00:02:46.620I don't know, we get seven to 10 visitors every day.
00:02:49.240They're all teachers, tend to be, from across the country and across the world who come to see what we do.
00:02:54.860So it's been really powerful in terms of putting the argument forward because teachers have been able to see the arguments in theory in real life and to see whether or not they work.
00:04:42.580And if you're able to answer, that's great.
00:04:44.340That means you've been listening. And so you'll find 75 percent of hands in the class will go up.
00:04:49.700And that's what I mean about having the order and the structure. If you have order, everyone's able to listen.
00:04:53.700If the teacher is standing at the front of the class, they can look in one direction to see the teacher.
00:04:58.240If the teacher is teaching in the way that we would consider to be excellent teaching,
00:05:02.960the children have a chance to really grapple with the subject and then be able to put their hands up and answer questions and then feel successful.
00:05:11.960and then their self-esteem goes through the roof but um we do things the other way around in that
00:05:18.160sense uh so you might find more modern methods of teaching are trying to address their self-esteem
00:05:23.660we don't address their self-esteem we think about the learning we make sure they learn
00:05:27.780and guess what their self-esteem then benefits because they're learning because it's very
00:05:33.200interesting that you say excellent teaching because i've been on i was a teacher for 10
00:05:37.580years in primary and secondary and the idea of what good teaching is seemed to change year upon
00:05:44.240year upon year because education is a political football in the UK so what do you think is
00:05:49.560excellent teaching for you? Yeah and it's a really good point things do change all the time
00:05:54.460and to a certain extent there is some value in change because people you don't want to just be
00:06:02.460stuck in the same way so we change our minds all the time one of the things that people think is
00:06:05.940oh, well, at Michaela, they just have one way of doing things. Well, that's just not true.
00:06:09.860We have changed our mind over the years, and we also change our minds daily about things.
00:06:13.980So change isn't necessarily bad. But some of the ideas, I would say, have been bad over the last
00:06:18.46050 years in education. So what has changed for the worse is that education has become more
00:06:25.200child-centered. And what I mean by that is, rather than the teacher leading the learning,
00:06:29.760it's the child that's leading the learning. And that comes from the idea that learning
00:06:33.200should always be personalized and that each child is his own self to be able to just discover what
00:06:38.920he wants. I want to be a dancer. I want to be an artist. I want to be a, you know, I want to work
00:06:43.960with computers and that's fine. The idea of wanting to do what you want, but the teacher needs, who's
00:06:49.620the history teacher, needs to teach the history and the child needs to learn from the teacher who
00:06:54.480knows more than them. That concept has been lost. And to people who aren't in teaching, that seems
00:06:59.820really odd. Well, obviously the history teacher knows more about history, but you'd be amazed by
00:07:03.640the number of teachers who say things like, I learned just as much from my children as the
00:07:08.460children learned from me. And I always think, well, okay, then you must not be a very good
00:07:13.360teacher and something's wrong there. And I'm not saying that the children can't point out
00:07:17.540little quirky things and they don't make you laugh. And I love working with children for that
00:07:22.360reason. But the teacher ought to know more. The teacher ought to stand at the front of the class.
00:07:27.880the desk should be in rows. The children should look to the teacher. I always say the teacher
00:07:31.940is driving the bus, right? And the teacher drives the bus because children can't drive.
00:07:38.240And they can't. They can't drive, right? I mean, the thing is, in teaching, people don't think
00:07:43.440that. They think, no, no, no, no, no. Children should just do, they should be in groups and
00:07:48.020they should be looking at each other. So the teacher then moves around the desks as a facilitator
00:07:52.380of learning as opposed to, no, I'm the teacher. I'm driving the bus forward and all the children
00:07:58.440are going to jump on the bus with me. And then a really excellent teacher is making sure that
00:08:02.640children don't jump off on route. You're on your way to Rome. You don't want them jumping off at
00:08:07.060Paris. You don't want some of them never leaving home. You want to make sure that you are so skilled
00:08:12.080as a teacher that every time, oh, you're looking out the window, you jumped off the bus. Bing,
00:08:16.480little Johnny, come back in. Oh, you're doodling. You jumped off the bus. Okay, get back in. And you
00:08:21.020Keep going, keep going until you get to Rome.
00:08:23.080And you are a brilliant teacher if you've managed to get to Rome
00:10:06.760So we have a year 11 committee for the ball, the year 11 ball when they leave and they're telling us where they want to go, which hotel to rent, all that kind of stuff. Great. They ought to be participating in that. We've got future leaders in the school who take our guests around and give them tours and they feed back to us about the school and so on. Yes. You know, are the toilets working? Do you have enough basketball hoops in the yard and all that sort of thing?
00:10:30.600We need their point of view. But do they know who makes a good deputy head? Do they know what makes a good teacher? Of course not.
00:10:39.180But that is very common in schools. That's just one example.
00:10:45.180The idea that the teacher should be the authority is controversial because they jump to the idea that they then must be authoritarian.
00:10:54.140And what I mean by that is they're mean and they're oppressive.
00:11:00.300So people often come to the school thinking, well, it must be an oppressive place where children are miserable because the teachers are in charge, literally.
00:11:08.180But that's exactly the opposite is what you find.
00:11:11.140Children are thrilled because they're being led by their teachers, which is what they want.
00:11:16.580I always say children push, we push back.
00:11:19.780They expect you to give them a detention if they misbehave.
00:11:22.140If you don't, then you are letting them down.
00:11:24.800It's very interesting you say that, because especially when you work with kids who come from really difficult backgrounds where there's not a lot of stability.
00:11:33.740To them, school is the one stable influence in their life where they're going to go in.
00:11:38.340They're going to be able to sit at the same place. The same thing is going to happen every day.
00:11:41.900They're going to get fed. And to them, that is their safe place.
00:11:45.020And if you go in and you have this attitude of, you know, the child takes control, like you said, to a child, especially a young child, that is terrifying.
00:11:53.980Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's not even just the shy children or the awkward children who are then eaten alive in that kind of system.
00:12:01.300But children who wouldn't have been bullies become bullies because they have to to survive.
00:12:06.420Right. Right. You know, there's that film Wonder, which was based on the book about this little boy who's had lots of operations on his face.
00:12:17.020And he goes he goes back to school. Julia in the in the trailer, you see Julia Roberts and the husband.
00:12:24.060I can't remember. It's one of the big American actors. And they go to the school gates.
00:22:03.960I mean, he's not going to think about things
00:22:06.760that matter. And that is what's key is that we need to recognize that children are children and
00:22:11.960it is our duty to look after them. Do you think that this discomfort with authority that you
00:22:17.580talked about is a broader issue in society? Because it seems to me that it's not just
00:22:22.360education. Like I'll go play basketball in my local park and I'll see these parents
00:22:26.280chasing their child who is determining where they go, what they do, what kind of food the family
00:22:32.920leads, it's all determined by a five-year-old. That's right. That's right. And that becomes
00:22:37.240standard. And in fact, as a parent, if you try and take a harder line with your child,
00:22:43.580your friends look at you as if you are the unreasonable one, right? And if you're made
00:22:48.380to feel like that, then the social pressure that you feel around you is to let the child
00:22:55.860lead things. And I mean, of course, children need to have choices about things, you know,
00:23:00.360do you want to catch up with your food or not? That's fine. But what school do you want to go to?
00:23:05.520Clearly, it's the parents who should be making that decision.
00:23:09.720And it's interesting that the points that you raised there were fascinating. I wanted to talk
00:23:14.240to you because I wanted to get your opinion on this. We've got a crisis in this country with
00:23:18.260teaching and teacher retention rates. People qualify. They do the PGCE. We spend hundreds
00:23:23.520of thousands, if not millions, getting teachers through this system. The Postgraduate Certificate
00:23:28.700of education. They stay, what is it, maximum something like five years? They drop out of the
00:23:32.560system. What are the problems with teaching in this country? Well, the two big things are behavior
00:23:38.200and workload. Those are the two big things. So the behavior, I mean, look, if you're being told
00:23:42.020to F off every day, people don't want to do that, right? Well, we're comedians. I have us all the
00:23:47.900time. Yes, I suppose. And it takes a particular type of person. But most people don't want to
00:23:53.220be told to F off. Don't want that adrenaline having to pump all the time because you feel
00:23:57.620like you're going to war that shouldn't be happening right um and so teachers will leave
00:24:02.060for those reasons uh but they'll also leave because of workload and um the workload of course
00:24:08.380is caused in part because of behavior and it's also caused because um if the teaching methods
00:24:14.520and i keep referring to these teaching methods if you're having to move amongst the desks and
00:24:19.460you're doing all of this uh so-called creative work which isn't creative at all uh it actually
00:24:24.940stunts learning, there's then a lot of pressure on you for the children to achieve. But the only way
00:24:30.160to make them to achieve is to teach them properly. So it can be very confusing for a teacher. Well,
00:24:34.840you want me to teach this way? And that's what senior team keep telling me to do. But if you
00:24:38.560want me to get the results, then, well, I have to do that. So I have to teach in a traditional manner.
00:24:44.360So you move between the two, not quite sure what to do. Sadly, people think about traditional
00:24:49.380teaching. They think it just means rote learning. And yes, there are some things you want to rote
00:24:53.500learn. So you do want to rote learn your times tables. You do want to rote learn your dates
00:24:57.320and history. But that doesn't mean you're rote learning everything. You're still having class
00:25:01.060discussions. We do pair work with the children where they discuss, turn to your partner, we say,
00:25:05.200and then they discuss quickly. And then we say, hands up. And then they all have a bit of a class
00:25:08.440discussion on it. They obviously do independent work as well, where they're writing out essays
00:25:12.580and they're analyzing things. You don't not have analysis when you do traditional teaching. In fact,
00:25:18.980It's at the heart of traditional teaching. Sadly, people can interpret traditional teaching to mean everyone's just sat there, wrote learning something and repeating stuff back to the teacher.
00:25:30.320That is certainly not the case. All of our visitors at Michaela would testify to say, obviously, that is not the case at Michaela.
00:25:36.780But it's unfortunate that it can be an interpretation of that. And I think that's why traditionalism has had a bad name.
00:25:43.800And over the last 50 years, gradually it has disappeared from our schools.
00:25:47.060And do you think it's because parents have had a bad experience at school with certain teachers and then they come into school with their prejudices intact going, well, I had a bad experience at school. Therefore, I don't like teachers. Therefore, I don't like the education system. So I'm not going to want to engage with it.
00:26:02.400Yeah, I mean, that is certainly the case for a number of families in the inner city and so on. You'll find that. But I'm talking more about the politicians, the people with voices out there who talk about what works or even the teachers themselves. They are seduced.
00:26:18.980So Ken Robinson, for instance, who has the largest number of views for a TED Talk of all TED Talks.
00:26:26.820Right. I mean, there's five million or something mad.
00:26:29.420I mean, it's just so many people love him and they love him despite the fact that ninety nine percent of what he says is wrong.
00:26:37.720It really is. I say ninety nine percent because the stuff he says on ADHD is actually correct.
00:26:42.200But the rest of it is all wrong. He mistakenly thinks that traditional education is bad for children when it's what teaches them. And he promotes progressive education, which is about supposed creativity.
00:27:00.480and I say supposed creativity because the only way in which you can be creative is through gaining
00:27:05.760lots of knowledge. You cannot be creative with your artwork unless you have been taught the
00:27:12.540basics in drawing. You cannot be creative with your music as a musician unless you have been
00:27:18.100taught the basics in your instrument to be able to learn and move forward. You cannot be a creative
00:27:24.060French comedian, for instance, because you've learned French and you're being a comedian in
00:27:29.720France, well, you can't pull out those jokes and be really at ease in the French language unless
00:27:35.140you have learned the basics from the beginning and then moved up. Those are obvious, really,
00:27:41.720to anybody who understands teaching properly. Sadly, Ken Robinson and the whole progressive
00:27:46.440movement is very seductive. What he says is, oh, I know you had a bad time at school. It's because
00:27:53.780people didn't recognize that you were really talented underneath it. And you wanted to be a
00:27:58.840answer didn't you and if if somebody had recognized but instead they forced you to learn those awful
00:28:03.580times tables when we should have ignored those and we should have gone with your passion and
00:28:08.120people listening adults go yeah that'd make a great marks and spencer's ad but i just say
00:28:13.440but but it's interesting that you know that you talk about this because
00:28:17.120having been a teacher for so long i agree the one thing where i find is that more and more
00:28:24.540especially in primary is we've become data factories where we get kids to learn something
00:28:30.680by rote and then they regurgitate it in a test and then a few weeks later that knowledge is gone
00:28:36.160okay so what you're saying there is because they've been taught so badly in a progressive
00:28:40.720fashion for so long all teachers remember i said they were confused right they're confused on the
00:28:45.580one hand you want me to teach in this trendy way which isn't really teaching but we're having fun
00:28:51.340And then, on the other hand, you want me to get exams.
00:28:53.460So what happens is, for years, they're taught in this trendy way,
00:28:56.860facilitating the learning, let's all write on sugar paper,
00:29:00.440I'm going to stick things up on the wall, and you're all going to get up,
00:29:02.980and you're going to find them, I'm going to blindfold one of you,
00:29:04.840it's all going to be fun, and it is fun, it is fun.
00:29:07.320The children are learning about that much content.
00:29:09.340And then what happens is you get closer to the exams,
00:29:11.340whether it's the year six SATs or it's the GCSEs at 16,
00:29:14.460the teachers all go, we've got to do something, we've got to teach them,
00:29:17.900we've got to learn a whole load of stuff, because we've got to get it,
00:29:20.320we've got to get through this exam and so that's what so that is when you bring in the boom boom
00:29:24.620boom we got to do it got to do it and then people say ah you see there's too much traditional rote
00:29:29.400learning in the classrooms but actually had they way back at the beginning of year seven or way
00:29:34.340back at the beginning of year one been doing the rote learning of timetables had been doing the
00:29:38.860rote learning of of phonics and so on if they had learned that stuff properly and really built on
00:29:43.820the basics so that you're always building on the basics building a little bit more a bit a little
00:29:47.100bit more then by the time they get there to those exams see you're not teaching towards the exams
00:29:52.000anymore you're just the exam is there but you know so much so you know this much stuff and you get
00:29:58.080examined on that but what ends up happening in schools because they haven't really been taught
00:30:02.140properly for so long you're then gosh we've got to get through this exam so let's just rote learn
00:30:06.760and get through that exam and then that's all they're really taught properly that's what ends
00:30:10.040up happening um that that's where the confusion is so Catherine explain this to me then as someone
00:30:14.880who doesn't know anything about education none of what you're saying sounds controversial to me
00:30:19.240at all right and given you know i've seen videos from your school about how the kids behave and
00:30:25.260we'll as i said we'll look forward to coming and seeing it live but it seems like a great thing
00:30:29.800that you've created right so why why are people calling you a nazi why why why all this stuff
00:30:35.920obviously i do look like yeah well me too right um yeah because as i say the authority and the
00:30:43.480authoritarian thing then uh we have lots of small c conservative values at the school uh and people
00:30:50.480don't like those values uh even the word you know small c conservative makes people go you know uh
00:30:56.960and what are those values things like our belief in personal responsibility children are responsible
00:31:01.820for themselves um if you don't get your homework done well then that is your responsibility often
00:31:38.060are even connected. And they're not connected at all. But the excuse-making mechanism just goes
00:31:44.220into play automatically in schools. So that's personal responsibility. We believe in duty and
00:31:51.060obligation. So what I mean by that is we have a duty. You notice how I kept saying we have a duty
00:31:56.740to children as adults. In the school system, we have a duty to educate children properly.
00:32:02.620The word duty often has just disappeared from our language. So children have a duty to each other.
00:32:07.980I have a duty to behave, not just because I want to make sure I'm staying in my lesson, but because I don't want to disrupt for everyone else.
00:32:14.000I have a duty to be kind to my to my fellow classmates because that that's just that's put upon me by the world.
00:32:22.860You know, I believe in the whole and the team and I am a team player as opposed to it's all about me.
00:32:29.800So that's something we believe. Another thing that we believe, we believe that there should be some relation between effort and reward.
00:32:37.280So what I mean by that is in the progressive world, everybody gets a prize.
00:32:44.180Everybody gets a prize because they feel sad for the ones who don't get the prize.
00:32:47.900And it comes from a good place, they're thinking, which is that, oh, what about poor little Johnny who is a nice kid and we don't want him to lose out.
00:33:05.460And one of the things that motivates children to work hard is to know, well, I'm going to get I'm going to get rewarded for this.
00:33:11.400And somebody else hasn't got rewarded for that because I've done the work for it.
00:33:15.000So we believe there ought to be some kind of relationship between effort and reward, whereas others, more progressive people will think that that's just mean.
00:33:24.580You're being mean to little Johnny. But we think they're being mean to little Johnny because Johnny is going to stop working because it doesn't matter.
00:33:32.500Everybody gets, and not only will Johnny stop working, but, you know, little David, who does work hard, will also stop working because he thinks, well, I'm the same as Johnny, so who cares?
00:33:43.000What horrifies me about just that particular thing is there is a real world out there, Catherine, isn't there, where these kids are going to go out into and they're going to very quickly find out that you don't get a prize for being you.
00:33:54.560You get a prize for working hard, for achieving, for creating.
00:34:02.500I don't know. I mean, this is people in the world where they they do this.
00:34:07.200They do think they're helping the children.
00:34:08.700I always say, sadly, with many of these so-called virtues that contradict the ones that I'm talking about, it's not really about the children.
00:34:19.120It's about the people who are who are doing this feeling good about themselves.
00:34:23.400They want to be able to sit at a dinner party and say, I'm a nice person.
00:34:27.280I feel really good, you know, and they they want in the moment.
00:34:31.400Of course, it's not nice handing out a detention.
00:34:35.580And the progressives who accuse us, they like to paint this picture of they are sadistic and they love hurting children and they want to stand over them and make them be quiet and then say, ha, you're in detention.
00:34:47.780But actually, the reality is what will happen in the lesson is the teacher will say, now, Johnny, turn around.
00:36:09.980But I know I'm going to come out brilliant out of this school.
00:36:13.160Whereas if I was elsewhere, I wouldn't have this education.
00:36:15.820Now, you talk about the 10% on the edges, and I agree with you.
00:36:18.320But what about the 0.5% who don't respond to detention, don't respond?
00:36:23.480the kids that we've all dealt with, who you can't seem to get through, the ones who go to the PRUs,
00:36:29.920those are the pupil referral units, which when a kid can no longer be attending mainstream school,
00:36:36.680what do we do with those kids? Because there's a problem with expulsion rates,
00:36:40.180and then those kids getting involved in gangs. Yeah. And again, what I would say is that
00:36:44.840wrongly, schools that are like ours are accused of filling up the peruse when it's exactly the
00:36:50.640opposite. It's the schools that are chaotic, that are constantly having to expel kids because
00:36:54.560there's chaos. You have far fewer kids leaving the schools with order because those kids,
00:37:00.720the kids who are bad, but not that bad, don't ever become that bad because of the order that
00:37:06.440keeps them in line, right? It's the schools that have total chaos. Their decent kids become worse
00:37:15.580and worse remember i said earlier about um you end up having to become a bully in order to survive
00:37:22.140because your reputation matters you know and you have to be super cool you see that in like greece
00:37:27.860for instance but you know and it's not it's it's still like nice you know white middle class kids
00:37:33.080in greece whereas obviously when you're in the inner city it becomes a lot more you know when
00:37:37.000he's saying i have a rep to protect and all that kind of thing and you want to be a t-bird and you
00:37:40.640want to be super cool and you want to not be in lessons you know that kind of behavior uh is
00:37:46.300because the t-birds are are in control they're running things that happens far less in a school
00:37:52.200with order but yes i mean there have to there ought to be proves and and if a child gets uh
00:37:57.160excluded they need to go there although i have to say children never stay permanently in a prue
00:38:01.280what 10 what always happens is that they're moved to another secondary school to give them another
00:38:05.260start so people outside of education think oh my goodness isn't this terrible well actually
00:38:10.500they go there and the idea is, well, they go to that crew and then they'll go to a different
00:38:14.520secondary school and hopefully have a better start. The problem is, is that if the secondary
00:38:19.340school that they go to is chaotic, then they just go back to being a chaotic kid, right?
00:38:24.100Well, you know, I was thinking when you talk about discipline and how you kind of keep that
00:38:28.98010% in line, I probably would have been when I was a kid at school, I was quite rebellious.
00:38:33.660What I always found is I kind of, like you say, I always knew where the line was.
00:38:37.720Exactly. And so if I was called out and appropriately punished for a misdemeanor of some kind, that restricted me from becoming more rebellious.
00:38:49.740Exactly. That kept me very much in check. That's exactly right.
00:38:53.060So what I always say is you don't see the kids taking their clothes off and running around the corridors naked, do you?
00:38:57.820Because they know that that's just like completely unacceptable. They just don't do it. Right.
00:39:02.000They could do it. I mean, they could, but they don't do it. I once had an autistic boy do that.
00:40:03.480Well, they happily move very quickly from one lesson to the other, as opposed to having their heads bashed in, which is what happens when in schools with challenging intakes.
00:40:13.400I understand that schools without challenging intakes, you don't need this.
00:40:16.380So it depends on the level, what kind of intake you have.
00:40:19.620But our kids move along happily in silence.
00:40:22.020And because they're in silence, their way of rebelling is to go, mmm.
00:41:30.140And when you talk to the kids, come and have lunch, you'll see, you'll be on mixed tables and you'll see them all saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we do get detention, but we really like it.
00:41:36.860We like that. You know, they'll even thank the teachers for giving them detention.
00:41:40.160They will actually do that. And people say, oh, that's really weird.
00:41:42.700Well, yeah, but our kids understand that it's through detentions that having those detentions manages to keep order.
00:41:49.600Now, why do they get it? We spend six days at the beginning of every September.
00:41:53.700The rest of the school doesn't come back. We only have the year sevens arrive and we teach them how to behave in the Michaela way.
00:41:59.240So it's unfair to expect behaviors of children where you haven't taught them how to do it.
00:51:52.300Michael Gove changed the game in education big time.
00:51:56.500And free schools changed the game in education because coupled with him doing the political stuff, free schools then like ours, for instance, a few of them have done things differently on the ground.
00:52:09.240And and other teachers now are able to benefit from from seeing that.
00:52:13.640I mean, we had an event last night. There were all these languages teachers.
00:52:16.920My languages department ran it about the kinds of methods that they use in their classroom.
00:52:20.720And all these teachers came and could look and see and learn from us and could privately say to me, I really like what you're saying on Twitter, but I would never say that out loud.
00:52:30.640the thing that really annoys me is when somebody who is not white comes out and espouses a
00:52:39.340conservative value of whatever it may be and they're accused of being a traitor to their own
00:52:44.820race or having internalized racism or all this kind of stuff have you experienced that have you
00:52:50.320had people accuse you of that yes yes um definitely i mean it is interesting because i often wonder
00:52:57.700why, on the whole, I don't wonder, but I think about the fact that the black left often leave
00:53:06.620me alone. They do. So they'll attack Sean Bailey, or they'll attack Tony Sewell, or they'll attack,
00:53:13.700they attack various people. They tend to leave me alone. And I think that that's because over the
00:53:19.260years when I was working in schools, I used to know a lot of these people. And they know that
00:53:27.040i'm doing good work they've known me throughout my career and i'm you know i'm 45 years old i've
00:53:31.400been doing this a long time and they've seen me work with children and they've seen how committed
00:53:35.960i've been you know i'm at school 6 15 6 30 in the morning every day and i've done this all my life
00:53:41.400you know um they've seen the commitment to the children who they want to see succeed
00:53:46.080and i think they give me a bit of a break actually um but i know exactly what you mean and i do have
00:53:52.620people who will attack me I have to say it's mainly been from the white left not so much from
00:53:59.640the black left and I and I do think that's because the black left really understand what I'm doing
00:54:04.920they get it and they they they have to respect it and they they respect me although they probably
00:54:11.480find some of the things I say uncomfortable and what particular things do you think they find
00:54:16.980uncomfortable with what you say um what is it so lee jasper for instance is an interesting guy
00:54:23.700like i know him and you know we follow each other on twitter and um you know i i disagree with much
00:54:29.840of what he says and and i often wonder to myself actually is he just muted me on twitter because
00:54:34.540how can he stand to read my tweets you know i don't know i mean i do i wonder this um i think
00:55:09.360I've heard him say this to black kids myself.
00:55:11.580You know, so I've heard him say these things. It's just there's this kind of war between the right and the left all the time.
00:55:18.220And what's really sad is that the left have convinced themselves that the right only think what they think because they want to hurt people.
00:55:25.820You know, they want to get rich. They want to play golf. And you know what? There are some right wingers like that.
00:55:30.360So that's fine. But there are a bunch of people on the right who want the same things as the people on the left.
00:55:36.800They just think that they're going to get those things through different methods.
00:55:41.180And if the left are convinced, that's what I mean about I think the black left are not don't think I'm evil.
00:55:48.340They don't. They think I'm a good person and they think that what I'm doing is good.
00:55:52.540And so they let me get on with it. I think too often on the white left, they just can't process the idea that that I might be doing good because they they are very uncomfortable with some of the things I said.
00:56:35.180They sounded like all solid Nazi values to me.
00:56:37.240Exactly. Yeah, I mean, yeah, what is it? What is it? OK, dead white men. That's a big one, right? Dead white men. So I believe that we should be teaching Shakespeare and, I don't know, Dickens and so on. And what people will say, people will often say, so this is something I think Lee Jasper would take issue with me, is that unless children can see themselves in the novel, then they can't identify with it and they're unable to get as much from it.
00:57:06.240So why are black children misbehaving? It's because they're having to read about white characters as opposed to black characters. That might be an argument that would be put forward. And I would say that life isn't just about race. Shakespeare speaks to everyone.
00:57:22.880In fact, Maya Angelou would say that she said that she when she first read Shakespeare, that she thought that he was a black woman because there was no way that anyone could understand the plight of black women so well in the way that he did.
00:57:40.220It's universal. And you as a person can transcend. You're not just black, like you're a whole bunch of different things.
00:57:47.180you're a person. You can read Dickens and get something out of it, whatever color you are.
00:57:52.120And it's those, it's identity politics where people can only understand you as, well, I'm,
00:57:57.840what are you? Right. Well, I'm a woman and I'm black and I'm a mixed race and I'm, I don't know,
00:58:02.340whatever. But actually I'm somebody who's a little bit crazy and I'm, I'm a real radical
00:58:07.040and a rebel and I, and I want to change things. Those things that I just said are far more
00:58:11.360important actually to who i am than me being black and female right so i i just i'm not saying i'm
00:58:18.300not black right i'm not saying i'm not female but but it's it's not all consuming and um i think
00:58:26.020many people on the left are consumed with that they can't see past it uh and i just don't see
00:58:33.720the world in the same way well we've got time for a couple of quick questions the good work that you
00:58:39.280do it's obviously you know there's been times when that's been difficult for you right and you've
00:58:43.280continued to do it and you've built this great school and i'm sure you will keep going from
00:58:46.720strength to strength and we hope it will uh but what i'm always curious about the personal element
00:58:50.960of what is it inside of you people always say that that makes you want to have that battle
00:58:57.260yeah people always say that it's all those children it's all those children over the years
00:59:02.160who i have known thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of children who i've seen
00:59:06.760not just the children I've taught, children I've seen in schools that I've visited all around the
00:59:10.580world. I just, for me, I can see that education is the number one thing that is going to allow
00:59:16.280them to change their stars. And the reason why I went into teaching and the reason why I do what I
00:59:20.500do is because I want to enable disadvantaged children to be able to change their stars.
00:59:26.500You know, when I gave my speech at the Conservative Party conference and I was told I would never work
00:59:30.720in the state sector again, I did consider for about five minutes going to work in the private
00:59:36.260sector. But then I thought, well, I don't want to do that because the reason why I'm motivated to
00:59:41.120wake up in the morning is to change the lives of these children. And, you know, I'm all for private
00:59:46.540school and I'm quite happy that there are private schools. It's just not where I want to work. Yeah,
00:59:50.420I don't have a problem with them. They're fine. But I want to work with disadvantaged kids and I
00:59:54.740want to change their lives. And what is very sad is that these well-meaning people, I say they're
01:00:00.200well-meaning, but they also want to be sitting around dinner parties and feeling happy about
01:00:03.240themselves, have created a culture of low expectations for the children who I teach,
01:00:11.780you know, those tens of thousands of children. And their stories, the many children I have seen
01:00:18.560bullied in my life and so on, they're the ones who motivate me because I just want to reduce
01:00:23.460the numbers of them. I want all children to be given a chance at equality of opportunity,
01:00:30.500right that's what i want i want them to have the chance right um and most of them do not have the
01:00:35.620chance and and that's that's where um that's where the left is right in that sense too many children
01:00:43.000are do not have a chance at equal opportunity but what the left don't understand is they are the
01:00:48.480ones who are taking that chance from them spoken like a true nazi all right our last question um
01:00:55.920so what is the thing this is the way we wrap up all our interviews katherine what is the thing
01:01:00.200that we're not talking about as a society,
01:01:02.760but we really should be talking about?