Transcript for:
Katherine Burbling and the Michaela School Approach

people don't realize that schools have all of our children they are the future 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 [Music] hello everybody I had the opportunity today to speak with Katherine burbling who has a reputation as being the strictest head mistress in all of Great Britain um 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 well it was 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 that 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 highlevel universities than the graduates of virtually any other school um that exists in that country she's quite the force of nature Katherine Burber saying 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 flak 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 uh an equally remarkable woman who runs it she's 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 Michaela School in London tell everybody start right from the beginning tell everybody what it is how it operates and why it it works so spectacularly well yeah well um 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 um 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 um and there were a lot of people who tried to stop us from opening um we had people protesting outside with banners um insulting us um every time we tried to have a parents evening in various parts of London uh to tell the local parents and these are inner city parents remember so they're poor uh brown and black parents from the inner city um 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 um 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 uh they really hated me for that and um 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 you know I had spoken there and I think as a black teacher from the inner city who you know State educated myself uh you know I'm not I'm just not allowed to go to the conservative party and and give my views uh you know if I'd been at one of the teacher unions um saying what I thought I think that would have been acceptable so uh people would would I I don't know if I don't know if what you have have to say would be acceptable even at a teachers union so that's true that's true well you know people would would would come in they'd storm the um the 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 um 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 um but even then there were protesters outside handing leaflets to the children telling them their lives were in danger in our building um it's actually quite an extraordinary story that we ever managed to get off the ground but we did and then um we had so there's an inspectorate called ofstead 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 gcsc exams uh that's these are National exams that children take at age 16 and um they then track the progress that the children make from when they join us in uh 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 in our first year we came fifth in the country um for for our progress that is tracked uh uh you know by government and 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 for the whole country in the last two years we've come top in the country for our progress and again um you know our detractors very much don't like that uh 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 uh from all over the world and people can just go onto our website and sign up um you know from from from Australia from New Zealand from Canada America all across Europe and lots of British teachers who then take ideas from our school and uh 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 enjoy our annoy our Progressive contractors because I say that small C conservative values work that uh a small C conservative school is what's best for children uh 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 uh 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 uh our national anthem which is basically unheard of in Britain in America uh you know you're not I shouldn't say yours because you're Canadian but your your viewers might might be a lowed to be American and I know they're used to hearing their their presidents say um you know God Bless America at the end of their uh you know speeches that doesn't happen here in Britain um there seems to be quite a big you know quite a lot of Fame around British um uh the the historical past uh the the slavery colonialism and so on the guilt uh kind of rests there and it's it's we don't sort of celebrate that we might in a football match you know definitely we sing the national anthem then but journalists have come to our school and and find it quite shocking that um the children sing God Save the King and um why do they do that because it is a multicultural school with children from a whole variety of races and religions and I believe very strongly that for uh 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 um and um being British and being Michaela we are one together we are a team and I think in other schools uh where they divide you you're African you're uh you know you're Caribbean you're Muslim you're Hindu you're LGBT BT uh you 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 um when you do that your country is very unlikely to succeed because they don't see what they have in common indeed indeed you need to have a shared set of common values uh in order for multiculturalism to work and I realize that sounds slightly at all because I just said it 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 um that is what they do very much at Michaela which is why you see children uh friendly with each other across racial and religious divides um which is why you know we're also very strict I'm considered to be the strictest head mistress in Britain that's what people call me and um it's not people imagine that I'm marching up and down the corridors with whips and chains obviously I'm not um 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 uh people imag and relieved yes yeah they were relieved to be there I talked to lots of the kids who had come from other schools and had been while 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 um 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 busted in so then the question is you know who were these people that were busted in and uh why do 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 I all these white people they were actually all white were busting from outside of London in order to protest um now it's interesting because you know 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 you know 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 I don't deny that but as a result we then owe uh our votes to them we owe our thinking to them and if we dare to stray and have our own ideas for ourselves they're going to make us pay so I think one of the reasons why we had such trouble trying to open up there were other white school groups trying to set up uh who were Big C conserv there's one one guy I know Toby Young he 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 um as a as a as a brown person as you say um I am not allowed to think as I do and I certainly wasn't allowed to speak at the Conservative Party Conference uh 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 that it is this condescending uh kind of uh no bless obled 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 um they were handing out leaflets uh about me uh to stop the parents from coming in and the leaflets said the only reason why this school was going ahead was because I knew the then uh 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 okay go on well let's let's 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 like because it isn't a literate culture but that doesn't mean they don't want it and so then 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 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 uh the minority communities need to feel beholden to the left for accomplishing so the people who who are now looking for falty 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 um uh I believe in what we're offering families uh I also believe in families having Freedom of Choice um there are some families so it's interesting we've been going for 10 years now and uh white middle class people do not choose our school um our our the families who choose our school are ethnic minority uh brown and black kids in 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 uh it's very rare to find a middle class white child who comes and you know every now and again we get one but it's quite rare and that's not what they want they don't want the the strictness that we offer they don't want um the the drive the progress the progress I mean they just don't like they don't like the silence you know there silence in the corridors we are very strict I am know strictest head mistress so um yeah they like things to be a lot more Rel you know I didn't find your school strict yeah that isn't how it struck me no what I saw and I was watching MH what I saw was that all the kids knew very very clearly what the rules were yes but more than that they understood why the rules were there okay which is a major so that's very much distinct from it being a tyranny I never saw any use of force or compulsion to keep the rules in place Place yeah so that's absent tyranny and then I saw the fact that the you set up a reward system in your school which is 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 Cow cowed by Miss trench pull you know cow cowering in the hallways because they were afraid to open their mouths I didn't see any of that you know and I I also didn't feel you can feel an atmosphere of fear and oppression in a tyrannical institution you 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 uh 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 about half an hour if you do the work but it never happens and so usually what you see in a school a school performance is you see these kids that no one has ever paid attention to 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 4 seconds embarrassing themselves turning red being catall 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 was permeated the school and I'm certain from my observation that that was reflected in the children's respect for the rules they see your rules 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 so explain that in a little more detail because that's that 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 it lies 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 with children it means you love them enough to keep your standards high for them and I would say that most right teachers and parents nowadays want to be friends with children and uh 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 get her 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 you know other animals within a few weeks or a few months in the in the jungle they get sorted and off they go whereas human beings take many many years uh 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 uh you know I said to you you never talk about schools and um and you said oh it's true I don't really talk about schools and I said yeah well you should talk about schools cuz they're the most important institutions in any country 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 Megan Kelly or John McWater or Glenn Lowry and all these people who 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 hav't they developed critical thinking and this is where I sort of have a bit of a bug bear with you and I want to say to you you know I want to explain why I think not just you uh all these people I have huge admiration for Jonathan height 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 if as 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 when will say things like that it teach them how to think what do you mean Saudi Arabia recently ended its 50-year Petro dollar deal with the US which has the potential to weaken the US dollar since 1974 Saudi Arabia has sold oil solely in US Dollars which was huge for our global economic dominance now they want other options if there's less demand for the US dollar what happens to its value it's reasons like this that make it important to diversify some of your savings into gold and you can do that with help from Birch gold for over 20 years Birch gold group has helped tens of thousands of Americans protect their savings by converting an IRA or 401K into an IRA in physical gold to learn more text Jordan to 98 989 and claim your free no obligation info kit on gold with their Education First approach Birch gold has earned the trust of thousands of happy customers they understand that navigating financial decisions can be scary that's why their dedicated in-house Ira department is there to guide you every step of the way protect your savings with gold text Jordan to 9898 98 and talk to one of birch Gold's experts and claim your free info kit today text Jordan to 98898 that's Jordan to 98 9898 [Music] today well we mean with this Peterson Academy that I'm putting forward is that we don't want a university and I 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 and I would also say I'll say two things in response to the other things you said um 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 through2 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 it's almost indes rable and I've talked to plenty of Republican Governors about this and it's one of my lifelong Ambitions yes I agree we'll 100% agree on that teach training institutions are 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% not universities that's not the same as K through 12 you know I also agree with your approach from the particular upward with regards to children I so that's crucial I know it's just that when you will 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 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 do a c a particular domain so uh 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 Katherine 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 uh 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 a 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 talk to them they're all Communists because when they hear about communism they go you mean everybody's 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 Communists is because they're naive they're vulnerable and they 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 smartphones we ban sex we ban marriage we M ban driving there are all kinds of things that we ban from children and the thing about the libertarian right uh 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 so let me let me ask you a clarifying question yeah do you mean that their freedoms should be restricted or do you mean that the domain within which they have freedom should be restricted well no I I would because those are different right because the one tilts more to in some sense conceptually towards control see let 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 a um on hangers and maybe he's a little hungry and a little tired and you open up the closet you say what of which of those outfits do you want to 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 it's like a so there's a consumer Choice literature for example that shows PE 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 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 well I'm wondering what you think of that formulation yeah I don't think the the four-year-old 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 yes there's that right and sometimes I'm in thek that's thee 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 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 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 we why do we call it family lunch because it's like family dinner and why is what 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 Ser 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 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 no 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 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 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 be 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 the the 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 I when I say what to think giving them the facts about the various world the 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 is taught to them if on the other hand the school is convinced that actually what they need to do is um 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 be 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 I 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 it shouldn't the focus be uh them knowing 1914 and 1918 shouldn't the focus be them knowing about Hitler in the second world War I mean like like there there there are certain facts that the children they've never heard of the battle of the S they've never heard of um uh the the details of 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 that's what matters and of course Elizabeth first absolutely but there are 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 uh which is 2024 as opposed to uh 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 is 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 so and and 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 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 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 big 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 to 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 uh you know we we 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 Cru 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 what 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 right no exactly am Mone so what that so yeah you might say that all right so what this means fundamentally and i' 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 we did a study that showed that taking one politically correct course was a significant predictor in whether you were a politically correct authoritarian right so there were another of other predictors but that was one of them and it's an absolute it's a fate ACC comple on the side part of the radical left that they've 100% 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 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 in his outfits and I was thinking well what if he were to choose a a dress and want to put that on I think the parent should put the dress away no 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 Michaela 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 right right and they 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 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 right right our commentators on the right don't realize just how much as a society we have become unored from from from the coast so think of us as a as a boat and we used to be anchored to the side right next to the beach there but we've 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 form 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 meany you should let children do whatever they want even the the the government in 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 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 this month marks 2 years since the overturning of roie Wade but did you know that the number of abortions has actually increased since then new estimates show that more than 1 million babies were killed by abortion in 2023 the highest number of abortions in over a decade the overturning of roie Wade has unfortunately made the abortion pill more readily available now accounting for up to 64% of all abortions but pre-born continues to stand strong rescuing 200 lives every day pre-born is the largest pro-life organization in the country they provide free ultrasounds to mothers with unplanned pregnancies to introduce them to the precious life growing inside of them when a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat she is twice as likely to choose life how can you help one ultrasound costs only $28 and could be the difference between life and death please join the fight by sponsoring one 2 or more ultrasounds if you have the means you can sponsor pre-born entire network for a day for $5,000 all gifts are tax deductible and whatever gift you give will go towards saving lives to donate dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby that's pound 250 keyword baby or go to pre-born docomo that's pre-born do.com Jordan well so your comments 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 moured in the way that you indicated with your ship analogy is 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're you don't have freedom you have chaotic counterproductive chaotic revolutionary Anarchy 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 100 miles off the coast it doesn't work when we were next to the the shore that was fine but nowadays so let me give you an example Jonathan height he's written um his book on the uh 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 uh this has made their mental health Skyrocket how uh they're it's completely destroying children it's just awful and it's fantastic book but one of the things that he argues for Abigail shrier in 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 height and ab Abigail sh 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 uh viewers and um and it was all great and they're worry now rightly is that children are on their iPads and their phones and that's correct however they Jonathan height will then criticize families for being a little bit too protective of their kids uh 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 you know 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 uh they we we constantly have children who are well constantly but every now and again we have children who are mugged uh 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 would would break out um I'm constantly giving assemblies about how get home right away the local schools fights break out in the 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 height 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 uh love 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 W they were called mothers well mothers fathers communities so I think I remember me and my sister we 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 you cannot we 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 have we are 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 Michaela of trying to establish a whole new National way of being um where we buy into a multicultural Community where we sing God Save the King where we uh uphold certain values communal values that we all buy into so you may have heard about our recent uh case in the courts over prayer I don't know if you heard about this uh one one of the children and her her mother took us to court uh wanting a prayer room and our position is no uh there is no prayer room and there is no prayer room now and and thank goodness we won that court case um and one of the reasons why is that we would 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 um 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 height 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 cuz I would love it if the government were to ban phones for under 16s um 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 freefor all everybody do whatever you want those on the right get Hoodwinked into this because they think oh freedom for PE for 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 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 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 you're kind of a force of Nature and of yourself and 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 are both on the left and the right are just mistaken about what works in the classroom so uh in the last 50 years this idea of inquiry based learning uh Project work uh cross-curricular work uh Discovery learning all stemming from John dwey in the early 20th century um they 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 um in in in 1570s uh it's the case that Isaac Newton went to a grammar school and Lincoln share Margaret Thatcher went to one too and these old grammar schools uh taught a traditional education but it's also the case that Nelson Mandela uh stokeley Carl Michael who uh 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 uh 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 our 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 what's how science works this is 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 so you saw lots of passing of information but you saw lots of drilling as well of that information so well let me ask you about that okay so so this is is what I observed I want to drill down into this because I think it's really important um and 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 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 like I said like cats following a laser and then this is where I 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 yes to discuss what had just been delivered yes and that was a Tim 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 um and the reason why I think it's unfortunate that group work happens is because you may remember I mean well I remember well okay so even at your age I was about to say you might it may have been done 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 just discuss it with their friend and they feel a lot more confident which is why well they were competing to put their hands up which was I also thought was amazing they weren't sitting there in the back like looking at their shoes they were all exactly 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's 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 co it's co and yes it was because of Co because Co 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 are learning at school they're not going to turn up we do not have attendance 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 well you're going to get a detention right it might not be three but there always going about that okay tell me about that so two things you reward the kids and you do that in a very um what would you say obvious and public manner they get these little badges for doing things right but that 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 they got points we have merits and Dem merits 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 the the four 5 to one yeah something like that sometimes I've got six seven to one you okay good so so it's very positive and the kids are there they're wanning their merits now we have a um a a pyramid and if you're at the bottom of the pyramid you do the the right thing because you want to avoid A detention and then the next step up is you want to you do the right thing because you want to get a merit and the next step is uh 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 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 uh 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 say 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 exactly 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 T the only form of reward tyrants use is if you quit doing that I'll stop hitting you right and no I mean obviously that isn't Michaela but you know 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 you know 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 our the reason why it's called the power of culture is because you know that that quote uh 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 um like 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 we 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 McWater actually that I use and um the two of you are talking about how you're both a bit odd and how uh when I say odd uh you're guys who like to think outside the box and that you 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 of the country so uh uh England is playing in the Euros at the moment next Thursday uh at 5:00 p.m. England is playing Denmark we have made a massive deal of of this we have English flags all over the school we've 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 going to bring their little English flags and we're going to have extra English flags and um 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 Gham I'm jamaic I'm you know I'm I'm Iranian Etc or or I'm Hindu I'm Muslim Britain isn't for me you know we we we sing God the Save the King every every every week we teach them their history we celebrate uh the King's birthday on Friday just so yesterday uh was the King's birthday and so we had little cakes with with the British colors on them and we had all our flags and our our conversation uh 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 succeed for a country to succeed and um and so 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 So Glamorous it's so hard Etc because it historically it's been a male profession and it's like 97% 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 the planes are are are are 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 he 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 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 so let 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 inate abilities and and but 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 know 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 you know that's the way children are born um having said that our children all outperform what they would have done had they been at another school so they reached their potential tenfold now the fact is that um so I talked about the importance of knowledge and making that Central to your classroom and uh helping them become creative through knowledge uh 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 um and they and 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 G 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 are small C conservative values that we talk about 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 um 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 um there's MCB Beth that we teach as a set gcsc text it has witches in it they don't like the magic uh we also teach um A Christmas Carol Christmas in there they don't like it because of Christmas but they put up with it because they think about they 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 so that 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 uh Muslim children want to eat halal food seik 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 do you go vegetarian so we all eat vegetarian food and that we we do practical things we don't have a prayer room we have vegetarian food we we we we 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 uh you value the whole over your individual rights because you understand that it's your responsibility to to to to Value the group and the school over your own personal desires are you tired of feeling sluggish rundown or just not your best self take control of your health and vitality with balance of nature balance of nature fruit and veggies are a great way to make sure you're getting your essential nutritional ingredients every single day 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okay because it 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 rejoiner 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 so you know I'll give you an example this is a cool that that a cool example true Freedom requires restriction yes go on AB ABS 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 will 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 you're 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 you your father and mother you you 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 going to force you to learn your Calculus even though you think it's a bit boring and they're going to the there's going to be all kinds of restrictions around you and you get annoyed as a kid because you think I want to 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 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 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 like the whole student voice thing and this you know 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 you know 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 cuz I now have the knowledge that it's better for me and I have the 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 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 you know for some of our children they might be the manager in a in 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 of of 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 made the world into a better place that's what you want you know 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 have whatever you want have a great time you know what that makes children miserable what makes children happy is the love of a a a 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 is because I stand on the shoulders of giants and what he meant by that Shakespeare Newton even Thatcher who went to Newton's uh well the equivalent Girls Grammar School they they all learned traditionally in Shakespeare's day they would memorize loads they would read Latin test texts how did Shakespeare become the great that he is he actually he 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 at top of the pyramid so just yesterday our year 11s grade Els 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 they're there oh my goodness Pizza that we ordered in from like dominoes you know and we had um 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 and they 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 and 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 little birdie 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 they've learned how to think through attaining and grasping that knowledge over over those 5 years and 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 in your jobs you're sorry the reason why you want to do well on your exams is cuz 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 going to 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 going to 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 because they're on the same Journey as the ones who are clever 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 um I showed them a picture of my uncle Harold my uncle Harold was from the Caribbean and he he he lived in in in Detroit eventually and he he he he this's this 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 a 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 the family 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 uh finding them jobs in McDonald's and so on uh in order because my father wanted to help his family come to a better country where they they would have a better life and um 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 I tell you in the 1940s it was pretty damn racist right life was hard for Uncle Harold but I never heard Uncle howold 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 work like hell not just for themselves and for me and my sister but they worked like health for their families to be able to bring them to Canada cuz 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 um you know it's funny I was watching this documentary about uh 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 SE conservatism because he'd been in 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 Etc became this black te you know I was this teacher and then eventually I just it all felt wrong to me and then over years okay so wait so I'm going to stop you there I'm going to stop you there because well this is why first we're out of time on this side yes but more importantly that's exactly what I want to delve into on The Daily wire side yes yes I'm sorry it's true I I I no no no that's fine no but that's a perfect well it's a perfect place to stop Paradise means walled Gard Garden right yes right right and the walls are there so to make the garden flourish EXA Eden 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 and I could see your kids participating in that at Michaela School so congratulations on that so for everybody watching and listening we're going to switch to the Daily wire side now and I'm going to talk to Katherine 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 Katherine for walking us through Michaela 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 yes when I went to your school because I could see that and it's so rare and it's 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 y the thing is it's I I I 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 but you figured it out I know but and we're going to 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 uh well thank you for having me we'll meet again no doubt in the UK and and uh thank you to all you who've been watching [Music]