Is Classical Education the Key to Reviving the West?

Katherine Birbalsingh, headmaster of a private school, joins host Eric Metaxas on Socrates in the Studio. Birbalsingh found herself in the middle of a public debate over the UK school system after she began speaking about the deficiencies she saw as a teacher. The challenges she faced led her to found a school and initiate a reform of Classical Education to combat public education’s “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Listen in on their conversation in this 48-minute video.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

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Special thanks to Waterstone for sponsoring Socrates in the studio. Season three.

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In a day and age where we. There are all kinds of problems around multiculturalism. I feel we’ve found the secret to it and how to make it work under an umbrella of conservative values that we all buy into under the umbrella of Britishness, where we have a British flag flying outside. And when the World Cup is on, we all are rooting for England, whatever our color, whatever our religion, etc..

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I think that those elements of a school often people ignore. And both on the right and the left, I’d say, well, people don’t necessarily realize the impact that schools have on a country. And that if you’re fighting for your country and you’re fighting for the West, schools must be part of that conversation.

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Welcome to Socrates in the studio where Socrates in the city, the city in this case being Londinium, as they used to say in Roman times, I’m Eric Metaxas, and we’re talking largely, about the question, the large question, what is the future of the West? Today to discuss that question. But more specifically with regard to classical education, I have as my guest, Katharine Birbalsingh.

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I hope I pronounce that correctly. We’ll find out in a minute. She’s headmistress and co-founder of Mikayla Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela, that’s the name of the school is known for its tough love behavior, systems, knowledge, curriculum and teaching of kindness and gratitude. Katharine read philosophy and modern languages at the University of Oxford, and has pretty much ever since taught in inner London, inner city London.

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She was appointed commander of the order of the British Empire in 2020 by the Queen. I should mention that the school, Michaela was graded as outstanding in 2017. And in 2022, approximately 75% of all GCSE E’s at Michaela were graded. What we would considering United States from A to A+. So we’ll get into that.

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Katharine’s written two books, and added two more, including The Battle Hymn of the Tiger teachers. Katharine Birbalsingh, welcome to Socrates in the city.

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Thank you for having me.

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I’m. I’m nervous about whether I pronounced many things. The your name, for example, ruble saying. Is that right job, Harry? What kind of a name is Birbal Singh?

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Well, yeah, it’s, my father is Indian. Guyanese. And the word, the name Singh, actually, is a Sikh name and should really be on its own. And. Yeah, really is normally for men. Yeah. Now, in the day when slavery was abolished in the Caribbean, the British brought over indentured servants from India. And these were Dalit people.

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So the untouchables as as people would know, and they were brought over from India. And so my grandmother was born on the boat on the way from India. And, I mean, I never I’ve never met her. And, you know, I never met my grandfather either. My, my father’s parents and, well, so the Indians arrived, and there is a caste system in India and Brahmins at the top, untouchables at the bottom.

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And having moved to another country at that point, people tried to seize, you know, the opportunity to maybe change their caste in some way. Yeah. And so we imagine that the word Singh, the name Singh, was just sort of attached to the beer bottle, beer bottle would be and there’s actually beer bottles stories in India where this, this kind of joke are used to tell stories to the king.

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And wow, there’s like, stories that the Indians read to their to their children. So we imagine beer bottle was attached. Singh was attached to try and move them up to the warrior to cast. I don’t know, it is a very strange name.

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Well, I guess the the, but I just I’m glad I pronounced that correctly, you know. Is that the main thing? I guess, there’s so much I want to talk to you about, but let’s let’s. Most people tuning in are not familiar with your story. You were teaching in, you know, what you call it? Inner London. We.

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I guess we say inner city schools.

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Yes.

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With poor kids in these schools. Yes. And tell us your story. In other words, what happened while you were doing that when you just said, I’ve got to do something else or what? What’s that story? Well, I got led to the Mikayla school.

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Yes. Okay. So, my parents in the Caribbean, my mother’s Jamaican. I’ve always worked in the inner city with brown and black kids, wanting to, enable social mobility for them and to give them a chance at success. I used to write a blog, in the day when nobody wrote blogs, and it was called To Miss with love, which is.

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Now to miss with love. There are people, most people younger than I. I won’t get the reference.

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Yes.

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It refers to, a 1960s film starring Sidney Poitier, called To Sir With love, where he teaches in an inner city school. I don’t know if it’s Chicago or something like that, but. So you started to blog because you’re teaching at one of these schools?

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Yes. And I called it to Mess with love. And, I used to and my name was Miss Snuffleupagus in, in the blog.

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Now, I, I also happened to get that reference because I was one of the first watchers of Sesame Street. And when it came out in 1969. Yes. And I remember Mr. Snuffleupagus said, why in the world would you name yourself?

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Well, you’ll remember that, Mr. Stuff Lapidus, was Big Bird’s friend, and, he was this kind of mammoth. And no one could see Mr. Snuffleupagus except for Big Bird, because he was sort of the elephant in the room. So it made sense that I called myself Miss Snuffleupagus, which in the end was shortened to Miss Snuffy.

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And in fact, to this day, my Twitter is Miss Snuffy.

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Yes, I noticed that also. I looked you up. I love that. I want to ask you. So you’re this is going to be a problematic conversation, because I already want to talk to you about eight things, and we have room for like three. So you were teaching in inner city schools, teaching poor kids, you know, what we call minorities in the United States.

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And clearly, you saw that it wasn’t working very well. The the system in these schools were you were you were outspoken about that in your blog, but not publicly.

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Anonymously. Exactly. Because it couldn’t you weren’t not really allowed to say these things. I used to just write little stories, little money. Little Johnny got his money stolen today. Isn’t this dreadful? So-and-so got beat up today? Isn’t this awful? So-and-so brought a hammer in today and whacked somebody on the head or that kind of thing. And what I didn’t know is at the time, Boris Johnson, who later became prime minister, or Michael Gove, who later became education secretary.

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Various journalists were reading my blog quietly, I didn’t know. I mean, how would I know? In any case, I wrote this thing anonymously. Penguin were also reading my blog. They eventually contacted me and said, oh, we’d really like to turn this into a book. I said, okay, but it has to be anonymous because I’m not really allowed to say this sort of thing.

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They said, fine. It turns out that my publisher knew the what who was to become the new education secretary, Michael Gove. The conservatives in 2010 then won the election. She said to me, you need to go and tell him your thoughts about education so that things can get changed. I very naively went along to number ten Downing Street, actually, and said, here’s my list.

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These are the things you need to change. Can you fix the schools for us, please? Michael Gove said, well, why don’t you come and speak at our conference? Now, our conference is basically the equivalent to your political conventions. I didn’t know anything about political conferences and conventions. I said, well, you know, I need to be anonymous. And he said, well, you don’t need to give your name, but it will be out on BBC Parliament.

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It’s this channel that literally nobody watches. And I thought.

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Well, it’s like it’s like our C-Span or something.

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Okay, exactly.

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C-Span three yeah, exactly.

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I thought nobody watches it. It’ll be fine. Now, that sounds a bit silly now because of course, everything’s online in those days. I mean, it was still naive. It was a bit silly, but not as silly as it would sound now. There was no social media in those days and so on. Now what? I hadn’t really thought, I thought, well, it’ll get aired on BBC Parliament.

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Nobody will watch it and that’ll be the end. What I hadn’t considered is that, of course, once it’s been recorded, it can be replayed. This is the key point that I didn’t think of. And because I spoke, I suppose it was only a six minute speech or something. But I said certain things that made the audience quite, you know, interested, at this Conservative Party conference.

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And, they gave me a standing ovation, at which point the press turned to me and I, I was just teacher. I mean, I didn’t know, and I thought.

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You were outed as a troublemaker. Yeah, as a truth speaking, big troublemaker. You know, there were all these things that I see that are true, but I can’t say them. Or I could lose my job. I ostensibly that that’s the issue, right? You could lose your job. But did you at that time, think of yourself as someone who might be a force for good?

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Or were you just thinking, I have to work within the system? I am sorry a force for good in a larger sense, is what I mean.

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Oh no, I didn’t think. I thought I’d go back to school and get on with my life. I just thought, I’m coming here to tell everybody this is how it’s broken. Can you please fix it? And they’ll go away and fix it? I mean, I know that sounds hopelessly naive, but I was a teacher who mark my books.

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I didn’t pay any attention to politics. And actually, what ended up happening was that I was sent home and, essentially suspended, although not officially.

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And but what did you say that was so offensive? I mean, I at some point I have a quote, the system is broken because it keeps poor children poor.

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Well, that.

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Just saying that, of course, is incendiary, mainly because it was true.

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Well, I also said things like, black children fail because of what the white liberal does to them, you know. And what I was saying was, look, the crux of the speech was, I understand the left has done lots of good for, the poor kids, for black kids and so on. But we need to pull back now, and we need to maybe listen to what the conservative side is saying and that maybe some of those conservative values would, you know, have a place in our schools.

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And that’s just unacceptable. But most importantly, what was unacceptable is that I was speaking at the Conservative Party conference. Frankly, if I’d said the same thing at some union conference, it would have been fine. So, right. I just I sided with the conservative.

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Okay. So you said this, it blows up. What happens when do you decide.

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So I’m essentially kicked out okay. So so I didn’t decide I was kicked out.

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No, no I mean when did you decide to start.

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Yeah. Well because I didn’t I was kicked out of school and so I didn’t have any choice. I mean, it really wasn’t because I had this idea of, oh my goodness, I’m going to show everyone. Not at all. I just had to work. And so I thought, well, I know what I’ll do is I’ll set up my own school and then we’ll be able to implement some of the ideas that I want to implement.

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So it took us three and a half years, though, and I didn’t have any choice. I had to keep going because I was just living off writing. I was writing, journalism, blogging. But I mean, I was really I was living off my savings. The savings were going down and down. I was getting more and more worried. Normally in those days of free schools, it just started there copying your charter schools.

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They didn’t exist before 2010. In then you all had them since the early 90s. Michael Gove, the education secretary, copied the American charter school system essentially, and brought free schools into the mix in Britain. And so we I was there trying to set up the school. You were meant to be able to do it in the year, but we had so many detractors trying to stop us.

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So they would send people to our parent events. We’d have a parents evenings tell in a pub to tell people about, the school. There be all these black mums from the local market who would come along, and all of these white people had been bused in from outside of London with placards calling me Tory teacher, shouting abuse at me and then infiltrating the evening and standing up and shouting at me so that they would drown us out so that you.

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So you actually cared about children, about their schooling, and you wanted to do something about it. And many, many, many people wanted to stop you. I mean, yes, it sounds crazy principally because it is crazy, but it is. It’s extraordinary that we’re living in these kinds of times that you’re earnestly trying to, to, to help the situation. Is there nothing over here, in England like what we have in the United States?

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In the United States, over time, we’ve developed this, you know, we we have a lot of classical Christian schools, and we have a lot of, charter schools, and we have a lot of homeschooling. And, yes, you really seeing robust change in the United States finally. Yes. But was there nothing like that until 2010?

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No, exactly. There was nothing. We only had the state school system. I mean, you might have private schools, but that’s it, you know, so you the reason why we don’t have all of those schools, like the classical schools that you see in America, I always I’m amazed by it. Even to this day. We don’t have that kind of thing.

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But we’ve only been doing this for 15 years.

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So what is the what is the essence of our school? What you’re trying to do that is upsetting to people on whatever on the other side, so to speak.

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So why are they upset? I say that we’re teaching children small c conservative values. They don’t like the word conservative. It makes them very upset. They especially, I think, don’t like it when a woman of my color is saying that I’m not allowed to.

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You’re not allowed to say that. No, no. People of your color can only speak one way. Yeah, it’s the rule. But we don’t believe in rules. We believe in anarchy. But that’s different. So you. But your school, is it’s you. You were billed as, you know, the strictest, headmistress in the UK. You believe in rules and order.

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Yes.

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Which they also don’t like.

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That most people know that can go too far. But in the last 50 or so years, it’s been thrown. The baby’s been thrown out with the bathwater, where there’s very little of that. I remember already in the 70s when I was in school, they had, oh, there’s an experimental school across town where they have no there are no classrooms or there’s no wall or there are no grades, there’s no walls or this kind of stuff.

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And of course, that’s carried on for decades until you have chaos. And I assume that was the chaos you were dealing with in these inner city schools.

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Yeah. So absolutely, your man John Dewey’s, you know, much to be he’s at fault and Rousseau is at fault with, you know, you need to draw out of the child instead of putting it into the child. I mean, come on, we’re adults. We know more than children. We should be telling them stuff. And teaching them stuff instead of allowing them to sit in groups and lead the learning.

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Because there’s no adult who can be an authority in the room.

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It’s interesting because it’s a Socrates in the city conversation. I have to go to the things that are antecedent to what you’ve just done, that by mentioning Rousseau and Dewey, there are fundamental ideas which we would say are mistaken, but that they have been really foisted on children and families. And you saw because you were there that that those ideas were failing.

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Exactly. So the thing is, I used to be a sort of typical left leaning teacher. When I was at university, I read, Living Marxism and, you know, I was very much a lefty teacher. And then I went into teaching and sort of trying out all the ideas that you were taught at teacher training college and so on.

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And then I came to realize slowly, wait a minute, this stuff isn’t working. And actually, if I just go back to basics and do more of the sort of conservative stuff which just comes naturally to you, actually, you know, I think if you take a child who’s 12 and she puts out her dolls and she teaches them with her pretend little blackboard, she will do what we do at Mikayla, which is teach them stuff and then test them on it.

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You know, like you’ll have a class discussion. You’ll have some exercises to do. You’ll write stuff down instead of having a Chromebook or an iPad in every classroom and smartphone and earphones in, and general rudeness with children with the hands in their pockets and just slouching around all over the place. Now, you know when I say that sort of thing now they say, oh, Katharine come on, calm down.

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What’s the big deal? And I just think, well, it’s our duty, obviously, to help children be the best they can be.

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It’s this. I mean, I don’t know who said it, but it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Bush. The idea. Who’s the.

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Bush that.

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Did he, we didn’t write it, but, but the idea that we can’t push them too hard, the poor things. Yes. They and you know that that’s a lie. Yeah. And so you have. Yes. Dedicated.

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Because I tell you, what happens is you don’t push them because you feel sorry for them, and then they do really badly. And then what you say, if you’re on the left, you say, oh, well, you know what we need to do? We need to have quotas. So we’ll just push them in at age 20 into some job that they don’t have the skills for, because we never taught them the skills.

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But it’s okay because we’ll pepper around some black faces and some poor faces and some, you know, various people. So it looks like it’s a diverse intake. And then we feel good about ourselves. But what’s important is that the children be taught the skills and the knowledge that they need to be able to lead an interesting life.

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So in your mind, what is classical education? And then the bigger question is because I’m talking about the West is, is classical education to your mind key to, to the future of the West? If the West is to have a future.

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Yes. Well, it’s interesting. I mean, classical education, it depends. I wouldn’t necessarily describe us as a classical education school. Certainly the classical education schools in, in, in the U.S., they want to teach a lot of Plato and Aristotle and the, but what we are and we don’t necessarily do that at our school, but I think where we are at 100% in agreement is that you want to teach some of the greats, you want to teach the dead white men.

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You know, the thing I always think that’s interesting about dead white men is everybody always concentrates on the white bit and on the men bit, when actually the bit that’s most important is the dead bit. They’re dead. That’s why we want to teach them. Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years, and he’s been influencing literature for 400 years, which is why he’s interesting.

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The guy who’s writing right now, I mean, maybe one day he’ll be really interesting in 400 years. But right now it’s Shakespeare who is the guy we should be teaching. But because he’s also white male, we jump around and say, oh my goodness, we don’t want to teach him. It’s ridiculous. And it’s also the case for Charles Dickens and so on.

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And the fact is that if you want children to be British or American, you’ve got to look at your history and teach them the history of your country, the geography of your country and the literature and the artists and the musicians and so on and so forth. Now, of course, in America, you do have more of a diverse historical literature.

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You know, you’ve got James Baldwin and you’ve got, Maya Angelou and so on and so forth, who you can teach, less so in this country, there’s there are little bits. And of course, those can be taught, but there’s less of it here. But what’s important is not to choose people because of the color of their skin, but because they, they belong in the canon, because their writing is such that it deserves to be there.

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You realize? I mean, just as you talk, you know, you’re pushing all these hot buttons. The very idea of a canon, the very idea of making the judgment call that Shakespeare is great. Yes. And, you know, whatever novel came out five years ago is not as great that in other words, if we’re going to talk about the values that that would undergird, the West or, that would help kids get educated, you’re it’s a, it’s a minefield for, for people today because they are troubled by these very ideas.

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Yes. No. That’s right. Because they see everything through the lens of identity politics. And they don’t understand that people are so much more than the race, the gender, the sexuality, their religion. And it’s because they’re all clamoring up that mountain of victimhood to try and claim that they are the biggest victim, when actually, whatever it is, whatever obstacles they have been in their life may be race, it may be gender.

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It may be that your mother died when you were six years old. It may be that you know you had a hard life at home and nobody actually knows this. You know, the thing about race is that it’s obvious you can see it on someone, but there are a whole variety of obstacles that people will have been jumping over.

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You know, who may not be, you know, black or brown, etc.. The fact is that, there are obstacles. It’s what makes life interesting, frankly. It’s through jumping over those obstacles and learning how to succeed despite those obstacles. That’s what brings meaning to your life. You’ll find many a trust fund kid who ends up really quite depressed and miserable because everything’s been given to them.

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You don’t want that, right? What you want is not too many obstacles because the too many that’s, you know, but you want some obstacles and then you want the skills and the knowledge and the practice and the habits to be able the habits of mind to be able to overcome those obstacles. And the only way you do that is if you stress test children, put them in an environment in a school which gives them lots of knowledge and test them on it, and gives them opportunities to try out new things and to find the stuff that inspires them so that they can make a life for themselves.

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But if you’re going around thinking, oh my goodness, but you come from a poor background, I can’t possibly give you homework because you don’t have a desk at home. Well, great. And when they become functionally illiterate, well, you want to blame teacher because you’re the one that wouldn’t stress test them. And you know, I’m not saying it’s not harder for the kid who ends it lives in the inner city, who doesn’t have a desk at home and whose dad beats his mom or whatever it is.

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Yes, it’s harder for him, but that’s the one life he’s got. We’ve only got one life. You’ve got to deal the cards you’ve got, right? And then you got to make the most of it. Because suddenly being in a minute, you’re 75, right? And that’s it.

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00;23;25;18 – 00;23;27;21
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00;23;27;24 – 00;23;57;21
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Now how big is the Mikayla school? How many students are in the Mikayla and what are the what’s the age range? Yep.

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So from 11 to 18, just over 700.

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That’s that’s a big school. Yes. It’s you really. I mean, that’s extraordinary. And and I want to go back to what I said in the introduction that the kids are doing spectacularly. And in other words, even if someone hates you. Yeah. And everything you say, the results are astonishing and undeniable. Yeah. To the point where. Praise the Lord, the Queen saw fit to, give you the CBE.

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I mean, obviously that’s extraordinary. It’s amazing. So.

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Well, the reason for that is because of the influence we’ve had. So it’s not just this one school. We get, over 800 visitors every year coming to visit the school. Americans come, but also from across the world, mainly educators who are coming to learn from us and to see what we do. And then they take those ideas back to their schools and they really improve what’s happening in their school.

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So have you codified this? Have you written a book talking about what you’ve done in the school?

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We have. We’ve got two books, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers and also The Power of Culture, which is our second book. And, I mean, I’ve done many lectures and conferences and so on and talk to I go to, conferences just for teachers, and I give them advice. In fact, I’ve been working with a school in the Bronx, called Vertex Academies.

00;25;51;11 – 00;26;17;28
And a man called Ian Rowe. It’s his school, and he’s it’s a charter school, and he set it out to help the kids of the Bronx. And so I’ve been doing lots of work with them to help them make it into, a similar sort of thing as what we’ve got at Michaela. So I spent a lot of time just spreading the word, and, and we have changed things, I’d say across the country, actually, that many of our methods have now just become part of the norm.

00;26;17;28 – 00;26;34;07
And it’s what people do all over the place, and they don’t necessarily know it’s come from Michaela, but it’s now just part of the normal conversation, which is great to see. You know, my last frontier here. So I’ve, I’ve convinced them on line ups, I’ve convinced them on silent corridors. I’ve convinced them on the various, practical things.

00;26;34;10 – 00;26;34;27
Hang on.

00;26;34;29 – 00;26;35;15
Silent car.

00;26;35;16 – 00;26;44;12
Cuz you’ve convinced them on line ups. You’ve convinced them on silent corridors. Say more about that, because not everybody watching, okay? We’ll never know what you’re talking about.

00;26;44;13 – 00;26;49;23
Okay, so as an example, if you have a challenging intake, if you don’t have a challenging intake, then you don’t have to worry about this thing.

00;26;49;23 – 00;26;51;06
What do you mean a challenging intake?

00;26;51;06 – 00;27;13;04
You’re in the inner city. The kids come from backgrounds that can be challenging. In those schools, you will often have kids beating each other up, running down corridors, screaming doors, slamming other kids with the earphones in, the phones on. And it’s just an absolute mess. Now you go to a private school, you won’t find that because the kids are coming from different sorts of families.

00;27;13;07 – 00;27;33;13
So if you come to if you go to a school where there are challenging families, kids, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to be more strict. And, so lineups at lunchtime, they’re running around the playing. Do you just open up the doors and say, everybody come in. If you do that, there’s just tons of noise.

00;27;33;13 – 00;27;56;01
There’s, there’s, there’s they’re physical attacks. Kids get pushed and shoved and you have a million incidents that you’re then chasing all afternoon trying to figure out who punched who first and so on. If, on the other hand, you line them all up and there’s a whistle and there’s order, and then the kids come in in their lineups, one by one, each class going in in an orderly fashion.

00;27;56;07 – 00;28;09;09
Suddenly you have no more incidents if you have silent corridors. Now, in the day when we used to talk about silent corridors, oh my goodness, I mean, the progressives went mad. They used to say I hated children and I just wanted to force.

00;28;09;09 – 00;28;31;01
So when you say sound cadres, what you mean is that as the kids are going from class to class to the hallway, they’re not allowed to hang out. Gossip, talk. They need to simply go quietly. Yeah, yeah. This this seems, you know, to some minds, this is extremely draconian. What are you thinking of? How can you possibly. But but it’s a rule.

00;28;31;01 – 00;28;32;01
And you enforced.

00;28;32;01 – 00;28;59;12
It. Yes. And what they do is they say morning. So they’re not actually silent because we say good morning, morning. Good afternoon. And, the teachers are around. The place is morning, sir. Morning mass. And it’s just very polite and nice. It means it’s a minute and a half transition period. They get into their classrooms and, you know, if you’re an 11 year old with the reading age of a six year old, you need as much time as possible in your classroom to be exposed to your teacher, who can then help you with your reading so that it’s a win win.

00;28;59;19 – 00;29;17;10
So at first, those are the ideas that we’re pushing out there. And then our books, we talk a lot about all of these ideas and slow because at first it was scandalous. But slowly over the years people have come round to many of those ideas and they have been implemented in other schools. These days, I’m trying to push the small c conservative values point.

00;29;17;12 – 00;29;39;07
I’m having more difficulty with that one because people feel deeply uncomfortable with that word conservative. And my position is, you know what? The left used to be small c conservative. So the left used to be, I think about my own father, very much a man of the left, is a small c I grew up in a small C conservative household that was a Caribbean household.

00;29;39;13 – 00;29;58;16
So, most people from the Caribbean are small conservatives. What is it to be a small C conservative? Will you believe in personal responsibility? You are responsible for yourself. You own your life. You have agency. You can have impact on the world. You believe in a duty towards others that when you get a detention, you’re not just letting yourself down, you’re letting your whole class down.

00;29;58;23 – 00;30;17;22
You’re letting your form tutor down. And you feel bad about that, and tomorrow you’re going to do better, and you’re going to be a better version of yourself. Tomorrow than you were today. We believe in sacrifice, that, you know, you might sacrifice something that’s really important to you for the sake of the the whole so that everyone can be happy.

00;30;18;10 – 00;30;22;04
Now, these are all values that once upon a time, we all shared.

00;30;22;07 – 00;30;52;20
Well, that’s the thing that these are, they’re Western values. They’re they’re they’re they’re Christian values. I would say, and they were part of, of a shared heritage that you had here, throughout Europe, in America, and that it’s evaporated over the, over the decades. That’s right. So you’re actively going back to basics. In other words, it works.

00;30;52;23 – 00;31;20;21
You’ve proved that it works. And so why not do what works? But there are very people, very many people for whom these are, they’re they’re troubled, obviously, for some reason they’re troubled because they’re not. Now, you you say or have said that, that a lot of the I guess typically white liberals, they’re less concerned with helping the kids because if they were only concerned in that, then they would say, it works great, do it.

00;31;20;24 – 00;31;25;22
Then somehow assuaging their own guilty consciences. Yeah. Something like that.

00;31;25;24 – 00;31;51;07
Yes, absolutely. So look, identity politics, is never about how things really are. It’s about how things appear to be. So I think it’s fascinating how, Donald Trump is in, the white House and suddenly all these Dei initiatives are falling by the wayside immediately. They just suddenly it’s like a deck of cards. I have to say.

00;31;51;07 – 00;32;11;08
I’m amazed. And it’s almost as if the American public never really believed in any of these initiatives in the first place. All of the big KPMG and Google and all of these institutions suddenly know we don’t want these anymore. And I think, well, I thought you really believed in them. Obviously you didn’t. And that’s because nobody believes in this stuff.

00;32;11;10 – 00;32;36;17
It is all performative. It is all pretense. Everybody’s doing it because they don’t want to be called a racist. They’re not doing it because they actually believe that it’s right. Right. And so the thing is, all of this anti-racism, I mean, all we’re doing is lining the pockets of Abrams, Kennedy and Robin D’Angelo and all these people who are becoming billionaires, our stupidity and our inability to stand up for what’s right, what they’re saying is wrong.

00;32;36;18 – 00;32;51;07
Once upon a time, we wanted to not be racist. That’s what we wanted. But they say, no, you can’t be not racist. You have to be anti-racist. So it’s not good enough to just try and be a good person. It’s not good enough to be kind and be grateful for what you’ve got. All of the values that we teach our children.

00;32;51;07 – 00;33;11;24
No, no, that’s not good enough. You have to go out and seek out the racism. Well, I’ll tell you what anti-racism does. It teaches us to be, performative because then put the black box up on Instagram and I’m not a racist, but, put some black faces in my, Google, team, and I’m not a racist.

00;33;12;01 – 00;33;41;27
And so it necessarily makes you performative, but it is not about actually being a good person, you know, story that’s interesting. Your, American KIPP, the, charter school KIPP, hundreds of schools across America. We are inspired at Michaela by KIPP. Amazing. The work that they do. In fact, we even stole their motto. So their motto was, and that’s a key word was their motto was work hard, be nice.

00;33;41;29 – 00;34;03;22
And when we opened in 2014, we thought, well, we really like that motto because you want all children to work hard and also be nice, but we thought we can’t keep that. So what we’ll do is we’ll call it work hard, be kind. And so our motto is work odd, be gone. A few years ago, after George Floyd, Kipp sadly removed their motto and they no longer have the motto of work hard, be nice.

00;34;03;27 – 00;34;25;19
And the reason for this is because, they were told that this was racist. It’s racist for white teachers to teach black kids to be nice, because that means you’re teaching black kids to be subservient. So slaves in other way, in other words. And so black kids can’t be nice. I mean, I the whole thing is just so crazy.

00;34;25;24 – 00;34;39;26
It’s absolute madness. I wanted to you’re you’re bringing up what I wanted to to mention eventually at your school at Michaela. You teach kindness and gratitude.

00;34;39;27 – 00;34;40;24
Yes.

00;34;40;27 – 00;35;06;20
Now, it’s an interesting thing because it reminds me of C.S. Lewis. At some point before I mentioned that the idea of teaching what we might call virtue. Yes. I mean, be nice is a very it’s a sloppy, modern way of of of of you talking about virtue. Be a virtuous person. Yeah. Gracious. Be this, be that, whatever that was once, part of the world of education.

00;35;06;20 – 00;35;32;28
It wasn’t just I’m giving you information. I’m teaching how to be exactly a better person. Exactly. World. So you teach kindness and gratitude. And I know in my lifetime, those ideas. People sneer at honor. They sneer at patriotism, they sneer at virtue. They all that sort of somehow there’s this cynicism that’s crept in. And so you’re, you’re going against that.

00;35;32;28 – 00;35;55;11
But C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, says something like, we sneer at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. And that, to me, seems to be at the heart of what we’re talking about, that there was a time when everyone knew that you have to teach kids these things, but that doesn’t arise naturally. Thank you very, very much.

00;35;55;17 – 00;35;59;14
Jean-Jacques Rousseau yes, but it doesn’t come naturally out of us.

00;35;59;15 – 00;36;00;04
Exactly.

00;36;00;10 – 00;36;06;03
And so it has to be taught. It has to be enforced. It has to be rewarded. Yes. And that’s what you’re doing?

00;36;06;06 – 00;36;25;22
Yes. And Rousseau himself, who had several children, who he put in orphanages and some of them died and he took no interest in, yes, he would have done well to go to Michela, frankly. I mean, the fact is that you do need to teach these virtues because, as you say, they’re not natural. And, they also have to be habitual ized.

00;36;25;24 – 00;36;44;04
So, every lunch hour, the children stand up and give what we call our appreciations. They stand up, they say, I’d like to thank my mom for waking me up early this morning. And then we then they say, on the count of two, one, two, eight, all the children clap and there’s 200 children there. And then another one stands up.

00;36;44;04 – 00;37;09;13
I’d like to thank Mr. Smith for giving me a detention, because he’s taught me that actually I was a bit bad at such and such, and now I’ve learned my lesson on the count of do one, do. And so they publicly express this gratitude, which means that the whole atmosphere of the school is one of I am grateful for what I’ve got, however little it is, and I know I have more than somebody else as opposed to I’m a victim.

00;37;09;13 – 00;37;20;29
It’s not fair. Look at those rich kids down the road to go to the private school. Everybody’s against me and I’m really upset and miserable and look at all my mental health problems. You know, if we don’t do that.

00;37;21;01 – 00;37;45;02
It’s so, it’s so encouraging to to listen to you and to to think, how God has used you and is using you. I mean, when you talk about 700 kids, in the school and then you talk about it becoming part of a movement because I was going to ask you, I said, this is something that obviously, if if the Queen, you know, now we say the Queen, do we still say the Queen?

00;37;45;02 – 00;38;07;19
I mean, because now it’s the king. It’s Queen Elizabeth the second, of course, but that she acknowledged what you’re doing. And you what? What a glorious, affirmation. What an extraordinary thing. And I it it seems to just that would have, you know, done a lot for for the movement. And so it gives me hope for, for England, frankly.

00;38;07;21 – 00;38;39;16
Yes. But of course, the work is on the ground. So it’s about winning hearts and minds, which is why we open up the school and we have all these visitors come. And, which is why I go to conferences and I speak as I do, I feel like I’m a traveling salesman going around the place trying to tell people what’s possible, because I want people to understand that our school is so much more than the results, because of course, we have had the best progress in the entire country for the last three years, and this has never been done before.

00;38;39;18 – 00;39;03;26
And we even had, results. In terms of our top GCSE grades last year that were, of a similar percentage to Eton, the top, private school boys boarding school in, in England. We had 52% grade nines, which is the top grade. They had 53%. So, we’re very proud of that.

00;39;03;27 – 00;39;15;02
This and this is absolutely astonishing. I mean, really, it is it’s absolutely astonishing. And I, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I’m just it that’s it’s magnificent.

00;39;15;04 – 00;39;52;09
It is. But I’d say what’s even more magnificent is the people our children become, you know, and that’s what’s most important to me. The, the environment that we have, where children are from, all different races and all different religions, and they all get on with each other and they don’t see race and religion as dividing them, you know, and in a day and age where we there are all kinds of problems around multiculturalism, I feel we’ve found the secret to it and how to make it work under an umbrella of conservative values that we all buy into under the umbrella of Britishness, where we have a British flag flying outside.

00;39;52;11 – 00;40;23;10
And when the World Cup is on, we all are rooting for England, whatever our color, whatever our religion, etc.. I think that those elements of a school often people ignore. And both on the right and the left, I’d say, people don’t necessarily realize the impact that schools have on a country. And that if you’re fighting for your country and you’re fighting for the West, schools must be part of that conversation, because the future is the children, isn’t it?

00;40;23;13 – 00;40;43;06
Well, that’s I mean, of course, and that’s the that’s the question, you know, or is classical learning or this kind of learning, traditional learning, the the future of the West? I mean, I would answer my own question, say it. It has to be because where we’ve been going, clearly doesn’t work. You’ve seen that. I mean, you you’ve you’ve really seen that.

00;40;44;16 – 00;41;15;16
But the idea of teaching virtue, the idea of teaching patriotism, that’s another one of those things that has been sneered at, you know, really since the 60s, a lot of this stuff has come into the middle of culture in the 60s, basically, like a lot of this. That’s right. And is anti-authoritarian rules are bad. Yes. You’ve discovered no rules can be very good actually, and can can help people that a lot of this stuff does come from the 60s.

00;41;15;16 – 00;41;42;22
And the idea that you’re teaching these kids to be patriotic, to say, like, I love my country. My country has a great heritage. Of course, it’s not perfect, the same the States, but not to celebrate it. It’s a little sick, actually, but there’s something about the West. I would say that it’s tended toward this place where we are now, where it has the sort of the the seeds of destruction are in it that it, it, it hates itself is it’s kind of guilt and self-loathing.

00;41;42;22 – 00;41;45;05
That’s right. And that’s, that’s what you’re pushing against.

00;41;45;07 – 00;42;07;26
Yes. And the thing is, is that there’s a difference between authoritarianism and being an authority. A mum or dad, of course, there in authority. What mum or dad says to the toddler, you get yourself across the street. I mean, that’s mad. Obviously we’re in charge, you know, and it’s just, it’s very strange the way in which parents and teachers want to be friends with their children.

00;42;07;26 – 00;42;23;05
Yeah. You know, there’s a wonderful quote that says you can be friends with your children either when they are children or when they are adults, but you cannot be both. So you have to choose, because if they are friends when they’re children, they’re not. You’re not going to like them when they’re adults. You know, we have a job to do.

00;42;23;07 – 00;42;31;22
We have a duty as parents, as teachers, we have a duty. And too much, too many of us have abdicated on the responsibilities that we have.

00;42;31;24 – 00;42;34;10
So where do you get all this stuff from?

00;42;34;25 – 00;42;55;00
It’s interesting you mentioned, Christianity. You know, one of my, teachers pointed out to me said, well, Katharine, you know, it is. And it’s also interesting because various, people of different religions will come to our school and they’ll say, gosh, you know, this really is a it’s very Islamic. Or they’ll say, oh, it’s very Hindu, or they’ll say, it’s very Christian.

00;42;55;03 – 00;43;05;20
And I suppose what they’re recognizing is that, the great religions of the world, have taught similar sorts of values.

00;43;05;20 – 00;43;40;01
Even even if the theology is not the same, which it certainly is not. Nonetheless, the idea of virtue. Yeah. There. Yeah. Idea of morality. Yes. Is there and you, you’ve, It sounds like you’re saying you’ve seen this across the world, across different religions and it’s important somehow. Yeah. So the idea that it’s not important that you can have this secular environment where we don’t deal with these issues of gratitude or kindness or honor or that, that, that, that simply doesn’t work.

00;43;40;01 – 00;43;41;26
But so keep going. It it seems.

00;43;41;27 – 00;44;07;21
Well, I grew up in a Christian household. My parents were Christian. And those Christian values, I suppose, have just embedded in me and, and, I mean, I’m first generation away from because I wouldn’t I’m not a Christian, but all of those values, I sort of take them for granted and and assume that they’re normal. But actually, I find lots of atheists don’t necessarily hold those same values.

00;44;07;23 – 00;44;33;06
Yeah. And and I just assume they’re normal and they’re not normal. And in fact, people get very upset by them. And. Yeah. And and I think we in the West have, underestimated just how much, they have propped up what the West has been and that we’re sowing off that branch. We’re sitting on the branch and sowing it all because we think we can live without those values.

00;44;33;08 – 00;44;51;23
And the West would not be the West without those values. And look, I’ve seen what it does for our children. I’ve seen what it does for our school. For our staff. You know, it was lovely. I just got this lovely card from one of my teachers. She’s been with us for four years, and she’s just left.

00;44;51;25 – 00;45;17;08
She’s moving out of London with her new family. She’s got a little toddler and, and she at the end, she said she was explaining to me in the card that the way in what she does for her little boy and her family is different for having worked at Michaela because her values have changed. And at the end she said, you’ll never know the impact that you’ve had on my family, but my son will, you know, wow.

00;45;17;10 – 00;45;19;09
And it’s just lovely.

00;45;19;11 – 00;45;41;00
You must have a sense that you were born for this, because just talking to you, that’s the sense that I get because it’s you. No, because it’s one thing to have ideas and to talk about ideas. But, you know, the world’s, the things happen because of people, and you, you seem uniquely gifted to to be doing what you’re doing right now.

00;45;41;00 – 00;45;42;24
You you must have a sense of that.

00;45;42;26 – 00;46;01;22
Well, that’s very kind of you to say. I don’t know, I just try and get through the day. I mean, I, I, I go around like my traveling salesman case going from place to place saying, listen to me. Schools are important. Children are important. And I just sort of keep going. I don’t know, I mean, I’m just me, you know?

00;46;01;23 – 00;46;23;24
I mean, yes, that’s that’s from your perspective. But it seems to me that, your, your personality, has a lot to do with, you know, being able to do what you do, which maybe just seems, you know, somehow normal. But if we’re very normal, lots of other people would be doing it. So, we’re we’re just about, out of time.

00;46;23;26 – 00;46;41;16
So let me ask you, finally, just this is a question. Do you teach C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books in the school? Or are they considered, I don’t know, too something to to teach because I I think they’re so spectacular. Oh, they’re wonderful. I can hardly say.

00;46;41;16 – 00;47;01;12
No, they’re wonderful. So they’re all in our library. Library. And and all the children will have read them. But because we started 11, you know, Narnia is perhaps for younger. So. But they, they read them when they first come, they’ll read them if they haven’t read them before. And they are in our library. But we, you know, you would probably teach them that elementary school rather than at high school.

00;47;01;14 – 00;47;20;08
Guess so. I guess so. I read them for the first time when I was 30. So. And I just think that they, they really they, they, embody so much of what we’re talking about. That’s that’s what I love about Lewis. It’s just there and it’s beautiful and it’s very British. It’s. Yes. It’s interesting to me.

00;47;20;11 – 00;47;31;23
So. Well, Katharine, just a joy to meet you and to hear about what you’re doing. I look forward to seeing much more of it. Thank you for being my guest.

00;47;32;00 – 00;47;39;19
Yeah, well, you’ll be pleased to know C.S. Lewis is in our staff library, so all the staff read him, too. It’s, Well.

00;47;39;21 – 00;47;40;23
Good. Good for you.

00;47;40;25 – 00;47;41;22
And thank you.

00;47;41;27 – 00;47;42;15
Thank you.