National Identity Should Be Part of Education | Katharine Birbalsingh

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 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 ask 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. I have videos of you talking about different ideas, little clips, and I'll use a clip. There's a lovely clip of you talking with John McWhorter, actually, that I use. And, 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 live in your heads, and you're quite happy to live in your heads. But that actually, for most people, we are group animals and that we need to belong to something.

And I show them that and I say, "Well, isn't that interesting? Because that's what we're doing here at Michaela: we're creating a group culture where we are part of the school and where we are part of the country."

So, uh, uh, England is playing in the Euros at the moment next Thursday at 5:00 p.m. England is playing Denmark. We have made a massive deal of this; we have English flags all over the school. We've invited the kids back after school to watch the England game in school, and there's loads of kids that have signed up.

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 Ghanaian, I'm Jamaican, I'm Iranian," etc., or "I'm Hindu, I'm Muslim, Britain isn't for me."

You know, we sing "God Save the King" every week; we teach them their history. We celebrate the King's birthday on Friday. Just so yesterday was the King's birthday, and so we had little cakes with the British colors on them, and we had all our flags. Our conversation for the lunch topic was about Britain, so we do all of this stuff to bring us all together so that we can be one big happy family.

And I don't think people realize just how much schools contribute to the cohesion of a country and just how much schools are required for a country to succeed. And, um, and so we just forget about them, and we forget about kids. And partly, I think that maybe this is because teaching has historically always been a female profession.

So people always think being a pilot, "Oh my goodness, it's so glamorous, it's so hard," etc., because it historically has 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 planes are automatic. I mean, it really isn't that hard.

Whereas teaching is so hard to do it well, and running a school is 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 in it?" We Westerners say, "Well done, you're so clever." And in the East, what they say is, "Well done, you tried really hard."

And that means that the next time the Western boy tries, he thinks something he can't do. He thinks, "Am I clever enough to do this?" And if he doesn't feel clever enough, then he won't try. Whereas in the East, they think, "Well, I tried hard the last time; try hard this time, and I will succeed."

And once at a conference, I said this, and a Chinese woman came up to me and she said, "Absolutely 100% agree with everything you say, except that in the East they wouldn't say 'Well done' at the beginning," which made me laugh.

Yeah, right, right. Reward is harder to come by.

Okay, so let’s use that. I have another question for you then. So I spent a lot of time studying the literature on the prediction of performance, and you can predict how well people will perform in a complex environment by measuring their general intelligence and their conscientiousness. Those are the best two predictors.

Now, your school is not a selective school, so 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, an average population, and yet your kids are advancing very rapidly, and they do extremely well on objective tests.

So now, I saw how effective your teaching was, but I'm quite struck by that. And so what I would like to know is, you know that there's great differences in people's innate abilities, and, and, 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 reach 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. You mean all you are? That's not an easy thing.

The people who are putting you down for accomplishing that have some real thinking to do because what you did purely on the objective side is people would have regarded that as impossible, so they don't get to play that game. But I agree, it's not all you're doing well.

And so what you're talking about there is being able to live a life of dignity.