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

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with the headmistress of the Michaela Community School, Katharine Birbalsingh. They discuss the importance of K-12 education, why it matters more than the universities in regard to the formation of thinking minds, how children can pursue both excellence and a life of dignity, and why strictness, absent tyranny, is the best form of education. Katharine Birbalsingh is Headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School and former Chair of the Social Mobility Commission. She is known as “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress”, following the ITV documentary about Michaela. Michaela’s Progress 8 score placed the school top in the country the last two years. In 2023, OFSTED graded the school as “Outstanding” in every category. Birbalsingh read “Philosophy & Modern Languages” at the University of Oxford and has always taught in inner London. She has made numerous appearances on television, radio, and podcasts and has written for several publications. Birbalsingh has also written two books and edited another two, the last of which is “The Power of Culture,” which is about Michaela.  Birbalsingh was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2020 and Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford in 2021. This episode was recorded on June 15th, 2024  - Links - For Katharine Birbalsingh: On X https://x.com/miss_snuffy Documentary on the Michaela school  www.strictestheadmistress.com Website for the Michaela Community school in Wembley, London. Here you can sign up for a visit www.michaela.education 

Music Hello everybody. I had the opportunity today to speak with Catherine Burblesing, who has a reputation as being the strictest headmistress in all of Great Britain. I went to her school, the Michaela School. It's an inner city school in London. I went there about a year ago and it was really memorable and really quite moving. What she has done with that school is, it was really something to see. Those kids were alert and learning at a rate that I'd never seen in any educational institution, even at the highest levels of graduate seminar, let's say. So that was remarkable to see. And

the kids were secure and happy there. And it's a very disciplined and structured place. And the teachers were as engaged in the educational enterprise as the children. And also the results of her school are stellar. She, her students, even though they're not selected, regularly graduate in the top echelons of the standardized testing results that are universal across Great Britain. And they're much more likely to be admitted to high-level universities than the graduates of virtually any other school that exists

in that country. She's quite the force of nature, Catherine Burrmillsing, that's for sure, as well. So she's a very compelling and interesting person. And so I think, like, seriously, more power to her. Now, she invited me to that Michaela school and then took a picture with me and put it on Twitter and just got more flack for that than you can possibly imagine.

And her response to that was, well, to decide at least in part to speak with me further on the YouTube channel. So that gives you some insight into just how much force of character she has. So, a remarkable school. Truly, you'd be fortunate indeed to have your children attend it, and an equally remarkable

woman who runs it. She's like a character in a Harry Potter novel. Seriously. So, join us. Why don't you talk about what you are doing at the Micaela School in London? Tell everybody, start right from the beginning. Tell everybody what it is, how it operates and why it works so spectacularly well. Yeah. Well, we're in the inner city. We opened in 2014. We were a free school, which is the

equivalent of say a charter school in America. 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. There were a lot of people who tried to stop us from opening. 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, and these are inner-city parents, remember, so they're poor brown and black parents from the inner city.

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 and I had said that the education system was broken. And so they really hated me for that. And they were determined to stop us from setting up this school because obviously I was evil because I'd spoken at this conference. Not that I'm even a member of the Conservative Party, but I had spoken there. And I think as a black teacher from the inner city who state educated myself, I'm just not

allowed to go to the Conservative Party and give my views. If I'd been at one of the teacher unions saying what I thought, I think that would have been acceptable. So, people would protest. I don't know. I don't know if what you have to say would be acceptable even at a teacher's union. That's true. That's true. Well, people would come in, they'd storm the events for parents and they would put themselves amongst the parents 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. And I'd be thinking, how could I betray you? I don't even know who you are. This is ridiculous. And so it took us three and a half years. We had to move from different parts of London, trying to find a building. Eventually, we managed to open in 2014. But even then, there were protesters outside handing leaflets to the children, telling

them their lives were in danger in our building. It's actually quite an extraordinary story that we ever managed to get off the ground, but we did. And then we had, so there's an inspectorate called Ofsted here in Britain, and they came to see us three years in and gave us the highest score possible and said that we were very good. People really didn't like that. And then we, a couple of years later, had what we have in Britain, GCSE exams. These are national exams that children take at age 16. 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. And then they do these exams when they're in grade 11, year 11. And at that time, our first year, we came fifth in the country for our progress that is tracked by government. We were all celebrating, of course, our detractors very much didn't like that. Then there were a couple of years of COVID, and so it was impossible to track progress for the whole country.

In the last two years, we've come top in the country for our progress. Again, our detractors very much don't like that. They especially don't like when I explain why it is we're doing so well. I mean, we have had over 7,000 visitors come visit the school in the last 10 years from all over the world. And people can just go onto our website and sign up, you know, from Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, America, all across Europe, and lots of British teachers who then take ideas from our school and they implement it into

their own schools. And I think we have very much changed the debate around education about what works. 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. Values like personal responsibility, a sense of duty towards others, self-sacrifice on a personal level for the benefit of the whole. These are all things that don't sit well.

We are obviously very much anti-critical race theory, anti-gender ideology and anti-division of children according to their gender or race or sexuality. We sing God Save the King, our national anthem, which is basically unheard of in Britain. In America, you're in, I shouldn't say yours because you're Canadian, but your viewers might be a lot of the American. And I know they're used to hearing their presidents say, you know, God bless America at the end of their speeches. That doesn't happen here in Britain.

There seems to be quite a lot of shame around British historical past, the slavery, colonialism, and so on. The guilt kind of rests there. We don't sort of celebrate that. We might in a football match, definitely. We sing the national anthem then. But journalists have come to our school and find it quite shocking that the children sing God Save the King. Why do they do that? Because it is a multicultural school with children from a whole variety of races and religions. 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. So we are Michaela, but we are also British. And being British and being Michaela, we are one together. We are a team. And I think in other schools where they divide you, you're African, you're Caribbean, you're Muslim, you're Hindu, you're LGBT. All of these different groups means that children identify as part of that group as opposed to identifying as part of the whole. And those groups are extremely divisive 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. Well, there's no country. Indeed, indeed. You need to have a shared set of common values in order for multiculturalism to work. And I realize that sounds slightly at odds, because I just said the shared cultural values and then you have multiculturalism. Well, you know, multiculturalism can be, we eat different foods, we wear different clothes, but we all sit under the same umbrella in terms of the culture and the values that we are sharing. And that is what they do very much at Micaela, which is why you see children

friendly with each other across racial and religious divides, which is why we're also very strict. I'm considered to be the strictest headmistress in Britain. That's what people call me. And it's not people imagine that I'm marching up and down the corridors with whips and chains. Obviously, I'm not. I love children. I get to school at 6.45 every morning, not because I hate children, but because I love them. But it is a more traditional, disciplined approach that works with children. And that is where they thrive. And you saw it yourself how happy they were, how joyful they are and how excited they are about learning. People imagine- And relieved. Yes.

They were relieved to be there. I talked to lots of the kids who had come from other schools and had been, well, subject to the kind of bullying and, well, general chaos and idiocy that's characteristic of those schools. 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, 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. And they certainly regarded themselves as capable and upward-oriented, and it was lovely to see that confidence. So okay, so I have a bunch of questions from what you raised already. So well, let's delve into the opposition that you encountered when you first began

this endeavor. Now, you said some things that were very striking. 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. 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? That's a good one. And then allied with that, you said that as a brown person,

I guess, yourself, you're not allowed to be a conservative. And so I presume that that's something associated with the same cabal of ideas that animated the people who came to protest. So let's start with who were these people and what the hell did they think they were doing? Yeah, well, exactly. So lots of brown and black people in the neighborhood who desperately wanted another choice of school. And all these white people, they were actually all white

who were bussed in from outside of London in order to protest. Now, it's interesting because there's always this debate, the right and the left, the left believe in racism and an institutionalized racism and the right don't believe in it. 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. So they get very angry with me for thinking my own thoughts. There's a sense of I owe them.

So the left has done right by black and brown people, and there's some truth to that. I don't deny that. But as a result, we then owe our votes to them. We owe our thinking to them. If we dare to stray and have our own ideas for ourselves, they're going to make us pay.

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 conservative. There's one guy I know, Toby Young, big C conservative, he never got the negativity that I got when we were both setting up at the same time. He never got protests. So why did they hate me so much? Well, because I believe as a brown person, as you say, I am not allowed to think as I do. And I certainly wasn't allowed to speak at the Conservative Party Conference. 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. It is this condescending kind of noblesse oblige, we're going to look after you. You aren't clever enough to figure out what you want for yourselves, so we are going to stop these evil people. You know, it was quite funny at one of our open events, they were handing out leaflets about me to stop the parents from coming in.

And the leaflet said, the only reason why this school was going ahead was because I knew the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. Now, the fact is, I've never met David Cameron. I still don't know David Cameron, but that was what they were telling the parents. And the parents would read it and say, oh, wow, she knows the prime minister. This is really great. 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. And that what they want is a good school choice for their children. And because they're in the inner city. Well, okay. Go on. Well, let's zero in on that. So, I did a fair bit of research 30 years ago, let's say, on educational aspirations among the poor. 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. Now, part of the problem is, 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. You know, their houses aren't often full of books. 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, because it isn't a literate culture. But that doesn't mean they don't want it. 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. And so 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? 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. I'm 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. And there's been precious little done since then that the minority communities need to feel beholden to the left for accomplishing. 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. So okay, so back to the parents. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I know what works in schools. And I believe in what we're offering families. the parents. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I know what works in schools. I believe in what we're offering families. I also believe in families having freedom of choice. 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. The families who choose our school are ethnic minority, brown and black kids in the inner city. The white families just don't choose us. Now I say white families, there are white kids at the school, but they tend to be of Eastern European descent of some sort. It's very rare to find a middle-class white child who comes. And every now and again, we get one, but it's quite rare. And that's not what they want. They don't want the strictness that we offer. They don't want the drive.

The progress. The progress. I mean, they just don't like, they don't like the silence. You know, there's silence in the corridors. We are very strict. I am the strictest headmistress. So yeah, they like things to be a lot more relaxed. You know, I didn't find your school strict. That isn't how it struck me. No, what I saw, and I was watching, what I saw was that all the kids knew very, very clearly what the rules were.

But more than that, they understood why the rules were there, which is a major, so that's very much distinct from it being a tyranny. I never saw any use of force or compulsion to keep the rules in place, so that's absent tyranny. 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, at least people don't do it. 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. And so because of that, they understood the reason for the structure of the rules, which also protected them and gave them security. 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.

I didn't see any of that, you know, and I also didn't feel... You can feel an atmosphere of fear and oppression in a tyrannical institution. You can... I don't know if you can smell it, but it wouldn't surprise me, but you can certainly detect it and you detect it. You certainly wouldn't see the walls covered, for example, by the brilliant artwork of creative children. And then also, you know, I spent lunch there

and I watched the kids. So the kids all discussed a topic when they were eating, quite efficiently they were eating too. And they were actually eating, which was good to see. And they were in their groups focused on the topic at hand. And you asked them to nominate someone from the group to stand up and speak to the entire group. And that also, I found that also startling.

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. 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. You can train a kid to do that in about half an hour

if you do the work, but it never happens. And so usually what you see in a school performance is you see these kids that no one has ever paid attention to 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, embarrassing themselves, turning red, being catcalled, everyone talking around them,

and everybody pretending that this is acceptable. And I saw zero of that at lunch. I saw kids stand up and everyone listen and them speak like very clearly and in a volume that made everyone listen. And I saw everyone listen and I saw them say something that was a summary of what they discussed and to say it in a manner that indicated that they understood it and had processed it. And so that ethos permeated the school,

and I'm certain from my observation that that was reflected in the children's respect for the rules. See, your rules aren't restrictions, and they're not jail cells. They're the rules that you need to play a game. Right. And games have rules and everyone wants to play a game and you people are playing a very good game.

And so people are so stupid that they think that you're a, what would you call it, a rule monster of some sort. All that means is that they either refuse to see or that they're too blind to see because that is not what's going on in your school. And you also have evidence, you know, the fact that your school is performing so highly. We should delve into that a little bit

because I want to tell everybody watching and listening, the Michaela school is not a selective school. And that means anybody can go there and see, usually schools perform well if they hyper select their students, because it's easier to teach, let's say, kids that have been screened for IQ and conscientiousness, but you take everybody.

And yet your students hyper perform on their examinations. And so explain that in a little more detail because that really pulls the rug out from underneath your detractors except the ones who don't believe in objective merit. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because you hear strict and of course, as with lots of people, people think tyrannical and unhappiness and so on. I always say that strict is immersed in love. And when you're strict with children, it means you love them enough to keep your standards

high for them. And I would say that most teachers and parents nowadays want to be friends with children. And they don't know that their duty is to have children rise up and meet them where they are and to demonstrate to them over and over again what virtuous behavior is so that they too can learn to be virtuous. And that when grandma's looking a bit sad, you say to the boy, go and bring her a cup of tea. You explain that that is what kindness is. And every little moment of kindness in the particular, the child is able to do over and over again. There's no point in telling children, be kind. I mean,

you can tell them, but they won't understand what that means. They need to see examples and non-examples. So the cup of tea is an example, but then their brother hits them because he wants to take the toy. And that's an example of unkindness. And you would say, well, that was unkind and this is kind. Over and over and over again. And over years, I know you're interested in evolutionary psychology, this is what we are as humans. Other animals, within a few weeks or a few months in the jungle, they get sorted and off they go. Whereas human beings take many, many years to be able to survive on their own without their parents. And the role of the parents and the role of the teacher should be to show them the particular over and over again, whether that's about gratitude or about duty or about kindness

and so on. And then eventually they can move that to the abstract and they'll understand what kindness is, having seen the particular of examples and non-examples so many times. But sadly, I think that people generally don't understand that about children. And so, for instance, I know I've often said to you, when you came to the school, I said to you, you never talk about schools. And you said, oh, it's true, I don't really talk about schools. And I said, yeah, well, you should talk about schools, because they are the most important

institutions in any country, because they are the most important institutions in any country. Yes. Because children are the future. And so when all of you guys, and when I say guys, I mean, they're women too, like Barry Weiss or Megyn Kelly or John McWhorter or Glenn Lowry and all these people who I have huge admiration for, huge admiration for all of you, nobody ever talks about schools. Nobody ever talks about the importance of our education system.

And then what you all do is you talk about what's going on in the universities and you say, oh my goodness, how come these young people think as they do? And how come we've got all of these marches and so on and so forth, things that are happening? And we think, how come they're not thinking about stuff in the way, you know, why don't they, why haven't they developed critical thinking? And this is where I sort of have a bit of a bugbear with you. And I want to say to you, you know, I want to explain why I think, not just you, all these people I have huge admiration for, Jonathan Haidt, Abigail Shrier, I read all of your

stuff and I love it. But when it comes to children, I think you're all wrong. Elon Musk, the other day, I saw him, you know, on some video, he was talking about how to teach children and he's wrong. You're all wrong. And let me explain why. The fact is, you're all wondering why it is these students at university don't think in a critical manner. And then what you all say is, what we need to do is teach them how to think, not what to think. But you're wrong. We need to teach them what to think. Okay? Because what's currently happening is we are teaching them how to think.

And what does that mean? In fact, I should ask you, when you all say things like that, teach them how to think, what do you mean? Well, we mean with this Peterson Academy that I'm putting forward is that we don't want a university, and I'm speaking specifically of universities, to be an ideological propaganda factory. And so really it's a dig at the radical left. Okay. And so, and then I, and I would also say, I'll say two things in response to the other things you said.

I have talked privately with any number of government officials, especially on the Republican side, about the absolute catastrophe that's unfolding in the K-12 system. And one of my dreams, and you can tell me what you think about this, is that I think that the right to teacher certification should be taken away from the faculties of education. Okay. Because I think they have done a job that's so abysmal that it's almost indescribable. And I've talked to plenty of Republican governors about this

and it's one of my lifelong ambitions. Yes, no, I agree. We'll 100% agree on that. Each training institution is a disaster. But, okay, and it's really interesting what you said. You don't want this ideology just pumped through kids. And I 100% agree with you. Not at universities. Yes. That's not the same as K through 12.

Okay. You know, I also agree with your approach from the particular upward with regards to children. I know. So that's crucial. I know. It's just that when you all talk about this business of teaching them how to think, what that looks like in a classroom, in a high school, is that, okay, so what that is, is the standard discussion between knowledge and skills. Should we teach them knowledge or should

we teach them skills? How to think is a skill and it can only be done within a particular domain. So, I don't know how to think about cars. Okay, You told me, you put a car in front of me and said, create a different kind of car, Catherine. Be creative. Think outside the box. I wouldn't know what to do because I don't know anything about cars. But if you tell me to turn education on its head, I've done exactly that. I've been very radical.

I've thought outside the box and I've done things very differently. Why? Because I know education inside out. The only way you can think in a creative manner or think outside the box and have independent thoughts about anything is to know it really well. And so that means children at school level need to be taught loads of knowledge. So when you all say things like we need to teach them how to think, I disagree with you. When I say we need to teach them what to think, what I mean by that is we need to give them knowledge about the

world wars, about slavery, about colonialism, about all of these ideas that if they don't have historical knowledge, they're unable to make a judgment that is well informed and that isn't just going to go down an ideological route. You know, all children are communists, okay? They're all communists. When you talk to them, they're all communists because when they hear about communism, they go, you mean everybody is going to have equality?

You mean everybody's we're going to share? And then, you know, everybody poor and rich doesn't happen anymore? Everybody's just the same. That's lovely. And the reason why children are all communist is because they're naive. They're vulnerable. And it sounds nice to them. And so that's what they go for.

They don't have enough knowledge or enough wisdom to be able to make correct decisions. That's why, for instance, we ban alcohol. We ban cigarettes. I believe we should ban instance, we ban alcohol, we ban cigarettes. I believe we should ban smartphones. We ban sex. We ban marriage. We ban driving. There are all kinds of things that we ban from children. And the thing about the libertarian right, while I myself believe in freedom and I believe in freedom of speech and all of that, when it comes to children, I don't believe in any of it. I believe that children need

their freedoms restricted so that later in life, they can be truly free. And when I say their freedoms need to be restricted, that doesn't mean that they're unhappy. You saw at my school just how happy they were. Let me ask you a clarifying question. Do you mean that their freedoms should be restricted or do you mean that the domain within which they have freedom should be restricted? No, I would say both. Those are different, right? Yeah.

Because the one tilts more to, in some sense, conceptually towards control. See, let me give you an example. You tell me what you think about this. This is a very concrete example, so it brings it down to earth. So imagine you have a four-year-old child and he has a closet full of clothes, like 40 outfits to wear, and they're all hanging on hangers.

And maybe he's a little hungry and a little tired, and you open up the closet and you say, which of those outfits do you wanna wear? And he has a meltdown. Okay, and so imagine that instead you take three of those items of clothing off the hangers and you put them on the bed and you say, which of those three pieces of clothing

would you like to wear? And then he can point to one with no problem. And it's like, so there's a consumer choice literature, for example, that shows you that if you have four shampoos to choose from on the shelf and you pick one, you're happier with your purchase than you are if you have 200 on the shelf to pick from because you drown in complexity and you've probably made the wrong choice. So with children, my sense is that, you know, they need that play that enables them to decide, but adults are supposed to be wise enough so that the domain of choice that's presented

to them is commensurate with their actual emotional and cognitive ability. So while I'm wondering what you think of that formulation. Yeah, I don't think that the four-year-old should be choosing at all. I don't. I think you're in a should be choosing a tool. I don't. I think you're in a rush. You need to get him to school, get him in his clothes. Well, yes, there's that. Right?

And sometimes I'm in the supermarket. Yeah, there's times when that's the case. I'm in the supermarket and I'm watching parents say, darling, what would you like from the freezer to eat? And I'm looking at them thinking, why are you asking them? Just take what you want, put it in the basket and go. You've got a life. You know, like these children who are the center of the world, we need to ask them what they think about everything. Why are you asking them? Just take what you want, put it in the basket and go. You've got a life.

Like these children who are the center of the world, we need to ask them what they think about everything. We have to ask them, what would you like to eat? Put the spinach and broccoli in front of them and tell them to eat it. And that's what we do at Michaela. They have one choice, they don't have any choice at lunch. They all eat the same thing.

And we call it family lunch and you had lunch with the children. Why? Why do we call it family lunch? Because it's like family dinner. And what used to happen at family dinner? I have to say, I don't think this happens anymore in many households because everybody's on their phone or their iPad and they take their plate of food and they go and sit in their bedroom. But what should be happening is that you sit around a table and that you're being served, you all serve out the food and you're all eating from one pot of food.

And if you don't like it very much, well, you suck it up because that's what it is to be a child. Okay. And you learn how to eat different foods because your parents don't let you to get away with this idea of I'm a free human being and it's against my human rights and I should be able to eat what I want. Now you shouldn't be able to eat what you want. You're a child. Now, look, that's why people call me strict, but it's because I love them that I think we should be doing this. Because by doing that, we teach them how to become adults. Be communal. And you talk about exactly, you say that you don't want children, you shouldn't bring up

children who you're going to dislike. Well, the more choices and the more freedom you give them in that sense, the more you're going to dislike them as adults. I mean, the fact is, you cannot be friends with your children when they're children and be friends with them when they're adults. You have to choose. And you should not be friends with them when they're children, because otherwise you're not going to like them when they're adults. You are in a position of authority.

And you should be molding your child and helping him with his moral formation and giving him knowledge. And the school should be doing both as well, both moral formation and giving him knowledge. And where I worry about the libertarian right is that the freedoms that they enjoy amongst adults, they then impose that on children or they don't realize that that's what they're doing. And then they think, oh my goodness, but why is it all these students at university are behaving the way that they do? It's because the schools have not taught them what to think. When I say what to think, giving them the facts about the various world wars, giving

them the facts about the history of their country, making them feel as if they belong in their country and that their history belongs to them, that the geography of their country, making them feel as if they belong in their country and that their history belongs to them, that the geography of their country is taught to them. If, on the other hand, the school is convinced that actually what they need to do is teach them how to think, and then nobody can agree on what that looks like

because it's a skill, and outside of its domain of knowledge it cannot be taught independently. It's impossible. All you can do is give children knowledge. You see, what those skills are is actually bits of knowledge. And when you give them lots of bits of knowledge about, say, the Second World War, they are then able to piece together what they think of it. Now the problem we've got nowadays is that the schools are teaching them with a particular ideology in mind. So in Britain, for instance, I see very much that history lessons in schools, they will

be teaching about how the British were really racist and how the Indian soldiers who were fighting for Britain were treated very badly. And you know what? I'm not even saying that isn't true. But when it comes to secondary school children who might have one or two lessons a week in history and they're only going to have it for a few years, wouldn't it be, shouldn't the focus be them knowing 1914 and 1918? Shouldn't the focus be them knowing about Hitler in the Second

World War? I mean, there are certain facts that the children, they've never heard of the Battle of the Somme. They've never heard of the details of the various key battles in the First World War and the Second World War. And they've never heard of them because they're too busy being taught stories that are ideological, which will convince them that the British, for instance, are racist, or convince them that there were various important female characters in our historical history, and that that's what matters. And of course, Elizabeth I, absolutely. But there are other people that are brought forward as being very important when they're not so important, but because they're taught through an ideological lens, which is 2024, as opposed to teaching them the basics of their own history so that they can feel that they are British.

Well, your car analogy is the right one, I think, in some ways. What are you going to have to think about or say about a car if you don't know what all the parts are and how they work together? Exactly. And so it is so important then that we give them knowledge. And if some of you are saying what we need to do is teach them how to think, it means they're not taught anything. Because that skill cannot be taught in isolation. And schools try to do that in isolation. They try to teach skills. What they ought to be doing is teaching knowledge. And if they don't teach them knowledge, children are leaving school not knowing very much.

And if they don't know very much, like I said, they're all communists. Like I said, they're always going to take the side of the underdog. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong, but it's wrong if you don't have the knowledge and information that could make you see why always taking the side of the underdog is not necessarily the right option, and that it's complex, and that wouldn't it be nice perhaps, I mean, I don't even, wouldn't even necessarily agree that it would be nice for everything to be equal, but let's imagine they think wouldn't it be nice perhaps? I mean, I don't even wouldn't even necessarily agree that it would be nice for everything to be equal, but let's imagine they think, wouldn't it be nice that actually the reality of communism isn't that

and that they need more information before they can make a properly informed decision. Now that should be the job of schools. At the moment it is immersing them in ideology, but the biggest problem is, for me, is those on the right who I very much agree with, they don't realize that they're giving a back door, they're leaving the back door open to progressivism to take over the culture. And the tyrannical culture of the left has taken over our schools because the right keeps

arguing for this freedom for children to have. And we're arguing for children to be able to think what they want and do what they want. Children shouldn't be allowed to do that. Now look, when you were at our school, you didn't see them unhappy. You saw them playing in the yard. You saw them, they play basketball, they play, you know, football table. They, you know, and we don't have a big yard. we don't have any grass or any trees. You know, we are an inner city school with not many resources. But what we've got, the children have fun and they love it. They love it because they are secure in the knowledge that we love them. And we

are teaching them knowledge that makes them feel really smart, clever, successful. And then eventually they can come up with their own ideas. But they cannot come up with their own ideas isolated away from knowledge. That knowledge is absolutely crucial. But the right never talk about the importance of knowledge and they never talk about the importance of schools because people don't realize that schools have all of our children. They are the future. And the reason why our universities are so messed up,

it's not just because the universities are telling them the wrong things. It's because they've already been brainwashed in school. And so when they arrive at university, they're just sitting ducks. You know that in the United States, the K through 12 system, approximately, eats up 50% of the state budgets.

Yes. No, exactly. Huge amount of money. So, yeah, you might say that, all right. So what this means fundamentally, and like I said, I've been hammering this home at the Republicans is that the classic liberals and the conservatives have turned half the government revenues over to radical, incompetent, ideologically bound

progressives trained in the worst faculties in the universities. Right. You know, we did a study that showed that taking one politically correct course was a significant predictor in whether you were a politically correct authoritarian. So there were a number of other predictors,

but that was one of them. And it's a fate accompli on the side part of the radical left that they've 100% occupied the school systems. And there are Republican governors and so forth that have tried to take on the teachers' unions occupied the school systems. And you know, there are Republican governors and so forth that have tried to take on the teachers unions in the United States. And they often lose because it isn't obvious

that the governors have more power, especially more staying power than the teachers unions. And so it's a tough battle. And I think the Achilles heel is teacher certification. That should be stripped from those faculties of education, and then they would collapse under their own weight. That's true. However, teachers tend to be on the left.

Okay? They tend to be. And if they are immersed in a culture that is telling them that what they ought to be doing with children is getting them to understand just how awful their country is, that to be a good teacher, you want to sort of radicalize them and make them into revolutionaries so that they can stand up against their repressive government. Because actually what we want is a more communist society or we want a society where critical race theory reigns and gender ideology reigns. You know, like when you were telling me about the little boy and his outfits

and I was thinking, well, what if he were to choose a dress and want to put that on? I think the parent should put the dress away. You don't put that on the bed. Well, indeed. So you don't give them that choice. So one of the- Right, definitely not. Exactly.

One of the big jokes at Micaela is, you know, tuna or cheese, because when we go off to a, on a school trip, the kids get to choose a sandwich, either tuna or cheese. That's the extent of their choice. Yeah, right. And they're happier for it. Children are happier because they're in a secure environment where they're loved and they're able to be taught what they need to develop their own ideas and their own opinions.

The thing is, is that paradoxically, the way in which children become creative, the way in which they become independently minded is through giving them lots and lots of knowledge. And the more knowledge they have, the more hooks they have in their heads to be able to hang more knowledge on. And then that, it grows exponentially. And often it's the rich kids who only have access to that knowledge because they access it when they go on holiday with their parents around the world, when they go and watch documentaries,

when they talk to their uncle who's a banker and their aunt who's a doctor and so on. They find out about the whole world. If it isn't the case that inner city kids also get that opportunity from their teachers, then they just don't know very much. Now I have to say, I think it's even happening with the more well-off kids as well these days. And so we're allowing children to lead. Children cannot lead because they are children. And what I worry about on the right is that our commentators on the right don't realize just how much as a society we have become unmoored from the coast.

So think of us as a boat and we used to be anchored to the side, right, next to the beach there. But we're no longer anchored. And we're hundreds of miles off the coast now, right? And we're hundreds of miles off the coast. For a school to succeed, we have to bring that fence in. We have got to do much of that moral formation ourselves because it's not necessarily coming from the families. And

that's because families, look, I know from so many people, if you're a bit of a disciplinarian at home, you are looked down upon by your friends because they say, oh, you're just a bit of a meanie. You should let children do whatever they want. Even the government in Britain will send a nurse round when you've had a child to see whether or not you're doing the right things. And the things that the nurse tell you to do, it's all the wrong stuff.

One of my teachers who went off of maternity leave, she said to me, we have to pretend that we're doing this stuff, but we don't want to do it because we're Michaela teachers, both of them, they're married and they're at the school and they don't want to pretend that we're doing this stuff, but we don't want to do it because we're Michaela teachers, both of them, they're married and they're at the school and they don't want to do that stuff because otherwise the state is actually going to undermine the more traditional values that they have got

in bringing up their child. Well, so your comments on the right, let's say, I would say that's probably particularly relevant and you alluded to this, it's particularly relevant to the libertarian right. And the libertarian right suffers from the delusion that if you just let people make choices, including market choices, that everything will work out for the best. But they don't understand, and they should understand, that even the small-L liberals whose ideas they're essentially utilizing understood that that individual freedom was only

possible in a society that was moored in the way that you indicated with your ship analogy. It's like once the game rules are in place, then everybody can be free to play. But if you can't agree on the damn rules, you don't have freedom. You have chaotic, counterproductive, chaotic, revolutionary anarchy. That's exactly right. And then you're done. That's right. So that's why the phrase, teach them how to think, doesn't work. Because when you're off a hundred miles off the coast, it doesn't work.

When we were next to the shore, that was fine. But nowadays, so let me give you an example. Jonathan Haidt has written his book on the anxious generation. I think it's absolutely brilliant. He's talking about the damage that tech has been doing to children and smartphones in particular and how this has made their mental health skyrocket, how it's completely destroying children. It's just awful and it's a fantastic book.

But one of the things that he argues for, Abigail Schreier and in her excellent book, Bad Therapy, also mentions this sort of thing, where they want children to have the freedom that they had when they were growing up. So when you and I and Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier, when we were all growing up, we could ride our bike to the corner shop, we'd leave it outside, we'd go in, we could find friends down the street,

and we'd play football and it was all great, soccer for your American viewers, and it was all great. And their worry now, rightly, is that children are on their iPads and their phones. And that's correct. However, Jonathan Haidt will then criticize families for being a little bit too protective of their kids, not wanting them to go places on their own and so on.

And I understand when it comes to a more middle-class intake, his arguments will stand. But I don't blame our inner-city parents for not wanting their children to be wandering around in the inner city because it is actively dangerous. We constantly have children who are, well, constantly, but every now and again, we have children who are mugged. One of the reasons why our children don't get mugged as often is because my teachers go out at the end of every school day and make sure

they get them on their buses so that they can get home safe. But if our teachers weren't there, all kinds of trouble would break out. I'm constantly giving assemblies about how get home right away. The local schools fights break out in the street. And even if you're not just, well, you are in physical danger,

but it's also the case that your child could be led astray. They're taken down to the chicken shop. They then get involved in gangs and all kinds of things. So parents need very much to be on top of their children. Jonathan Haidt doesn't realize this. And he doesn't realize it, partly, I suppose, because he doesn't know disadvantaged children in the inner city.

But it's also because he has this lovely nostalgic view, as do many of us have, of what it was like to grow up, say, in the 1970s, 1980s. And we remember the freedom we had. And we say, this is what we need to give to our children now. But what he doesn't realize is that there was an invisible shield that surrounded us in the 1980s. When I- They were called mothers.

Well, mothers, fathers, communities. So I remember me and my sister, we cycled down the road, my sister fell on the ground and hurt herself really badly. We were able to knock on the neighbor's door. We were able to go in and she bandaged her up and she told us, come on, it's all right, you can do it. And she got us back home. We do not have the levels of trust and levels of virtue necessary for that kind of freedom. We cannot argue for freedom without virtue.

Freedom requires virtue. And we are 100 miles off the coast. That's the problem. And so, to get back to the coast, we are in the process, I would say, at Micaela, of trying to establish a whole new national way of being where we buy into a multicultural community, where we sing God Save the King, where we uphold certain values, communal values that we all buy into. So, you may have heard about our recent case in the courts over prayer. I don't know if you heard about this.

One of the children and her mother took us to court wanting a prayer room. And our position is no, there is no prayer room and there is no prayer room now. And thank goodness we won that court case. And one of the reasons why is that we have several Muslim children and we would have to have several prayer rooms to make that work. And that would get rid of our silent corridors. It would get rid of probably the family lunch that you saw. It would totally change the ethos of the school. And it is my belief that children should not be dictating to me how to run the school. As I just said, children should not have all of those choices open to them.

They are given restricted choices within a framework where we know what's best. Just like you said about the three outfits, although as I said for a four year old, I don't think he should be choosing his outfits at all. But I might say a 12 year old could have a few choices. And so we fought that and I went to the high court in order to defend our ethos and our belief that children need handholding. They are children, which is why I 100% agree with Jonathan Haidt that they shouldn't have smartphones and they shouldn't have unsupervised access to the internet.

But every time I talk about this on Twitter, there are all these libertarians who come on and say, stop being such a, you know, why are you trying to take away their freedom? Why are you being so miserable about this? You shouldn't give so much control to the state. Because I would love it if the government were to ban phones for under-16s. But they ban alcohol, they ban cigarettes, they ban marriage, they ban sex and porn and so on. And they should ban those things. So, and why do they ban them? Because it's our role as adults to be protective of children and to look after them.

And I worry that those on the left certainly don't. They think free for all, everybody do whatever you want. Those on the right get hoodwinked into this because they think, oh, freedom for adults, freedom of speech, absolutely. But I don't give my children freedom of speech. They don't get to just jump up and say whatever it is they want no matter how insulting it is to other children.

They don't get to be rude. They don't get to tell the teachers to F off and so on. Obviously, they don't get to do that. They're children. I mean, now, I don't think adults should be arrested for saying F off on the street. But I'd put my children in detention if they say it in school because they are children. And it's about us understanding the difference between adults and children and how far off

the coast we are. If we can't understand the difference between men and women, we're going to have an even more difficult time understanding the difference between. I'm dead serious about that. Okay, I want to ask you something that I found mysterious too, that I don't know enough about your school approach. So, you know, you're kind of a force of nature

and of yourself. And I thought when I went to the school that, you know, I didn't know how well you would have been able to disseminate your technology of teaching, let's say, to your teachers. But what I saw were teachers thriving, but also a commonality of approach between the classrooms, very intense style of interacting with the kids. Why don't you describe two things, if you would, what your teachers and your children are actually doing in the classroom,

and then how in the world you trained your teachers to do that? Okay, so really good question. And this is where I think people, both on the left and the right, are just mistaken about what works in the classroom. So in the last 50 years, this idea of inquiry-based learning, project work, cross-curricular work, discovery learning, all stemming from John Dewey in the early 20th century,

they think that that is what makes children into thinking beings. And they forget about that in the years, in Elizabethan times, Shakespeare will likely have gone to a grammar school, probably the new King's School in 1570s. It's the case that Isaac Newton went to a grammar school and Lincolnshire Margaret Thatcher went to one too. And these old grammar schools taught a traditional education. But it's also the case of Nelson Mandela.

Stokely Carmichael, who coined the term black power. So real revolutionaries also. So creative geniuses, Newton created calculus. I mean, Nelson Mandela, of course, an extraordinary revolutionary. So people across their fields have transformed our world for the better, and they've done so by having a traditional education. That traditional education prizes knowledge in the center of the classroom

and teaches it in a traditional way that often people both on the left and the right reject. And we see, unfortunately, people think that the best kind of teaching is one where they're left to discover it on their own and this inquiry idea. It's wrong. What you need to do and what you saw our teachers doing is teaching the children knowledge.

You tell them what you want them to know, right? So you're not teaching them how to think. You're telling them what to think. This is what happened in X year. This is how science works. This is what happened in X year. This is how science works. This is Shakespeare. We're going to read him. We're going to understand him. So you do that and you get them. You do turn to your partner and they talk to each other. And then you get them to give their hands up and you have a class discussion and you're going at

pace, which you saw, and you're giving them lots of knowledge and you're checking to see whether or not they have understood it. And you are drilling them in that knowledge, and you're checking to see whether or not they have understood it, and you are drilling them in that knowledge. So you saw lots of passing of information, but you saw lots of drilling as well of that information. Well, let me ask you about that. Okay, so this is what I observed. I want to drill down into this

because I think it's really important. And I also think it's revolutionary, because like I said, I never saw education progressing at the rate that you managed in your classrooms anywhere. And so, okay, so I saw the teachers up at the front of the class and then they were disseminating the information in the manner that you described. So they were, they were lecturing essentially and in a very pointed manner looking at all the kids. So they were good lecturers too. They weren't these mumbly idiots

who are like reading boring crap off a overhead, you know? And not even interested themselves. They were really engaged with the kids. But then you also spiced it up continually. So there'd be like a burst of information and the kids were listening, like I said, like cats following a laser. And then this is where I saw the choice in some sense for the kids entering or the participation or the play,

because then the teachers would turn the discussion over what to pairs of students to discuss what had just been delivered. And that was a time limited thing that they had to do quickly. Yes. Right. And so then that's where the kids had some creative play. Yes. And so, like, do you have an orchestral time sheet for the pace? Is it like five minutes of instruction, 30 seconds of interaction, you know, a minute of response? Like, how do you orchestrate this exactly? Okay. So, the turn to your partner, for instance,

lots of schools will do pair work. They will unfortunately, I think, do group work. And the reason why I think it's unfortunate that group work happens is because you may remember, I mean, well, you may- I remember. Well, okay, so even at your age, I was about to say you might,

it may have been done properly. Oh yeah, I remember. So the thing is, group work, what are you doing? You're talking about who you fancy, what you're doing that evening, you know, what you think of the teacher. You're talking about all kinds of things. You're not actually talking about the work. When we do pair work, it's very quick because we know that if we don't make it quick, they're

going to end up talking about goodness knows what, but they're not talking about the work. So we need to keep them focused. Now we're telling them the knowledge. They are then able to discuss the knowledge and really make it theirs and understand it. They're able to come back to the teacher. They're far more likely to put their hands up because they now know that they discussed it with their friend

and they feel a lot more confident, which is why... Well, they were competing to put their hands up, which I also thought was amazing. They weren't sitting there in the back, like, looking at their shoes. They were all striving to be called upon. That's right. And so that's because they're all super confident, because they've just spoken to their partner. So then they put their hands up. And the culture of the school is then,

you're always putting your hand up, you're always answering, you're always feeling good. If you get the answer wrong, your teacher is going to tell you, because we are 100% honest with the kids in that way. Because, and then we can come back to that kid later and say, okay, so you give me an answer to some other question. So that bigs him up in that moment. And the kids love learning. I always say children go to school to learn. And if they don't learn, they will stop going to school. So we have a massive attendance problem here in Britain at the moment where kids are not going to school. I suspect it's

the same in other Western countries. And the fact is, they say it's COVID, it's COVID. And yes, it was because of COVID, because COVID set in a culture in our schools where kids didn't go to school. But it's also the case that if children do not feel that they're learning at school, they're not going to turn up. We do not have an attendance problem at Michaela because the kids know that if they miss a day, they're missing a hell of a lot of learning. And so now they have a quiz every week in every lesson. In every subject, they have a quiz once a week and they want to do well on that. And if they don't, there's always three kids at the bottom where you're going to get a detention, right? It might

not be three, but there's always going to be at least a couple. Oh, yeah. Okay, tell me about that. So two things. You reward the kids and you do that in a very, what would you say, obvious and public manner, they get these little badges for doing things right. But that wasn't the amazing thing, because I could imagine as a 13-year-old having these badges at hand and being entirely cynical about them and even looking down on the kids

who were striving to get them. And that is not what I saw at Michaela's school. I saw that they valued their badges and that they really wanted to earn them. And so, I don't understand how you managed that. Now, I saw that one of the things you were doing was very targeted and immediate reward. So, if the kid was right, you let them know and they got a little point. A merit. We have merits and demerits. Merits.

Yeah. Right. And they're very performance linked and they're immediate. That's right. So, I'm expecting anywhere from 30 to 50 merits to be given out in a lesson. And there will also be some demerits. I look myself every six weeks or so at a sheet to make sure that there's at least four to five merits being given out on generally in comparison to the number of demerits that you'll give. So the school-

Four to one? Four to one. Five to one, yeah. Something like that. Sometimes I've got six, seven to one. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's very positive. And the kids are there, they're wanting their merits.

Now we have a pyramid, and if you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you do the right thing because you want to avoid a detention. And then the next step up is you do the right thing because you want to get a merit. And the next step up is, so that's one and two, then to get to three, you do the right thing because you want to get a merit. And the next step up is, so that's one and two, then to get to three, you do the right thing because you want to impress your teachers. And then the next step up is you do the right thing because you understand that the person who you are now

is the person who you will likely become in the future. And so you want to become the best person that you can be now, so you can be a good person in the future. And you can also have a future job that you enjoy and so you want to become the best person that you can be now, so you can be a good person in the future. And you can also have a future job that you enjoy and so on. And at the very top of the pyramid, it's who you are. It's who we are, is what we say. So we are trying to move the children

for every characteristic out there, whether it's 100% effort on the homework, being on time, being kind to people, being grateful. When you saw, you saw the appreciations at the end of lunch where the children stood up and in front of 150, 200 people, they say, I'd like to say thanks to my mom for helping me get up this morning and get to school. And then we all sat and then they say on the count of two, one, two, and the whole room claps, right? And you saw that happen. And so, and it was real too. It was real. The kids were actually, that was cool too, because

it wasn't an act. So I thought that was remarkable because what you were doing was training. So one of the things that's very difficult that behavioral psychologists identified was that it's easier to use punishment than reward because infractions stand out and progress is subtle. And so one of the things you want to do with children is you want to watch them like hawks so that when they do something good, you can say, this is what you did, it was good, here's a pat. You can do that with your wife and your husband too, by the way, and it's very effective. But you have to be attentive.

And so I like your pyramid too, because what you have is when people are barely in the game at the bottom, you're using avoidance there. It's like, get your act together. You've got to straighten yourself up. But then the rest of the pyramid is upward aiming and reward based. And so that's a nice dynamic between restriction and opportunity, right?

And that's also something that's not tyrannical, because the only form of reward tyrants use is, if you quit doing that, I'll stop hitting you. Right? And so, right. I mean, obviously that isn't Michaela, but the thing is, is that you've got to create an environment where that invisible shield

that was around in the 1980s has been returned. And we have to build that shield now because it isn't there anymore. We don't have the collective culture and the collective virtue and the collective understanding and trust that's required for freedom to flourish. We just don't have it. So we have created that within our school walls. And people don't understand that that needs to be created in society and that all schools need to be doing it.

That's right. And so we have a book called The Power of Culture. And the reason why it's called The Power of Culture is because, you know, that quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast. I am constantly watching our culture and keeping it just where it needs to be. And that is mainly through my staff. So you asked me about the staff. How do I get the staff to where they need to be? So people, my staff are always fascinated by how much time I spend with them individually and how much time we spend talking about philosophy and politics.

You know, new staff joining always say, but why aren't we talking about teaching methods? Why aren't we talking about turn to your partner? And we do do that as well, obviously, because they need to be trained to teach as we teach. But the time I spend with them is all on culture. So we will talk. I have videos of you talking about different ideas, little clips. And I'll use a clip.

There's a lovely clip of you talking with John McWhorter actually that I use. And the two of you are talking about how you're both a bit odd and how, when I say odd, you're guys who like to think outside the box and that you live in your heads and you're quite happy to live in your heads. But that actually for most people, we are group animals and that we need to belong to something. And I show them that and I say, well, isn't that interesting? Because that's what we're doing here at Michaela. We're creating a group culture where we are part of the school and where we are part of the country.

So England is playing in the Euros at the moment. Next Thursday at 5pm, England is playing Denmark. We have made a massive deal of this. We have English flags all over the school. We are inviting the kids back after school to watch the England game in school. And there's loads of kids that have signed up, and they're gonna bring their little English flags,

and we're gonna have extra English flags. And we've told them that they can come in uniform, or they can come in their own clothes as long as they're wearing the English shirt, right? Now, this is us actively encouraging them to identify with their country, as opposed to saying, I'm Nigerian, I'm Ghanaian, I'm Jamaican, I'm Iranian, et cetera. Or I'm Hindu, I'm Muslim. Britain isn't for me. We sing God Save the King every week. We teach them their history. We celebrate the King's birthday on Friday. So yesterday was the King's birthday and so we had little cakes with the British colors on them and we had all our

flags and our conversation for the lunch topic was about Britain. So we do all of this stuff to bring us all together so that we can be one big happy family. And I don't think people realize just how much schools contribute to the cohesion of a country and just how much schools are required for a country to succeed. And we just forget about them, and we forget about kids. And partly I think that maybe this is because teaching has historically always been a female profession. So people always think being a pilot, oh my goodness, it's so glamorous, it's so hard, etc.

Because historically it's been a male profession, and it's like 97 percent or something, male now. But the fact is you only need a high school degree in order to become a pilot and it's actually pretty simple because the planes are automatic. I mean it really isn't that hard. Whereas teaching is so hard to do it well and running a school so hard, which is why so many schools fail because it's really, really difficult. But because people don't take an interest in schools

and they don't take an interest in kids, and it's just seen as a thing that just happens, I also think that in the West, we seem to think that children are just born the way they're born, and in the East, they don't. In the East, I remember once giving, I was at a conference, and I said, what happens in the West when a child tries something and

succeeds at it? We Westerners say, well done, you're so clever. And in the East, what they say is, well done, you tried really hard. And that means that the next time the Western boy tries, he thinks something he can't do, he thinks, am I clever enough to do this? And if he doesn't feel clever enough, then he can't do. He thinks, am I clever enough to do this? And if he doesn't feel clever enough, then he won't try. Whereas in the East, they think, well, I tried hard the last time, try hard this time, and I will succeed.

And once at a conference, I said this, and a Chinese woman came up to me and she said, absolutely, 100% agree with everything you say, except that in the East, they wouldn't say well done at the beginning, which made me laugh. Yeah, right. Right. Reward is harder to come by. Okay. So let's use that.

I have another question for you then. So I spent a lot of time studying the literature on the prediction of performance. And you can predict how well people will perform in a complex environment by measuring their general intelligence and their conscientiousness. Those are the best two predictors. Now, your school is not a selective school.

So you, I would presume that the average IQ in your school is probably a little higher than 100 because your parents are selecting in. But basically you're dealing with a normal distribution in an average population. And yet your kids are advancing very rapidly and they do extremely well on objective tests. So now I saw how effective your teaching was

but I'm quite struck by that. And so what I would like to know is you know that there's great differences in people's innate abilities. But you are also producing a generic success that extends across, well, obviously across class and race and within the confines of your unselected population. And so, how is it that you've come to understand the relative contribution of, let's say, the intelligence that's God given, so to speak, and the discipline and strategy and structure that your school is

providing. And then how much variation do you still see? You've moved the whole population upward, but how much variation do you still see in terms of talent and ability within your own school? Yeah, so there's huge variation. Of course there is, because there's such a thing as being talented at certain things and not, and that's the way children are born. Having said that, our children all outperform what they would have done had they been at

another school. So they reach their potential tenfold. Now the fact is that, so I talked about the importance of knowledge and making that central to your classroom and helping them become creative through knowledge. All our children manage that, and by learning so much, that is why we do so well in the end on the exams. But it's not just the final exams.

Our children know so much about all sorts. And what annoys me is that people always talk about how successful we are in our exams, as if that's all we are. We are so much more than that. Our children are really interesting people. What do you mean all you are? That's not an easy thing. The people who are putting you down for accomplishing that have some real thinking to do, because what you did purely on the objective side is people would have regarded that as impossible. So they don't get to play that game. But I agree it's not all you're doing.

Well, and so what you're talking about there is being able to live a life of dignity. So we, our values, our small c conservative values that we talk about with the children all the time, the idea of being able to take responsibility, not being a victim, somebody who has a sense of duty towards others. I don't disrupt my class, not just because I don't want to get a detention, but because I wouldn't want to disrupt the learning from my classmates. Being somebody who is able to sacrifice. So that position on prayer, for instance, you know, the Muslim children, well, they put up with not having a prayer room. They make that sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. The Jehovah Witness children, there's Macbeth that we teach as

a set GCSE text. It has witches in it. They don't like the magic. We also teach a Christmas carol, Christmas in there. They don't like it because of Christmas, but they put up with it because they think about the self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. The Hindu children who think, well, we want our separate plates at lunch because the eggs have touched the plates, so we don't like that. They too self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. Because the problem with multiculturalism is that if each group is vying for their rights, and it's always, I want this, I want that, and you're a racist or you're an Islamophobe unless I get it, then we'll never be happy. We'll never be successful. And schools struggle with this because they are multicultural communities. And unfortunately, our whole culture encourages

them to divide children according to race and religion and sexuality and so on. So you have your LGBT group over there, you have your Hindu group over there, the Muslim group over here and so on. If that happens in your school, it becomes impossible because you're trying to please everybody. And sometimes those rights clash. So for instance, Muslim children want to eat halal food. Sikh children are not allowed to eat halal food.

Well, what do you do if you have a situation where family lunch means that you all share the same food? Well, I'll tell you what you have a situation where family lunch means that you all share the same food? Well, I'll tell you what you do. You go vegetarian. So, we all eat vegetarian food. And that, we do practical things. We don't have a prayer room. We have vegetarian food.

We use the same plates. And it doesn't matter who you are. You have to leave those demands at the gate and make sure that you value the whole over your individual rights. Because you understand that it's your responsibility to value the group and the school over your own personal desires. Well, while you're also, while the thing is too, you make a case that I would argue is actually more subtle than that.

Okay. Because, well, it isn't only that you're calling upon your kids and your parents to sacrifice. What you've pointed out, and I think this is evident in your school, is that the freedom that the libertarians and, let's say, even the anarchic leftist radicals desire is actually only possible within the confines of a shared community. And so, you know, your opponents might say, well, look how strict you are with the children. They have no freedom. But your rejoinder is something like, no, no freedom, but your rejoinder is something like, no, we establish a community with boundaries and walls so that people know what the expectations are with regards to upward striving, and then within that, they have true freedom.

That's right. So, you know, I'll give you an example. That's exactly it. This is a cool example. That is it. True freedom requires restriction. Yes, go on. Well, so when Moses faces the Pharaoh to free the Israelites,

God tells him to say something to the Pharaoh, and he says it repeatedly. And some of it's famous. He says, let my people go. And that's a civil rights cry. That is not what Moses says. Moses says, God said to me, let my people go so that they may worship me in the desert. And so it's a vision of ordered freedom and not a vision of an anarchic freedom.

What the Israelites have in the desert, which they hate, is anarchic freedom, right? Because so they go from tyranny to anarchic freedom and it's a catastrophe. So what's set up instead is a hierarchy like your pyramid. That's the subsidiary structure and that's responsibility as the antidote to tyranny and slavery. And you do that in your school. And so you are actually providing those kids with freedom. You are not taking it away. And what you're doing is restricting anarchy. Indeed. And the thing is, in order for children, look, the Christian God would also say, honor thy mother and father, right? And what do they mean by honor thy mother and father?

Your father and mother love you, and they are going to restrict some of your freedoms, and they're going to force you to do things like eat your broccoli that you don't like, and your teachers are gonna force you to learn your calculus, even though you think it's a bit boring, and they're gonna be all kinds of restrictions around you. And you get annoyed as a kid, because you think, I wanna be able to do whatever I want.

One day, you will be able to do whatever you want, but by then, you have earned that right. By then, you have taken the wisdom from your elders. You talk about hierarchies and you say hierarchies are sometimes bad because they are hierarchies of power. You're absolutely right. But hierarchies of competence are good. And the fact is that the adults here are meant to be the more competent ones. And they're meant to embrace that. Well, that's the definition of adulthood. Well, it's meant to be. Unfortunately, adults these days don't feel like they're the most competent.

In fact, they're made to feel like they're bad people if they insist that children should listen to them. And the whole student voice thing and giving them tons of choice about stuff and so on. Look, we are meant, I'm not saying don't ever listen to children. Obviously, you listen to them, but you also know that you know better, right? And you make sure that you support them in choosing the better choice and also in knowing why it's the better choice. We don't say to kids, look, do whatever you want.

Go to the supermarket and buy whatever you want. Well, they'll come back with a whole load of cookies, right? I mean, I find it hard enough now to stay away from the cookies, you know? But thank goodness my mother told me to eat the broccoli because I eat the broccoli because I now have the knowledge that it's better for me. And I also have the experience of knowing

that if I don't eat broccoli, that I'm not going to feel very good in myself, I need to go to the gym and so on. Kids don't understand that. So because they don't understand that, we need to pull the fence in tight. And it's our job as adults to be instilling these habits in them, and then they climb that pyramid till eventually they get to the top and it's who they are. So you were asking for those kids who cognitively, they're perhaps not as bright as other ones,

how do they feel happy and satisfied? Because we very much don't just talk about cognitive success. We talk about the kind of person you are, and that it's who we are is the top of the pyramid. Can you be somebody who's grateful, who's kind, who's decent? For some of our children, they might be the manager in a shoe shop. Well, you know what? Well done you.

And if you're somebody who can turn up every day on time and you can pay for your mortgage and you can look after your wife and your children, good on you. That is a hugely successful life. And it's about recognizing that a life of dignity is one of purpose, of knowing who you're going to be, of trying to become something, of being able, when you're 90 years old, to look back from your deathbed and look at your life and say, I lived for something, I contributed, I made the world into a better place. That's what you want. Becoming some billionaire, I mean, I don't know, most billionaires are unhappy. Certainly, their children are unhappy.

And often because their children were just given exponential choices, you have whatever you want, have a great time. You know what? That makes children miserable. What makes children happy is the love of a restricted choice, of teaching them knowledge, of allowing them to stand on the shoulders of giants. As, as Newton said, he said, if I see further, it allowing them to stand on the shoulders of giants, as Newton said. He said, if I see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants. And what he meant by that, Shakespeare, Newton, even Thatcher, who went to Newton's, well, the equivalent girl's grammar school, they all learned traditionally. In Shakespeare's day, they would memorize loads. They would read Latin texts.

How did Shakespeare become the great that he is? He actually, he stole stuff from other authors. He copied. That is what children need to do in the first instance. They need to be able to copy. They need to learn from others. And that is by showing them through example, developing those habits,

so that eventually they are at top of the pyramid. So just yesterday, our year 11s, grade 11s who took their GCSE exams, the exams finished yesterday so that we had a big pizza party and they had cans of Coke for the first time in five years. Okay. They've never had their, their, oh my goodness, pizza that we ordered in from like Domino's, you know, and we had cans of Coke and they were there like, wow, this is amazing. The kids can't believe next Thursday with the England game,

they're allowed to bring their own crisps and their own chocolate. They think heaven has come early. They can't believe it, right? And that's because we don't normally give them this sort of stuff. And then children are really grateful for those small things. And so they were having this massive party outside and it was wonderful and they were signing their shirts and so on.

They finished their exams and they know they've done really well because they have climbed that pyramid. And my thing is, you know, when we have our prom next week, I'm going to be saying to them, you know, we try and get the little birdies to the top, and then we tell them, fly little birdie. And that's where those wings need to be able to fly. Now, the only way those wings are going to be able to fly is if we pump them through of wonderful knowledge so that they can come up with their own creative

ideas and they've learned how to think through attaining and grasping that knowledge over those five years. And that we also have taught them what it is to live a life of dignity, that they're looking for purpose, they're looking for something in life that's going to ignite a passion in them, that they're going to love and that they're going to be able to contribute to society. That they're not just going out there to make a load of money. You will never see me or any of my teachers at assembly talk about the reason why you need

to do well in your exams is to get a good job. We would never say that, ever. The reason why you want to do well on your jobs, sorry, the reason why you want to do well on your exams is because you want to be the kind of person who works hard for something and then gets the best that you can get. That is what you want out of life, right? You know, not everybody is gonna get the top score of a nine. What you want is to get the best score that you can get. And the only way you're gonna know that is if you've worked like hell to get there.

So our kids who are getting the fours and fives, still passing the sixes, but they're not getting the nines, they don't feel bad about themselves because they have purpose, but they're not getting the nines. They don't feel bad about themselves because they have purpose, because they're on the same journey as the ones who are cleverer than they are to be the kind of person who's finding purpose and who is going to have dignity.

And I think many years ago, you know, I think of my Uncle Harold, this is one of the training, for instance, that I do with staff. And I show them a picture of my Uncle Harold, this is one of the training, for instance, that I do with Star. And I show them a picture of my Uncle Harold. My Uncle Harold was from the Caribbean, and he lived in Detroit, eventually. And this is a wonderful photo of him with this white hat and this white suit, and he looks so sharp.

And it probably was taken in the 1940s. And I remember Uncle Harold when he was very, very old. And he used to give us, my sister and me, a little quarter, you know. This is in the 80s. He'd give us a quarter. And we would think, oh, we've got a quarter. And it was just so exciting. Just like our kids think we've got cans of Coke. Isn't it exciting? Because we weren't given everything. My family, we grew up, we didn't have loads. And my mother worked night shifts as a nurse, and my dad was a lecturer,

and he was always sponsoring family from Guyana. My father came from Guyana, my mother is Jamaican, and they would bring family, and we always had family at home, finding them jobs at McDonald's and so on, in order, because my father wanted to help his family come to a better country where they would have a better life. And my Uncle Harold, you know, you look at him in that suit.

And what I always say to my teachers is, everybody goes on about how racist everything is. Well, I can tell you in the 1940s, it was pretty damn racist, right? Life was hard for Uncle Harold, but I never heard Uncle Howard complain. I never heard him going on about racism. My Uncle Harold got his head down and did what was necessary for his family, just like my father and my mother did. And I never heard my dad and my mom ever complain about racism, ever. They just worked like hell, not just for themselves and for me and my sister, but they worked like hell for their families to be able to bring them to Canada because I grew up in Toronto in Canada and at 15 I came to Britain. And you know, that small C conservatism

is just part of who I am. And you know, it's funny, I was watching this documentary about Clarence Thomas and he was saying how when he was in his early 20s, he became this black radical and he was this total leftist. And he really reminded me of me because eventually he found his way back to small c conservatism because that was instilled in him by his grandfather when he was growing up. And it was a very similar thing with me. I became this black leftist, et cetera, became this black teacher. I was this teacher. And then eventually, it all felt wrong to me. And then over years- Okay. So wait, so I'm gonna stop you there. I'm gonna stop you there because, well, this is why.

First, we're out of time on this side. But more importantly, that's exactly what I wanna delve into on the daily wire side of this. Yes, yes, I'm sorry, it's true. I jumped. No, no, no, no, that's fine. No, but that's a perfect, well, it's a perfect place to stop.

Paradise means walled garden. Right. Yes! Right! Right! And the walls are there to make the garden flourish. Exactly! And Eden means well-watered place.

And that's what you have at Michaela's school. You have a walled garden. That's right. And you're watering the kids. And that's working. And so, that's a lovely, that balance between order and natural flourishing, right, that's paradise. And I could see your kids participating in that

at Michaela School. So congratulations on that. So for everybody watching and listening, we're gonna switch to the daily wire side now. And I'm gonna talk to Catherine in more detail about, well, this transformation, let's say, the one that she described that also characterized Clarence Thomas and many people, because most people have a leftist proclivity, let's say, when they're young and foolish, radical leftist proclivity when they're young and foolish and full of

undiscerning empathy, let's put it that way. And so we'll talk about that on the Daily Wire side. And so join us there and thank you to everybody watching and listening for your time and attention. And also to you today, Catherine, for walking us through Michaela's school and sharing the thing that's so striking about listening to you apart from the conceptual element

is that you are obviously thrilled with what you're doing and to be part of the lives of your children. And that's, I could see that at the school, but I can also hear it in every, well, in your passion and your, what would you say, your obvious pleasure in the specific stories you tell about the kids and the love that you have for them is, that's the culture. Yeah. That was really what got me when I went to your school because I could see that and it's so rare and so painful that it's rare because it could be everywhere if people would take the responsibility and open their eyes.

That's true. But the thing is, the thing is, I understand why they don't know how to figure out what to do what we do, because they're told so many things that are the opposite to what we do. Yeah, but you figured it out. I know, but... And we're going to try to figure out why. And so you people can all join us on the Daily Wire side to go into that. So thank you very

much ma'am and well thank you for having me we'll meet again no doubt in the UK and yes and thank you to all you who've been watching.