.

00:35:43.900 So while I'm wondering what you think of that formulation.

00:35:47.060 Yeah, I don't think the four-year-old should be choosing at all.

00:35:50.220 I don't.

00:35:51.040 I think you're in a rush.

00:35:52.540 You need to get him to school.

00:35:53.380 Get him in his clothes and go.

00:35:54.480 Well, yes, there's that.

00:35:55.580 Right?

00:35:56.620 Yeah, there's times when that's the case.

00:35:58.760 I'm in the supermarket and I'm watching parents say,

00:36:01.660 darling, what would you like from the freezer to eat?

00:36:04.820 And I'm looking at them thinking, why are you asking them?

00:36:07.540 Just take what you want, put it in the basket and go.

00:36:09.940 You've got a life.

00:36:11.240 You know, like these children who are the center of the world, we need to ask them what they

00:36:15.100 think about everything.

00:36:15.880 We have to ask them, what would you like to eat?

00:36:17.940 Put the spinach and broccoli in front of them and tell them to eat it.

00:36:20.780 And that's what we do at Michaela.

00:36:22.280 They have one choice.

00:36:23.800 They don't have any choice at lunch.

00:36:25.140 They all eat the same thing.

00:36:26.380 And we call it family lunch.

00:36:27.620 And you had lunch with the children.

00:36:29.560 Why?

00:36:30.280 Why do we call it family lunch?

00:36:31.400 Because it's like family dinner.

00:36:32.780 And what used to happen at family dinner?

00:36:35.180 I have to say, I don't think this happens anymore in many households because everybody's

00:36:38.100 on their phone or their iPad and they take their plate of food and they go and sit in

00:36:41.300 their bedroom.

00:36:41.740 But what should be happening is that you sit around a table and that you all serve out the

00:36:46.980 food and you're all eating from one pot of food.

00:36:50.200 And if you don't like it very much, well, you suck it up because that's what it is to

00:36:53.860 be a child, okay?

00:36:54.940 And you learn how to eat different foods because your parents don't let you to get away with

00:36:59.960 this idea of, I'm a free human being and it's against my human rights and I should be able

00:37:04.020 to eat what I want.

00:37:05.000 No, you shouldn't be able to eat what you want.

00:37:06.460 You're a child.

00:37:07.500 Now, look, that's why people call me strict.

00:37:09.780 But it's because I love them that I think we should be doing this.

00:37:12.720 Because by doing that, we teach them how to become adults.

00:37:17.100 Be communal.

00:37:18.400 And you talk about, exactly.

00:37:20.080 You say that you don't want children.

00:37:22.400 You shouldn't bring up children who you're going to dislike.

00:37:25.080 Well, the more choices and the more freedom you give them in that sense, the more you're

00:37:29.640 going to dislike them as adults.

00:37:31.300 I mean, the fact is you cannot be friends with your children when they're children and

00:37:36.660 be friends with them when they're adults.

00:37:38.080 You have to choose.

00:37:39.300 And you should not be friends with them when they're children because otherwise you're not

00:37:42.480 going to be, you're not going to like them when they're adults.

00:37:44.260 You are in a position of authority and you should be molding your child and helping him

00:37:50.520 with his moral formation and giving him knowledge.

00:37:53.820 And the school should be doing both as well, both moral formation and giving him knowledge.

00:37:58.880 And where I worry about the libertarian right is the freedoms that they enjoy amongst adults,

00:38:05.540 they then impose that on children or they don't realize that that's what they're doing.

00:38:10.120 And then they think, oh my goodness, but why is it all these students at university are

00:38:14.580 behaving the way that they do?

00:38:16.040 It's because the schools have not taught them what to think.

00:38:20.180 When I say what to think, giving them the facts about the various world wars, giving them

00:38:25.700 the facts about the history of their country, making them feel as if they belong in their country

00:38:31.540 and that their history belongs to them, that the geography of their country is taught to

00:38:36.680 them. If, on the other hand, the school is convinced that actually what they need to do

00:38:41.660 is teach them how to think, and then nobody can agree on what that looks like because it's

00:38:48.940 a skill and outside of its domain of knowledge, it cannot be taught independently.

00:38:54.300 It's impossible.

00:38:55.660 All you can do is give children knowledge.

00:38:58.340 You see, what those skills are is actually bits of knowledge.

00:39:01.620 And when you give them lots of bits of knowledge about, say, the Second World War,

00:39:05.760 they are then able to piece together what they think of it.

00:39:09.500 Now, the problem we've got nowadays is that the schools are teaching them with a particular

00:39:14.780 ideology in mind. So, in Britain, for instance, I see very much that history lessons in schools,

00:39:22.140 they will be teaching about how the British were really racist and how the Indian soldiers

00:39:28.000 who were fighting for Britain were treated very badly. And you know what? I'm not even saying

00:39:33.240 that isn't true. But when it comes to secondary school children who might have one or two lessons

00:39:38.340 a week in history, and they're only going to have it for a few years, wouldn't it be—shouldn't

00:39:43.900 the focus be them knowing 1914 and 1918? Shouldn't the focus be them knowing about Hitler in the

00:39:53.080 Second World War? I mean, like, there are certain facts that the children—they've never heard of

00:39:57.840 the Battle of the Somme. They've never heard of the details of the various key battles in the

00:40:05.260 First World War and the Second World War. And they've never heard of them because they're too

00:40:09.320 busy being taught stories that are ideological, which will convince them that the British, for

00:40:13.800 instance, are racist, or convince them that there were various important female characters

00:40:18.380 in our historical history, and that that's what matters. And of course, Elizabeth I, absolutely.

00:40:24.720 But there are other people that are brought forward as being very important when they're not so

00:40:29.840 important, but because they're taught through an ideological lens, which is 2024, as opposed to

00:40:35.920 teaching them the basics of their own history so that they can feel that they are British.

00:40:42.360 Well, your car analogy is the right one, I think, in some ways.

00:40:45.900 What are you going to have to think about or say about a car if you don't know what all the parts

00:40:51.620 are and how they work together? Exactly. And so, it is so important, then, that we give them

00:40:59.220 knowledge. And if some of you are saying what we need to do is teach them how to think, it means

00:41:06.180 they're not taught anything, because that skill cannot be taught in isolation. And schools try to do

00:41:11.680 that in isolation. They try to teach skills. What they ought to be doing is teaching knowledge.

00:41:17.560 And if they don't teach them knowledge, children are leaving school not knowing very much.

00:41:22.980 And if they don't know very much, like I said, they're all communists. Like I said,

00:41:27.100 they're always going to take the side of the underdog. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily

00:41:31.360 wrong, but it's wrong if you don't have the knowledge and information that could make you see why

00:41:38.060 always taking the side of the underdog is not necessarily the right option. And that it's

00:41:44.800 complex. And that wouldn't it be nice, perhaps? I mean, I don't even wouldn't even necessarily agree

00:41:49.740 that it would be nice for everything to be equal. But let's imagine they think, wouldn't it be nice,

00:41:53.940 that actually the reality of communism isn't that, and that they need more information before they can

00:42:00.080 make a properly informed decision. Now, that should be the job of schools. At the moment,

00:42:06.380 it is immersing them in ideology. But the biggest problem is, for me, is those on the right who I

00:42:15.100 very much agree with, they don't realize that they're giving a back door, they're leaving the

00:42:20.680 back door open to progressivism to take over the culture. And the tyrannical culture of the left

00:42:26.540 has taken over our schools because the right keeps arguing for this freedom for children to have.

00:42:33.380 And we're arguing for children to be able to think what they want and do what they want.

00:42:40.560 Children shouldn't be allowed to do that. Now, look, when you were at our school,

00:42:44.100 you didn't see them unhappy. You saw them playing in the yard. You saw them, they play basketball,

00:42:48.380 they play, you know, football table, you know, and we don't have a big yard, we don't have any grass or

00:42:53.080 any trees. You know, we are an inner city school with not many resources. But what we've got,

00:42:58.840 the children have fun, and they love it. They love it because they are secure in the knowledge that we

00:43:04.920 love them. And we are teaching them knowledge that makes them feel really smart, clever, successful.

00:43:11.400 And then eventually, they can come up with their own ideas. But they cannot come up with their own

00:43:18.520 ideas isolated away from knowledge. That knowledge is absolutely crucial. But the right never talk about

00:43:25.140 the importance of knowledge. And they never talk about the importance of schools. Because people

00:43:29.060 don't realize that schools have all of our children, they are the future. And what the reason why our

00:43:35.860 universities are so messed up, it's not just because the universities are telling them the wrong things,

00:43:40.980 it's because they've already been brainwashed in school. And so when they arrive at university,

00:43:45.940 they're just sitting ducks. You know that in the United States, the K-12 system, approximately,

00:43:53.940 eats up 50% of the state budgets. Yes. Right. No, exactly. A huge amount of money.

00:43:59.780 Okay, so what that, so yeah, you might say that, all right. So what this means fundamentally,

00:44:05.460 and I've, like I said, I've been hammering this home at the Republicans, is that

00:44:08.980 the classic liberals and the conservatives have turned half the government revenues over to radical,

00:44:17.860 incompetent, ideologically bound progressives trained in the worst faculties in the universities.

00:44:24.260 Right. You know, we did a study that showed that taking one politically correct course was a

00:44:32.540 significant predictor in whether you were a politically correct authoritarian. Right. So there were

00:44:38.720 a number of other predictors, but that was one of them. And it's an absolute, it's a fait accompli on

00:44:44.000 the side part of the radical left that they've 100% occupied the school systems. And, you know,

00:44:50.240 there are Republican governors and so forth that have tried to take on the teachers unions in the

00:44:54.880 United States. And they often lose because it isn't obvious that the governors have more power,

00:45:01.600 especially more staying power than the teachers unions. And so it's, it's a tough battle. And I think the

00:45:08.240 Achilles heel is teacher certification that should be stripped from those faculties of education.

00:45:13.520 And then they would collapse under their own weight.

00:45:15.840 That's true. However, teachers tend to be on the left. Okay. They tend to be. And if they are

00:45:22.320 immersed in a culture that is telling them that what they ought to be doing with children is getting

00:45:27.200 them to understand just how awful their country is, that to be a good teacher, you want to sort of

00:45:32.080 radicalize them and make them into revolutionaries so that they can stand up against their repressive

00:45:37.440 government. Because actually what we want is a more communist society, or we want a society where

00:45:43.280 critical race theory reigns and gender ideology reigns. You know, like when you were telling me

00:45:47.440 about the little boy and his outfits, and I was thinking, well, what if he were to choose a dress

00:45:52.400 and want to put that on? I think the parent should put the dress away.

00:45:55.680 No, you don't put that on the bed. Well, indeed. So you don't give them that choice.

00:46:00.480 So one of the- Right, definitely not.

00:46:02.480 Exactly. One of the big jokes, Michaela, is, you know, tuna or cheese. Because when we go off to

00:46:07.360 on a school trip, the kids get to choose a sandwich, either tuna or cheese. That's the extent of their

00:46:12.240 choice. Yeah, right. And they're happier for it. Children are happier because they're in a secure

00:46:18.160 environment where they're loved and they're able to be taught what they need to develop their own

00:46:24.240 ideas and their own opinions. The thing is, is that paradoxically, the way in which children become

00:46:30.240 creative, the way in which they become independently minded, is through giving them lots and lots of

00:46:36.000 knowledge. And the more knowledge they have, the more hooks they have in their heads to be able to

00:46:41.040 hang more knowledge on. And then that, it grows exponentially. And often it's the rich kids who only

00:46:47.440 have access to that knowledge because they access it when they go on holiday with their parents around

00:46:51.840 the world, when they go and watch documentaries, when they talk to their uncle who's a banker and their

00:46:57.040 aunt who's a doctor and so on, they find out about the whole world. If it isn't the case that inner city

00:47:03.440 kids also get that opportunity from their teachers, then they just don't know very much. Now, I have to say,

00:47:10.240 I think it's even happening with the more well-off kids as well these days. And so we're allowing children

00:47:15.840 children to lead. Children cannot lead because they are children. And what I worry about on the right

00:47:21.600 is that our commentators on the right don't realize just how much, as a society, we have become

00:47:29.340 unmoored from the coast. So think of us as a boat, and we used to be anchored to the side,

00:47:37.380 right, next to the beach there. But we're no longer anchored. And we're hundreds of miles off the coast

00:47:43.360 now, right? And we're hundreds of miles off the coast. For a school to succeed, we have to bring

00:47:49.120 that fence in. We have got to do much of that moral formation ourselves because it's not necessarily

00:47:55.180 coming from the families. And that's because families—look, I know from so many people,

00:48:00.740 if you're a bit of a disciplinarian at home, you are looked down upon by your friends because they say,

00:48:07.900 oh, you're just a bit of a meanie. You should let children do whatever they want. Even the government

00:48:13.060 in Britain will send a nurse around when you've had a child to see whether or not you're doing

00:48:18.680 the right things. And the things that the nurse tell you to do, it's all the wrong stuff. One of

00:48:23.640 my teachers went off on maternity leave. She said to me, we have to pretend that we're doing this

00:48:28.080 stuff, but we don't want to do it because we're Michaela teachers. Both of them, they're married

00:48:32.820 and they're at the school. And they don't want to do that stuff because otherwise the state is

00:48:36.960 actually going to undermine the more traditional values that they have got in bringing up their child.

00:48:43.060 Well, so your comments on the right, let's say, I would say that's probably particularly relevant.

00:48:50.500 And you alluded to this. It's particularly relevant to the libertarian right. And the libertarian right

00:48:57.400 suffers from the delusion that if you just let people make choices, including market choices,

00:49:04.360 that everything will work out for the best. But they don't understand, and they should understand,

00:49:09.160 that even the small L liberals whose ideas they're essentially utilizing understood that

00:49:17.860 that individual freedom was only possible in a society that was moored in the way that you

00:49:25.640 indicated with your ship analogy. It's like once the game rules are in place, then everybody can be

00:49:33.400 free to play. But if you can't agree on the damn rules, you don't have freedom. You have

00:49:38.040 chaotic, counterproductive, chaotic, revolutionary anarchy.

00:49:42.900 That's exactly right.

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00:50:34.740 That's right. So that's why the phrase, teach them how to think, doesn't work. Because when you're

00:50:43.080 100 miles off the coast, it doesn't work. When we were next to the shore, that was fine. But

00:50:49.920 nowadays, so let me give you an example. Jonathan Haidt, he's written his book on the anxious

00:50:55.600 generation. I think it's absolutely brilliant. He's talking about the damage that tech has been

00:51:00.080 doing to children and smartphones in particular, and how this has made their mental health skyrocket,

00:51:06.560 how it's completely destroying children. It's just awful, and it's a fantastic book. But one of

00:51:11.680 the things that he argues for, Abigail Schreier, and in her excellent book, Bad Therapy, also mentions

00:51:16.820 this sort of thing, where they want children to have the freedom that they had when they were growing

00:51:23.280 up. So when you and I and Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Schreier, when we were all growing up,

00:51:27.420 we could ride our bike to the corner shop, we'd leave it outside, we'd go in, we could find friends

00:51:33.700 down the street, and we'd play football, and it was all great soccer for your American viewers. And

00:51:40.440 it was all great. And their worry now, rightly, is that children are on their iPads and their phones,

00:51:45.620 and that's correct. However, Jonathan Haidt will then criticize families for being a little bit too

00:51:52.600 protective of their kids, not wanting them to go places on their own and so on. And I understand

00:51:57.880 when it comes to a more middle class intake, his arguments will stand. But you know, I don't blame

00:52:03.120 our inner city parents for not wanting their children to be wandering around in the inner city,

00:52:06.880 because it is actively dangerous. We constantly have children who are, well, constantly, but every

00:52:13.140 now and again, we have children who are mugged. One of the reasons why our children don't get mugged

00:52:16.680 as often is because my teachers go out at the end of every school day and make sure they get them on

00:52:20.460 their buses so that they can get home safe. But if our teachers weren't there, all kinds of trouble

00:52:24.500 would break out. I'm constantly giving assemblies about how get home right away. The local schools,

00:52:30.580 fights break out in the street. And even if you're not just, well, you are in physical danger,

00:52:35.780 but it's also the case that your child could be led astray. They're taken down to the chicken shop.

00:52:39.700 They then get involved in gangs and all kinds of things. So parents need very much to be on top of

00:52:44.940 their children. Jonathan Haidt doesn't realize this, and he doesn't realize it, partly, I suppose,

00:52:49.520 because he doesn't know disadvantaged children in the inner city, but it's also because he has this

00:52:54.960 lovely nostalgic view, as do many of us have, of what it was like to grow up, say, in the 1970s,

00:53:01.320 1980s. And we remember the freedom we had, and we say, this is what we need to give to our children

00:53:06.040 now. But what he doesn't realize is that there was an invisible shield that surrounded us in the

00:53:11.480 1980s. When I wrote- They were called mothers.

00:53:14.300 Well, mothers, fathers, communities. So I remember me and my sister, we cycled down the road. My sister

00:53:20.920 fell on the ground and hurt herself really badly. We were able to knock on the neighbor's door. We

00:53:25.340 were able to go in, and she bandaged her up. And she told us, come on, it's all right, you can do it.

00:53:30.040 And she got us back home. You cannot- We do not have the levels of trust and levels of virtue

00:53:35.860 necessary for that kind of freedom. We cannot argue for freedom without virtue. Freedom requires

00:53:42.360 virtue. And we are 100 miles off the coast. That's the problem. And so to get back to the coast,

00:53:50.200 we are in the process, I would say at Michaela, of trying to establish a whole new national way of

00:53:55.820 being, where we buy into a multicultural community, where we sing God Save the King, where we uphold

00:54:03.580 certain values, communal values that we all buy into. So you may have heard about our recent case

00:54:10.040 in the courts over prayer. I don't know if you heard about this. One of the children and her mother

00:54:17.500 took us to court wanting a prayer room. And our position is, no, there is no prayer room,

00:54:24.240 and there is no prayer room now. And thank goodness we won that court case. And one of the reasons why

00:54:30.300 is that we have several Muslim children, and we would have to have several prayer rooms to make that

00:54:34.440 work. And that would get rid of our silent corridors. It would get rid of probably the family lunch that

00:54:38.720 you saw. It would totally change the ethos of the school. And it is my belief that children should

00:54:44.420 not be dictating to me how to run the school. As I just said, children should not have all of those

00:54:50.220 choices open to them. They are given restricted choices within a framework where we know what's

00:54:55.260 best, just like you said about the three outfits. Although, as I said, for a four-year-old, I don't

00:54:59.400 think he should be choosing his outfits at all. But I might say a 12-year-old could have a few choices.

00:55:03.800 And so we fought that. And I went to the high court in order to defend our ethos and our belief

00:55:11.000 that children need handholding. They are children, which is why I 100% agree with Jonathan Haidt that

00:55:17.560 they shouldn't have smartphones and they shouldn't have unsupervised access to the internet. But every

00:55:21.740 time I talk about this on Twitter, there are all these libertarians who come on and say,

00:55:25.440 stop being such a, you know, why are you trying to take away their freedom? Why are you being so

00:55:30.520 miserable about this? You shouldn't give so much control to the state, because I would love it if

00:55:34.200 the government were to ban phones for under-16s. But they ban alcohol, they ban cigarettes, they ban

00:55:40.120 marriage, they ban sex and porn and so on. And they should ban those things. So, and why do they ban

00:55:45.280 them? Because it's our role as adults to be protective of children and to look after them. And I worry that

00:55:51.760 those on the left certainly don't. They think free for all, everybody do whatever you want.

00:55:56.020 Those on the right get hoodwinked into this because they think, oh, freedom for adults,

00:56:04.300 freedom of speech, absolutely. But I don't give my children freedom of speech. They don't get to

00:56:09.300 just jump up and say whatever it is they want, no matter how insulting it is to other children.

00:56:13.280 They don't get to be rude. They don't get to tell the teachers to F off and so on. Obviously,

00:56:18.060 they don't get to do that. They're children. I mean, now, I don't think adults should be arrested

00:56:22.980 for saying F off on the street, but I'd put my children in detention if they say it in school

00:56:28.240 because they are children. And it's about us understanding the difference between adults

00:56:33.740 and children and how far off the coast we are. If we can't understand the difference between men

00:56:41.140 and women, we're going to have an even more difficult time understanding the difference

00:56:44.680 between... I'm dead serious about that. Okay, I want to ask you something that I found mysterious

00:56:49.760 too that I don't know enough about your school approach. So, you know, you're kind of a force

00:56:56.660 of nature in and of yourself. And I thought when I went to the school that, you know, I didn't know

00:57:02.300 how well you would have been able to disseminate your technology of teaching, let's say, to your

00:57:11.000 teachers. But what I saw were teachers thriving, but also a commonality of approach between the

00:57:19.320 classrooms, very intense style of interacting with the kids. Why don't you describe two things,

00:57:25.820 if you would, what your teachers and your children are actually doing in the classroom,

00:57:32.220 and then how in the world you trained your teachers to do that? Okay, so really good question. And this

00:57:39.700 is where I think people are both on the left and the right are just mistaken about what works in the

00:57:43.680 classroom. So, in the last 50 years, this idea of inquiry-based learning, project work, cross-curricular

00:57:51.840 work, discovery learning, all stemming from John Dewey in the early 20th century. They think that that is

00:58:00.780 what makes children into thinking beings. And they forget about that in the years, in Elizabethan times,

00:58:06.960 Shakespeare will likely have gone to a grammar school, probably the new King's School

00:58:10.140 in 1570s. It's the case that Isaac Newton went to a grammar school in Lincolnshire. Margaret Thatcher

00:58:17.920 went to one too. And these old grammar schools taught a traditional education. But it's also the

00:58:24.080 case that Nelson Mandela, Stokely Carmichael, who coined the term Black Power. So, real revolutionaries

00:58:30.380 also. So, creative geniuses. Newton created calculus. I mean, Nelson Mandela, of course,

00:58:36.560 an extraordinary revolutionary. So, people across their fields have transformed our world for the

00:58:43.360 better. And they've done so by having a traditional education. That traditional education prizes knowledge

00:58:50.200 in the center of the classroom and teaches it in a traditional way that often people both on the left

00:58:56.620 and the right reject. And we see, unfortunately, people think that the best kind of teaching is one

00:59:04.340 where they're left to discover it on their own. And this inquiry idea, it's wrong. What you need to do

00:59:11.820 and what you saw our teachers doing is teaching the children knowledge. You tell them what you want

00:59:17.660 them to know, right? So, you're not teaching them how to think. You're telling them what to think.

00:59:22.280 This is what happened in X year. This is how science works. This is Shakespeare. We're going to read

00:59:29.880 him. We're going to understand him. So, you do that and you get them. You do turn to your partner and

00:59:35.300 they talk to each other and then you get them to give their hands up and you have a class discussion

00:59:38.440 and you're going at pace, which you saw, and you're giving them lots of knowledge and you're checking to

00:59:43.320 see whether or not they have understood it and you are drilling them in that knowledge. So, you saw lots

00:59:49.120 of passing of information, but you saw lots of drilling as well of that information.

00:59:52.760 Well, let me ask you about that. Okay. So, this is what I observed. I want to drill down into this

00:59:57.220 because I think it's really important. And I also think it's revolutionary because, like I said, I never

01:00:03.360 saw education progressing at the rate that you managed in your classrooms anywhere. And so, okay. So, I saw

01:00:11.440 the teachers up at the front of the class and then they were disseminating the information in the manner

01:00:16.300 that you described. So, they were lecturing, essentially, and in a very pointed manner, looking at all the

01:00:23.100 kids. So, they were good lecturers too. They weren't these mumbly idiots who are like reading boring

01:00:28.740 crap off a overhead, you know, and not even interested themselves. They were really engaged

01:00:34.620 with the kids. But then you also spiced it up continually. So, there'd be like a burst of

01:00:39.920 information and the kids were listening, like I said, like cats following a laser. And then this is

01:00:47.520 where I saw the choice in some sense for the kids entering or the participation or the play because

01:00:53.780 then the teachers would turn the discussion over, what, to pairs of students? Yes. To discuss what

01:01:00.000 had just been delivered? Yes. And that was a time-limited thing that they had to do quickly. Yes. Right?

01:01:05.560 And so, then that's where the kids had some creative play. Yes. And so, like, do you have an

01:01:10.820 orchestral time sheet for the pace? Is it like five minutes of instruction, 30 seconds of

01:01:17.020 interaction, you know, a minute of response? Like, how do you orchestrate this exactly?

01:01:22.800 Okay. So, the turn to your partner, for instance, lots of schools will do pair work. They will

01:01:27.800 unfortunately, I think, do group work. And the reason why I think it's unfortunate that group work

01:01:32.220 happens is because you may remember, I mean, well, you may. I remember. Well, okay. So, even at your age,

01:01:38.380 I was about to say you might. It may have been done properly. Oh, yeah. I remember. So, the thing is,

01:01:43.020 group work, what are you doing? You're talking about who you fancy, what you're doing that evening,

01:01:47.180 you know, what you think of the teacher. You're talking about all kinds of things. You're not

01:01:49.700 actually talking about the work. When we do pair work, it's very quick because we know that if we

01:01:54.460 don't make it quick, they're going to end up talking about goodness knows what, but they're

01:01:57.500 not talking about the work. So, we need to keep them focused. Now, we're telling them the knowledge.

01:02:03.200 They are then able to discuss the knowledge and really make it theirs and understand it.

01:02:08.060 They're able to come back to the teacher. They're far more likely to put their hands up because they now

01:02:12.520 know that they discussed it with their friend and they feel a lot more confident, which is why-

01:02:16.400 They were competing to put their hands up, which was, I also thought was amazing.

01:02:20.240 They weren't sitting there in the back, like looking at their shoes.

01:02:23.180 Exactly.

01:02:23.420 They were all striving to be called upon.

01:02:27.100 That's right. And so, that's because they're all super confident because they've just spoken

01:02:30.400 to their partner. So, then they put their hands up and the culture of the school is then,

01:02:34.680 you're always putting your hand up, you're always answering, you're always feeling good.

01:02:37.540 If you get the answer wrong, your teacher's going to tell you because we are 100% honest with the

01:02:41.640 kids in that way. And then we can come back to that kid later and say, okay, so you give me an

01:02:45.360 answer to some other question. So, that bigs him up in that moment. And the kids love learning.

01:02:50.740 I always say children go to school to learn. And if they don't learn, they will stop going to school.

01:02:55.580 So, we have a massive attendance problem here in Britain at the moment where kids are not going

01:02:59.080 to school. I suspect it's the same in other Western countries. And the fact is, they say it's COVID,

01:03:04.240 it's COVID. And yes, it was because of COVID because COVID set in a culture in our schools where kids

01:03:08.300 didn't go to school. But it's also the case that if children do not feel that they are learning at

01:03:12.580 school, they're not going to turn up. We do not have an attendance problem at Michaela because the

01:03:17.360 kids know that if they miss a day, they're missing a hell of a lot of learning. And so, now, they have

01:03:22.180 a quiz every week in every lesson. In every subject, they have a quiz once a week. And they want to do

01:03:26.640 well on that. And if they don't, there's always three kids at the bottom where you're going to get a

01:03:29.960 detention, right? It might not be three, but there's always going to be at least a couple.

01:03:33.660 Okay, tell me about that. So, two things. You reward the kids and you do that in a very,

01:03:39.860 what would you say, obvious and public manner. They get these little badges for doing things

01:03:45.800 right. But that wasn't the amazing thing because I could imagine as a 13-year-old having these badges

01:03:53.060 at hand and being entirely cynical about them and even looking down on the kids who were striving to

01:03:58.160 get them. And that is not what I saw at Michaela's school. I saw that they valued their badges and that

01:04:03.640 they really wanted to earn them. And so, I don't understand how you managed that. Now, I saw that

01:04:09.660 one of the things you were doing was very targeted and immediate reward. So, if the kid was right,

01:04:14.580 you let them know and they got a little point.

01:04:16.480 A merit. We have merits and demerits.

01:04:18.440 Merits.

01:04:19.100 Yeah.

01:04:19.600 Right. And they're very performance-linked and they're immediate.

01:04:22.580 That's right. So, I'm expecting anywhere from 30 to 50 merits to be given out in a lesson.

01:04:27.320 And there will also be some demerits. I look myself every six weeks or so at a sheet to make sure

01:04:32.740 that there's at least four to five merits being given out generally in comparison to the number

01:04:37.140 of demerits that you'll give.

01:04:39.000 Four to one?

01:04:40.120 Four to one.

01:04:41.000 Five to one. Yeah. Something like that. Sometimes I've got six, seven to one.

01:04:44.200 Okay. Okay. Good. Yeah.

01:04:45.180 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:04:46.100 So, it's very positive. And the kids are there. They're wanting their merits. Now, we have a

01:04:50.760 pyramid. And if you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you do the right thing because you want to

01:04:56.400 avoid a detention. And then the next step up is you do the right thing because you want to get a

01:05:02.280 merit. And the next step up is, so that's one and two. Then to get to three, you do the right thing

01:05:09.060 because you want to impress your teachers. And then the next step up is you do the right thing

01:05:14.500 because you understand that the person who you are now is the person who you will likely become

01:05:19.720 in the future. And so, you want to become the best person that you can be now so you can be a good

01:05:24.760 person in the future. And you can also have a future job that you enjoy and so on. And at the very

01:05:30.120 top of the pyramid, it's who you are. It's who we are is what we say. So, we are trying to move

01:05:36.260 the children for every characteristic out there, whether it's 100% effort on the homework, being on

01:05:41.680 time, being kind to people, being grateful. When you saw, you saw the appreciations at the end of

01:05:47.100 lunch where the children stood up. And in front of 150, 200 people, they say, I'd like to say thanks

01:05:53.900 to my mom for helping me get up this morning and get to school. And then we all say, and then they

01:05:58.060 say, on the count of two, one, two, and the whole room claps, right? And you saw that happen.

01:06:02.680 Yeah. And it was real too. It was real. The kids were actually, that was cool too because it wasn't

01:06:08.720 an act. So, I thought that was remarkable because what you were doing was training. So, one of the

01:06:15.340 things that's very difficult that behavioral psychologists identified was that it's easier

01:06:20.500 to use punishment than reward because infractions stand out and progress is subtle. And so, one of the

01:06:27.200 things you want to do with children is you want to watch them like hawks so that when they do

01:06:31.540 something good, you can say, this is what you did. It was good. Here's a pat. You can do that with your

01:06:37.060 wife and your husband too, by the way. And it's very effective, but you have to be attentive. And so,

01:06:42.420 I like your pyramid too, because what you have is when people are barely in the game at the bottom,

01:06:49.920 you're using avoidance there. It's like, get your act together. You've got to straighten yourself up.

01:06:55.540 But then the rest of the pyramid is upward aiming and reward-based. And so, that's a nice dynamic

01:07:00.740 between restriction and opportunity, right? And that's also something that's not tyrannical because

01:07:06.460 the only form of reward tyrants use is, if you quit doing that, I'll stop hitting you.

01:07:14.000 Yeah, right. No, I mean, obviously, that isn't Michaela. But the thing is, is that you've got to

01:07:21.320 create an environment where that invisible shield that was around in the 1980s has been returned,

01:07:28.180 you know? And we have to build that shield now because it isn't there anymore. We don't have

01:07:33.340 the collective culture and the collective virtue and the collective understanding and trust that's

01:07:37.760 required for freedom to flourish. We just don't have it. So, we have created that within our school

01:07:43.440 walls. And people don't understand that that needs to be created in society and that all schools need to

01:07:49.540 be doing it. That's right. And so, we have a book called The Power of Culture. And the reason why

01:07:54.840 it's called The Power of Culture is because, you know, that quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

01:08:00.620 I am constantly watching our culture and keeping it just where it needs to be. And that is mainly

01:08:07.700 through my staff. So, you asked me about the staff. How do I get the staff to where they need to be?

01:08:10.900 So, people, my staff are always fascinated by how much time I spend with them individually

01:08:16.120 and how much time we spend talking about philosophy and politics. Like, you know,

01:08:22.760 new staff joining always say, but why aren't we talking about teaching methods? Why aren't we

01:08:26.860 talking about turn to your partner? And we do do that as well, obviously, because they need to be

01:08:31.280 trained to teach as we teach. But the time I spend with them is all on culture. So, we will talk,

01:08:37.440 I have videos of you talking about different ideas, little clips, and I'll use a clip. There's

01:08:42.900 a lovely clip of you talking with John McWhorter, actually, that I use. And the two of you are

01:08:47.780 talking about how you're both a bit odd and how, when I say odd, you're guys who like to think outside

01:08:54.200 the box and that you live in your heads and you're quite happy to live in your heads, but that actually

01:08:59.560 for most people, we are group animals and that we need to belong to something. And I show them that

01:09:05.080 and I say, well, isn't that interesting? Because that's what we're doing here at Michaela. We're

01:09:08.820 creating a group culture where we are part of the school and where we are part of the country.

01:09:15.340 So, England is playing in the Euros at the moment. Next Thursday at 5pm, England is playing Denmark.

01:09:22.800 We have made a massive deal of this. We have English flags all over the school. We are inviting the

01:09:29.160 kids back after school to watch the England game in school. And there's loads of kids that have

01:09:33.760 signed up and they're going to bring the little English flags and we're going to have extra

01:09:37.020 English flags. And we've told them that they can come in uniform or they can come in their own

01:09:43.080 clothes as long as they're wearing the English shirt, right? Now, this is us actively encouraging

01:09:49.020 them to identify with their country, as opposed to saying, I'm Nigerian, I'm Ghanaian, I'm Jamaican,

01:09:54.640 I'm, you know, I'm Iranian, etc. Or I'm Hindu, I'm Muslim, Britain isn't for me. You know, we sing

01:10:05.400 God to save the King every week. We teach them their history. We celebrate the King's birthday

01:10:11.840 on Friday. So, yesterday was the King's birthday. And so, we had little cakes with the British colors

01:10:19.180 on them and we had all our flags and our conversation for the lunch topic was about Britain.

01:10:25.780 So, we do all of this stuff to bring us all together so that we can be one big happy family.

01:10:32.040 And I don't think people realize just how much schools contribute to the cohesion of a country

01:10:37.160 and just how much schools are required for a country to succeed. And so, and we just forget

01:10:44.980 about them and we forget about kids. And partly, I think that maybe this is because teaching has

01:10:50.040 historically always been a female profession. So, people always think being a pilot, oh my goodness,

01:10:55.620 it's so glamorous, it's so hard, etc. Because historically, it's been a male profession and it's

01:11:02.160 like 97% or something male now. But the fact is, you only need a high school degree in order to become

01:11:07.640 a pilot. And it's actually pretty simple because the planes are automatic. I mean, it really isn't

01:11:13.960 that hard. Whereas teaching is so hard to do it well. And running a school, so hard. Which is why

01:11:20.860 so many schools fail. Because it's really, really difficult. But because people don't take an

01:11:25.920 interest in schools and they don't take an interest in kids. And it's just seen as a thing that just

01:11:31.420 happens. I also think that in the West, we seem to think that children are just born the way they're

01:11:36.560 born. And in the East, they don't. In the East, I remember once giving, I was at a conference and I said,

01:11:42.520 what happens in the West when a child tries something and succeeds at it? We Westerners say,

01:11:49.080 well done, you're so clever. And in the East, what they say is, well done, you tried really hard.

01:11:56.220 And that means that the next time the Western boy tries, he thinks something he can't do. He thinks,

01:12:03.500 am I clever enough to do this? And if he doesn't feel clever enough, then he won't try. Whereas in the

01:12:09.220 East, they think, well, I tried hard the last time, try hard this time, and I will succeed.

01:12:14.780 And once at a conference, I said this, and a Chinese woman came up to me and she said,

01:12:19.120 absolutely, 100% agree with everything you say, except that in the East, they wouldn't say well

01:12:23.960 done at the beginning, which made me laugh. Yeah, right. Right. Reward is harder to come by.

01:12:29.860 Okay. So let's use that. I have another question for you then. So

01:12:34.120 I spent a lot of time studying the literature on the prediction of performance. And you can predict

01:12:44.140 how well people will perform in a complex environment by measuring their general

01:12:48.820 intelligence and their conscientiousness. Those are the best two predictors. Now, your school is not a

01:12:55.160 selective school. So you, I would presume that the average IQ in your school is probably a little

01:12:59.920 higher than a hundred because your parents are selecting in, but basically you're dealing with

01:13:05.240 a normal distribution and average population. And yet your kids are advancing very rapidly and they do

01:13:12.020 extremely well on objective tests. So now I saw how effective your teaching was, but I'm quite struck

01:13:19.180 by that. And so what I would like to know is, you know, that there's great differences in people's

01:13:24.480 innate abilities and, and, but, but you are also producing a generic success that extends across,

01:13:33.060 well, obviously across class and race and within the confines of your unselected population. And so

01:13:39.000 how is it that you've come to understand the relative contribution of, let's say the intelligence

01:13:47.040 that's God given, so to speak, and the discipline and strategy and structure that your school is

01:13:53.920 providing? And then how much variation do you still see? You know, you've moved the whole population

01:13:59.620 upward, but how much variation do you still see in terms of talent and ability within your own school?

01:14:05.300 Yeah. So there's huge variation. Of course there is, because there's such a thing as being talented at

01:14:10.880 certain things and not, and that, you know, that's the way children are born. Having said that, our

01:14:15.760 children all outperform what they would have done had they been at another school. So they reach their

01:14:21.400 potential tenfold. Now, the fact is that, so I talked about the importance of knowledge and making

01:14:28.580 that central to your classroom and helping them become creative through knowledge. All our children

01:14:34.920 manage that. And by learning so much, that is why we do so well in the end on the exams. But it's not

01:14:41.860 just the final exams. Our children know so much about all sorts. And they, and what annoys me is that

01:14:49.020 people always talk about how successful we are in our exams, as if that's all we are. We are so much

01:14:53.380 more than that. Our children are really interesting people. What do you mean all you are? That's not

01:14:57.700 an easy thing. No, it's true. The people who are putting you down for accomplishing that have some

01:15:02.140 real thinking to do. Yes. Because what you did purely on the objective side is people would have

01:15:07.620 regarded that as impossible. Yes. So they don't get to play that game. But I agree it's not all you're

01:15:11.980 doing. Well, and so what you're talking about there is being able to live a life of dignity.

01:15:16.520 So we, our values, our small c conservative values that we talk about with the children all the time.

01:15:21.640 The idea of being able to take responsibility, not being a victim. Somebody who has a sense of duty

01:15:27.900 towards others. I don't disrupt my class, not just because I don't want to get a detention, but because

01:15:32.140 I wouldn't want to disrupt the learning from my classmates. Being somebody who is able to sacrifice.

01:15:37.280 So that position on prayer, for instance, you know, the Muslim children, well, they put up with not having

01:15:42.220 a prayer room. They make that sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. The Jehovah Witness

01:15:46.280 children, there's Macbeth that we teach as a set GCSE text. It has witches in it. They don't like

01:15:52.720 the magic. We also teach a Christmas carol, Christmas in there. They don't like it because

01:15:58.500 of Christmas, but they put up with it because they think about the self-sacrifice for the betterment of

01:16:03.700 the whole. The Hindu children who think, well, we want our separate plates at lunch because the eggs

01:16:08.720 have touched the plates. So we don't like that. They too self-sacrifice so that for the betterment

01:16:13.600 of the whole. Because the problem with multiculturalism is that if each group is vying for their rights

01:16:19.700 and it's always, I want this, I want that, and you're a racist or you're an Islamophobe unless I get

01:16:24.880 it, then we'll never be happy. We'll never be successful. And schools struggle with this because

01:16:30.620 they are multicultural communities. And unfortunately, our whole culture encourages them to divide

01:16:36.820 children according to race and religion and sexuality and so on. So you have your LGBT group

01:16:41.780 over there, you have your Hindu group over there, the Muslim group over here, and so on.

01:16:45.100 If that happens in your school, it becomes impossible because you're trying to please everybody

01:16:50.040 and sometimes those rights clash. So for instance, Muslim children want to eat halal food. Sikh children

01:16:58.480 are not allowed to eat halal food. Well, what do you do if you have a situation where family lunch

01:17:03.860 means that you all share the same food? Well, I'll tell you what you do. You go vegetarian.

01:17:07.560 So we all eat vegetarian food. And that, we do practical things. We don't have a prayer room.

01:17:14.220 We have vegetarian food. We use the same plates. And it doesn't matter who you are. You have to leave

01:17:21.700 those demands at the gate and make sure that you value the whole over your individual rights.

01:17:31.380 because you understand that it's your responsibility to value the group and the school over your own

01:17:40.860 personal desires. Well, the thing is too, you make a case that I would argue is actually more subtle

01:17:48.920 than that. Okay. Because it, well, it isn't only that you're calling upon your kids and your parents

01:17:56.020 to sacrifice. What you've pointed out, and I think this is evident in your school, is that

01:18:02.280 the freedom that the libertarians and let's say even the anarchic leftist radicals desire

01:18:09.420 is actually only possible within the confines of a shared community. And so, you know, your opponents

01:18:17.260 might say, well, look how strict you are with the children. They have no freedom. But your rejoinder is

01:18:22.780 something like, no, we establish a community with boundaries and walls so that people know what

01:18:29.440 the expectations are with regards to upward striving. And then within that, they have true

01:18:34.620 freedom. So, you know, I'll give you an example. This is a cool example. True freedom requires

01:18:41.280 restriction. Yes, go on. Well, so when Moses faces the Pharaoh to free the Israelites, God tells him to

01:18:50.340 say something to the Pharaoh and he says it repeatedly. And some of it's famous. He says,

01:18:55.320 let my people go. And that's a civil rights cry. That is not what Moses says. Moses says,

01:19:04.180 God said to me, let my people go so that they may worship me in the desert. And so it's a vision of

01:19:12.440 ordered freedom and not a vision of anarchic freedom. What the Israelites have in the desert,

01:19:18.660 which they hate, is anarchic freedom. Right? Because so they go from tyranny to anarchic freedom

01:19:24.780 and it's a catastrophe. So what's set up instead is a hierarchy like your pyramid. That's the

01:19:31.060 subsidiary structure and that's responsibility as the antidote to tyranny and slavery. And you do that

01:19:37.160 in your school. And so you are actually providing those kids with freedom. You are not taking it away.

01:19:42.460 Right. And what you're doing is restricting anarchy. Indeed. And the thing is, in order for

01:19:48.640 children, look, the Christian God would also say, honor thy mother and father. Right? And what do

01:19:53.860 they mean by honor thy mother and father? Your father and mother love you and they are going to

01:20:00.440 restrict some of your freedoms. And they're going to force you to do things like eat your broccoli

01:20:04.340 that you don't like. And your teachers are going to force you to learn your calculus, even though you

01:20:08.240 think it's a bit boring. And they're going to be all kinds of restrictions around you. And you get

01:20:13.340 annoyed as a kid because you think, I want to be able to do whatever I want. One day you will be

01:20:18.160 able to do whatever you want. But by then you have earned that right. By then you have taken the wisdom

01:20:25.080 from your elders. You talk about hierarchies and you say hierarchies are sometimes bad because they

01:20:30.140 are hierarchies of power. You're absolutely right. But hierarchies of competence are good. And the fact is

01:20:36.440 that the adults here are meant to be the more competent ones. And they're meant to embrace-

01:20:40.640 Well, that's the definition of adulthood.

01:20:42.600 Well, it's meant to be. Unfortunately, adults these days don't feel like they're the most competent.

01:20:46.700 In fact, they're made to feel like they're bad people if they insist that children should listen

01:20:51.920 to them. And the whole student voice thing and this, you know, giving them tons of choice about

01:20:58.480 stuff and so on. Look, we are meant- I'm not saying don't ever listen to children. Obviously,

01:21:03.020 you listen to them. But you also know that you know better, right? And you make sure that you

01:21:09.200 support them in choosing the better choice and also in knowing why it's the better choice.

01:21:16.360 We don't say to kids, look, do whatever you want. Go to the supermarket and buy whatever you want.

01:21:22.300 Well, they'll come back with a whole load of cookies, right? I mean, I find it hard enough now

01:21:26.580 to stay away from the cookies, you know? But thank goodness my mother taught me to eat the broccoli

01:21:30.920 because I eat the broccoli because I now have the knowledge that it's better for me.

01:21:34.200 And I also have the experience of knowing that if I don't eat broccoli, that I'm not going to feel

01:21:39.680 very good in myself. I need to go to the gym and so on. Kids don't understand that. So because they

01:21:44.600 don't understand that, we need to pull the fence in tight. And it's our job as adults to be instilling

01:21:49.500 these habits in them. And then they climb that pyramid till eventually they get to the top and it's who

01:21:55.040 they are. So you were asking for those kids who cognitively, they're perhaps not as bright as other

01:22:00.400 ones. How do they feel happy and satisfied? Because we very much don't just talk about cognitive

01:22:06.080 success. We talk about the kind of person you are and that it's who we are is the top of the pyramid.

01:22:13.240 Can you be somebody who's grateful, who's kind, who's decent? You know, for some of our children,

01:22:19.300 they might be the manager in a shoe shop. Well, you know what? Well done you. And if you're somebody

01:22:25.860 who can turn up every day on time and you can pay for your mortgage and you can look after your wife

01:22:31.460 and your children, good on you. That is a hugely successful life. And it's about recognizing that a

01:22:38.260 life of dignity is one of purpose, of knowing who you're going to be, of trying to become something,

01:22:46.760 of being able when you're 90 years old to look back from your deathbed and look at your life and say,

01:22:52.760 I lived for something. I contributed. I made the world into a better place. That's what you want.

01:22:59.360 You know, becoming some billionaire, I mean, I don't know, most billionaires are unhappy. Certainly

01:23:04.140 their children are unhappy. And often because their children were just given exponential choices,

01:23:09.380 you have whatever you want, have a great time. You know what? That makes children miserable.

01:23:13.240 What makes children happy is the love of a restricted choice, of teaching them knowledge,

01:23:23.080 of allowing them to stand on the shoulders of giants. As Newton said, he said, if I see further,

01:23:28.480 it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants. And what he meant by that, Shakespeare, Newton,

01:23:34.240 even Thatcher, who went to Newton's, well, the equivalent girls' grammar school,

01:23:38.060 they all learned traditionally. In Shakespeare's day, they would memorize loads. They would read

01:23:45.420 Latin texts. How did Shakespeare become the great that he is? He actually, he stole stuff from other

01:23:51.920 authors. He copied. That is what children need to do in the first instance. They need to be able to

01:23:57.280 copy. They need to learn from others. And that is by showing them through example, developing those

01:24:02.420 habits so that eventually they are at top of the pyramid. So just yesterday, our year 11s,

01:24:08.000 grade 11s who took their GCSE exams, the exams finished yesterday. So that we had a big pizza

01:24:12.560 party and they had cans of Coke for the first time in five years. Okay. They've never had. They're

01:24:20.260 there. Oh my goodness, pizza that we ordered in from like Domino's, you know, and we had cans of Coke

01:24:26.840 and they were there like, wow, this is amazing. The kids can't believe next Thursday with the

01:24:33.180 England game, they're allowed to bring their own crisps and their own chocolate. They think heaven

01:24:39.560 has come early. They can't believe it. Right. And that's because we don't normally give them this

01:24:43.780 sort of stuff. And then children are really grateful for those small things. And so they were having this

01:24:48.740 massive party outside and it was wonderful. And they were signing their shirts and so on. They finished

01:24:53.140 their exams and they know they've done really well because they have climbed that pyramid. And my thing

01:24:58.480 is, you know, when we have our prom next week, I'm going to be saying to them, you know, we try and get

01:25:04.140 the little birdies to the top and then we tell them, fly little birdie. And that's where those wings need

01:25:10.160 to be able to fly. Now, the only way those wings are going to be able to fly is if we pump them through

01:25:15.580 of wonderful knowledge so that they can come up with their own creative ideas. And they've learned how to

01:25:21.660 think through attaining and grasping that knowledge over those five years. And that we also have taught

01:25:29.260 them what it is to live a life of dignity, that they're looking for purpose. They're looking for

01:25:33.900 something in life that's going to ignite a passion in them, that they're going to love and that they're

01:25:39.220 going to be able to contribute to society, that they're not just going out there to make a load of

01:25:44.420 money. You will never see me or any of my teachers at assembly talk about the reason why you need to do

01:25:49.760 well in your exams is to get a good job. We would never say that, ever. The reason why you want to

01:25:53.980 do well in your jobs, sorry, the reason why you want to do well on your exams is because you want

01:25:58.980 to be the kind of person who works hard for something and then gets the best that you can

01:26:03.900 get. That is what you want out of life, right? You know, not everybody is going to get the top score

01:26:08.460 of a nine. What you want is to get the best score that you can get. And the only way you're going to know

01:26:13.240 that is if you've worked like hell to get there. So our kids who are getting the fours and fives,

01:26:20.260 still passing the sixes, but they're not getting the nines, they don't feel bad about themselves

01:26:25.300 because they have purpose, because they're on the same journey as the ones who are cleverer than they

01:26:30.660 are to be the kind of person who's finding purpose and who is going to have dignity. And I think many

01:26:37.960 years ago, you know, I think of my Uncle Harold. This is one of the training, for instance, that I

01:26:43.220 do with staff. And I showed them a picture of my Uncle Harold. My Uncle Harold was from the Caribbean

01:26:50.340 and he lived in Detroit eventually. And there's this wonderful photo of him with this white hat

01:26:59.220 and this white suit, and he looks so sharp. And it probably was taken in the 1940s.

01:27:04.520 And I remember Uncle Harold when he was very, very old. And he used to give us, my sister and me,

01:27:09.860 a little quarter, you know. This is in the 80s. He'd give us a quarter. And we would think,

01:27:14.320 oh, we've got a quarter. And it was just so exciting. Just like our kids think we've got

01:27:17.820 cans of Coke. Isn't it exciting? Because we weren't given everything. My family, we grew up,

01:27:23.280 we didn't have loads. And my mother worked night shifts as a nurse. And my dad was a lecturer. And he was

01:27:28.940 always sponsoring family from Guyana. My father came from Guyana. My mother is Jamaican.

01:27:33.600 And they would bring family. And we always had family at home, finding them jobs at McDonald's

01:27:40.200 and so on. In order, because my father wanted to help his family come to a better country where

01:27:45.420 they would have a better life. And my Uncle Harold, you know, you look at him in that suit. And what I

01:27:51.280 always say to my teachers is, everybody goes on about how racist everything is. Well, I can tell you

01:27:55.640 in the 1940s, it was pretty damn racist, right? Life was hard for Uncle Harold. But I never heard

01:28:02.280 Uncle Harold complain. I never heard him going on about racism. My Uncle Harold got his head down

01:28:07.700 and did what was necessary for his family, just like my father and my mother did. And I never heard my dad

01:28:13.300 and my mom ever complain about racism, ever. They just work like hell, not just for themselves and for me

01:28:19.060 and my sister. But they work like hell for their families to be able to bring them to Canada because

01:28:23.660 I grew up in Toronto and Canada. And at 15, I came to Britain. And, you know, that small C

01:28:29.340 conservatism is just part of who I am. And, you know, it's funny, I was watching this documentary

01:28:34.600 about Clarence Thomas. And he was saying how when he was in his early 20s, he became this black radical

01:28:40.660 and he was this total leftist. And he really reminded me of me because eventually he found his way back

01:28:46.120 to small C conservatism because he'd been, that was instilled in him by his grandfather when he

01:28:51.400 was growing up. And it was a very similar thing with me. I became this black leftist, etc. Became

01:28:56.620 this black, you know, I was this teacher. And then eventually I just, it all felt wrong to me.

01:29:02.680 And then over years. Okay, so wait, so I'm going to stop you there. I'm going to stop you there

01:29:06.680 because, well, this is why. First route of time on this side. Yes, yes. But more importantly,

01:29:12.320 that's exactly what I want to delve into on the Daily Wire side. Yes, yes. I'm sorry. It's true.

01:29:17.600 I jumped. No, no, no, no. That's fine. No, but that's a perfect, well, it's a perfect place to

01:29:21.820 stop. Paradise means walled garden. Right. Yes. Right. Right. And the walls are there. So to make

01:29:30.820 the garden flourish. Exactly. Eden. Eden means well-watered place. And that's what you have at

01:29:37.160 Michaela's school. You have a walled garden. That's right. And you're watering the kids and that's

01:29:41.660 working. And so that's a lovely, that balance between order and natural flourishing. Right.

01:29:50.360 That's paradise. And, and I could see your kids participating in that at Michaela's school. So

01:29:55.600 congratulations on that. So for everybody watching and listening, we're going to switch to the Daily

01:30:01.300 Wire side now, and I'm going to talk to Catherine in more detail about, well, this transformation,

01:30:06.940 let's say the one that she described that also characterized Clarence Thomas and many people,

01:30:11.920 because most people have a leftist proclivity, let's say when they're young and foolish,

01:30:18.160 radical leftist proclivity when they're young and foolish and full of undiscerning empathy.

01:30:25.020 Let's put it that way. And so we'll talk about that on the Daily Wire side. And so

01:30:28.640 join us there and thank you to everybody watching and listening for your time and attention. And

01:30:33.280 also to you today, Catherine, for walking us through Michaela's school and sharing the thing

01:30:40.120 that's so striking about listening to you, apart from the conceptual element is that you are obviously

01:30:46.160 thrilled with what you're doing and to be part of the lives of your children. And that's,

01:30:51.660 I could see that at the school, but I can also hear it in every, well, in your passion and your,

01:30:58.520 what would you say, your obvious pleasure in the specific stories you tell about the kids and

01:31:03.140 the love that you have for them is, that's the culture. Yeah. That was really what got me

01:31:10.200 when I went to your school.

01:31:12.440 Love.

01:31:12.980 Because I could see that and it's so rare and so painful that it's rare because it could be

01:31:18.480 everywhere if people would take the responsibility and open their eyes.

01:31:22.640 That's true. But the thing is,

01:31:24.680 Yep.

01:31:25.200 The thing is, it's, I, I, I, I understand why they don't know how to figure out what to do,

01:31:31.180 what we do, because they're told so many things that are the opposite to what we do.

01:31:36.440 Yeah, but you figured it out.

01:31:37.680 I know, but.

01:31:38.460 And we're going to, we're going to try to figure out why.

01:31:41.160 And so you people can all join us on the Daily Wire side to go into that. So thank you very much,

01:31:46.580 ma'am. And, uh, well.

01:31:48.700 Thank you for having me.

01:31:49.420 We'll meet again, no doubt, in the UK.

01:31:51.280 Yes.

01:31:51.540 And, uh, thank you to all you who've been watching.

01:31:55.320 Craig, Craig, Craig. Craig likes it warm. Craig loves 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Craig doesn't

01:32:01.940 understand Fahrenheit. But Craig does like to save money when he's at work. Craig also cares about

01:32:07.280 his carbon footprint. He's so thoughtful that, Craig.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 24, 2024

458. Strictness Absent Tyranny Leads to a Great Education ｜ Katharine Birbalsingh

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