Katharine Birbalsingh, Teacher, Learning Without Frontiers,

Katharine Birbalsingh, is a teacher and author who was recently asked by the Conservative Party to speak at their party conference. Katharine discusses her experiences as a teacher working in inner-London secondary schools and calls for a return to a more traditional, fact-based approach to learning to provide a framework for those who do not have access to the benefits that learners from more affluent or middle-class backgrounds. Katharine draws a comparisons between the education provision in the private and state sectors suggesting that state provision could learn from the private sector more traditional approach to education. Presented January 11th 2011

[@MlleLarisa]

Wow! I'm liberal and a teacher but agree with her completely. I have just realised that I am educationally conservative!!! :) Respect to KB for voicing what has been boiling in my brain recently...

[@delaslight]

If only we could take these political words out and let common sense shine.

[@pauliberg3492]

Brilliant, she should get the Nobel Prize.

[@JeffUK]

People mistake chaos for freedom. Knowledge and self discipline is power. Ignorance is weakness.

[@redpanda2961]

I mostly agree but don’t quite agree with the ignorance part. I’d like to quote Daniel Boorstin, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

[@deplorabled1695]

If people hate conservative education so much.... simples, send your kids to your local state high school. Please allow those of us who want a traditional approach to education a chance to educate our kids the way we see fit.

[@newlywedbeth]

So true! It's not technology, dumbing down, or lack of boundaries. It's discipline, knowledge, and strong boundaries. My 13 year old just read the unabridged "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" last year for 8th level. He actually liked it! Geography, Oceanography, History, Philosophy, Psychology, action...all of his favorites are there! But his friends could not even fathom (pun intended) the first chapter. I realized that my son had built the skills over time. Difficult vocabulary, inference, as well as chronological study of history, watching "Octonauts," and school of hard knocks taught him so much. But his friends had not learned how to read, didn't watch TV with learning in mind, and were the ones dishing out the hard knocks out of frustration. They don't have parents read to them at bedtime as we do. They don't have individualized education plan as we do (we homeschool), and they don't have parents who taught them right from wrong. It doesn't take money or technology. We make $40k a year. My husband built our home computer. We write on the back of scrap paper he brings home from work. We eat out once a month, don't go on fancy vacations, and eat beans and rice quite often. But my son is deliriously happy.

[@ColeyTrejo]

She’s brilliant. Inspiring.

[@captainsleeman9787]

Brilliant, and what she has done since has proved to be prophetic

[@psantini2968]

Interesting to look at the audience and see those who are attentive and interested, whether they agree or not, and the lost zombies who are staring down at their phones throughout. Whatever you could say about this presentation, it was certainly not dull for anyone who cares about education. I wonder why so many of them could not even pay attention.

[@philiplancaster9668]

Yes, and those were probably teachers.

[@silviasanchez7619]

Maybe it's due to the goodies they have in their hands 😁😄

[@cavendish009]

She is inspirational !!! WELL SAID !

[@cynthiaacevedo3286]

I am a retired teacher,I like you very much Keep going and fighting

[@mickk3051]

Brillant Teacher with a powerful message.

[@Andy77337]

Wow Katherine is exceedingly good

[@nihanibrahim212]

Wish me luck she’s gonna be my high school teacher

[@naz-yk6rm]

@100k subscribers with 1 video challenge. yes

[@naz-yk6rm]

@100k subscribers with 1 video challenge. I am indeed

[@burleybater]

You'll be fine. Two years ago? You are fine. Carry on.

[@a81758]

You already have luck if Katherine is your teacher.

[@mmille10]

I listened to an interview with KB from 2019, and she referred back to this speech. My goodness, I don't understand why she got so much heat for it. There was nothing that set my hair on fire. It was a pretty tame speech on education. She explained a rationale for the heat, in the interview, saying that she got a lot of resentment from people who felt like they're owed something from her, and others like her. They felt she betrayed that obligation. Well, I think they're taking their eye off the ball in a big way. They shouldn't be worried about what she owes them. They should be thinking about their obligation to their students.

[@burleybater]

The reason she got trashed was that she showed them up. The public school shills and shirking sharks. The progressive post modern idiots whose "teaching philosophies" often don't include much actual work put into the job. They are indoctrinators/activists first, and teachers last. But the thing that really had them on a witch hunt was the fact that the score results from their classroom methodologies were absolutely abysmal. Talk about egg faced scarlet embarrassment. Of course she was advocating (as she has done ever since, and successfully so) for a return to a tried and true basic fundamental approach to traditional education methods. Discipline. Rigor. Strong study habits. Applied dedication to the cause of education. Devoted and inspired teaching staff who are in it for the glory of their students' success - and proof that all the tired old tropes that pave the way to failure - don't work, do not do kids any favors, mimic the same tired old blather about the soft bigotry of low expectations, and much more. New age teachers are lost in the quagmire of identity politics and absolutely straitjacketed by the restrictions of callout culture, cancel culture, and just bad culture all around. Marginalized school kids are the cannon fodder for the culture war they wage - all for the purpose of proving a political point that is more lie all around than any semblance of the truth. Katharine's kids reside in an academic joy. I know. I've seen it. It can bring ruddy tears to your eyes, to witness it. Because the kids excel. They don't just succeed. They fly. As if we've forgotten what that looks like? As if we remain stuck in this idea and attitude that unless you're part of that exalted South Asian and East Asian cultural model, you can't possibly be capable of competing at this level if you're simply a person of colour with a low income single parent long background history of the lowest working class. These kids rise above. And they rise because of an education that hands them the key. And that is what Michaela school does.

[@a81758]

Well said.

[@AS_210]

Was this "THE SPEECH" that drove them all crazy? I recently discovered her (in 2024) and have heard her refer to "that speech" in a few interviews and the backlash she got for it (which included her being quietly cancelled and not able to really work as a teacher in State schools anymore, leading her to open her own school in the face of fierce opposition). I've just watched this video now, and honestly (cos I didn't read the description), if not for your comment, I wouldn't have guessed that this was "THE SPEECH" that caused all that.

[@mmille10]

@@AS_210 - It's my memory that this was "the speech." It's been a while since I've paid attention to that controversy. She must've talked about the name of it, or the date, and where she spoke, in order for me to find it, because rather like you, I first heard about it through an interview with her. My memory is the controversy was about how she valued Western traditions, and merit, and said we're letting students down if we don't pass these on, and further, disparage them. I read some years back that there's been a war on merit, calling it "racist." There's certainly been a war on the Western tradition, calling it "racist, colonialist, oppressive." That's the only way I can explain the backlash.

[@AS_210]

@@mmille10 Oh this IS "the speech" (I've since read the description) What I was highlighting in my original comment was that the fact that THIS is "the speech" that caused all that backlash (they actually worked hard to stop her from opening her school - that battle lasted over 3 years) just shows how ideologically possessed and cult-like a lot of these people are. Any - and I mean ANY - deviation from the "party line" will be met with a heavy response.

[@rareword]

Discipline makes you free.

[@wanefelicia8779]

Lmfaooooo

[@cellbiologyshorts9105]

Surely you must know where that statement is headed!

[@ratusbagus]

KB did not use notes or a prompter once during this speech. Nor did ever use the lazy/hip slang , "kids" rather than children. At last, a thought leader who has no truck with the BS and groupthink of the educational establishment.

[@hibiscustea6886]

She’s a rare gem. I wish we had a similar, dissenting voice like hers here in the States.

[@deplorabled1695]

If row desks are so bad, why does every university lecture theatre in the known universe have them?

[@theoriginalwasa]

Im a university lecturer... trust me the progressives are trying to get rid of them...

[@peeceei7470]

Couldn't agree more. We export our more robust Cambridge o level exams abroad and our students are given watered down GCSE exams which are different for each school. Pants.

[@veroronnieronron]

IGCSE's are more challenging than GCSE's.

[@KeyStage2Maths]

I like Katharine Birbalsingh. But what's wrong with interactive white boards?! Children sit in rows facing it, and the teacher uses it to explain what the children need to be able to do. It's a tool of traditional, teacher-led learning. I would have expected the 'group work' and 'less teacher talk' crowd to be the ones who have a problem with it!

[@Cnoted33]

I can definitely see Tracy Ross playing Katharine in a TV series

[@katherinewilliams4500]

WOW. Well said.

[@MariaSpooon]

Katharine, Please put all of your lessons on line, please.

[@TallPoe]

I agree, technology is all well and good, but as the lady points out, some of her students couldn't hold a pencil, the education system needs a serious reboot. Money has to be weaned out as it is invaluable to learn in this life and benefits everyone in the long run. There is a feeling of hopelessness across the board in state schools, and these young people are far from stupid. You could have the online school for academic work and a school for the more physical lessons and practical parts of the academic subjects. The plus point there is that you would have more room in the school but still have a school. It really is that simple, but you do get those who make a meal out of everything, or just deliberately make it harder while cashing in on an education system that should be cheaper and more accessible, but instead is doing the opposite for good old fashioned greed.

[@kynchan3332]

Holding a pencil is taught at nursery starting from 3-4 years old. It requires little dexterity. If they can't hold a pencil in secondary school starting at age 11 there is something seriously wrong with them, mental retardation and nerve damage needs to be tested for. If they are severely retarded they should not be in secondary school and certainly not attempting to become the next Shakespeare.

[@burleybater]

For a real good time, tune in on one of Katharine's celebrated rants about kids and smart phones. They don't mix. She starts by banishing them from her school (dropped at the door) and if she had her way, they'd be banished from their lives, period. She has so many excellent points to make on this, that I'm more inclined to agree with her, than not.

[@jbridgehall4]

Well said!!

[@livingadventures5623]

And in 2019...you owned it!

[@deal2live]

Fluent with Tracey she absolutely owned it! She is an inspiration! www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/22/britains-strictest-schools-first-gcse-results-four-times-better/

[@lurlenejones456]

"The refirmers misunderstand what ought to be in that bag of goodies."

[@Markart50]

A Wonderful Woman.

[@smt.mkpatel280]

Are you saying the ongoing traditions of Oxford and Cambridge are stuffy places and that students possibly shine brighter in other establishments as a result of their good upbringing?

[@spencerhardy8667]

Why do I keep thinking of Sideshow Bob?

[@burleybater]

In spite of all that has happened here in North America in the past 11 years since this was recorded - the rising dropout rate (from public schools) of parents homeschooling, switching to private and charter schools, and whatever other alternatives they can manage the time or the money for (and I don't blame them one bit). The fact is that a pretty sizeable number of school age children (K-12) have no alternative but public school. They are not attending the public school system necessarily because their parent(s) are in love with it - but rather, because it's the only choice there is. You can easily see how this creates a two-tier system, not unlike the health care situation, the legal representation model, and a fair number of other benefits that are not available to all or even a large majority due to distinct lack of equal opportunity. I don't really care if a "culture" dooms certain kids from certain racial backgrounds to systemic illiteracy, and life drowning in an astonishing lack of awareness or understanding of much of the world they inhabit. Kids don't start out fashioning their futures around the same time they cut their first tooth. They are played by the conditions in which they grow. Blaming parents is a fool's game and a cheap shot. There was a time when po' kids all over the damned place had a sizeable shot to get an education better than a lot of middle class kids wind up with now. Why? Because the educational model was not constructed to fail them, in the way it does now - with 8 out of every 10 hours of school time devoted to gender, race, feelies, social engineering, and other hocus pocus adventures. The other two hours being devoted to 5th-rate fake academic slop. We might think this is an exaggeration? Think again. If there were a public and a political will to provide quality education to all child citizens from the get-go, we might get somewhere. But there isn't. And the fact that there isn't is on us. Blaming federal and state administrations, and basically any and all elected officials who don't give us the required opportunities for the desired results - depends for its outcome upon an informed, inspired and determined electorate. The public model requires an attitude (much like shared insurance risk) of respecting a collective risk. Instead of "I'm not paying one thin dime toward educating someone else's child!" While of course, all kinds of people contribute all kinds of money to public resources that your family benefits from. There are very few Bill Gates's in America who could afford to buy all their own critical services. The rest of us have to make do with a publicly shared contributive responsibility to a common good. If that common good becomes so passe - it won't be long before it becomes a very uncommon awful. And finally. It should be painfully obvious why the conventional approach to education as supported by the vast majority of teaching personnel in the UK is failing working class, marginalized children of color so spectacularly. This has become a stereotypical and elitist attitude, one that promotes the interests of middle class and upper children (the ones with that "bag of goodies") compared to all the children who do not possess these resources at home. Promoting the haves, against the have-nots.

[@ronaldfreeman4532]

I was effective in the NYC public schools with P.A.T.C (that commonwealth chic, Patsy!) - Preparation Active teaching Time management Consistency! Of course, other than the Science teacher, Ms Williams (from Barbados), we were the only two teachers in the Module (four sets of 6th grade classes in one section of the school) who enforced discipline. Mih nah joke, as the Caribbean folks would say.

[@maturingempath5071]

Active Literacy

[@katherinewilliams4500]

Rather comical that the moderator's last word was to appear to apologize for such an intimidatingly successful group of elite educators, when in fact they were most likely over confident and over 'qualified' failures. She wasn't intimidated at all, no, not in the slightest😏

[@kynchan3332]

If we go back to the past where education was meant to be awesome, Gruesome would be someone leaving school early to go into unskilled menial work, have a place in the military forces if applicable, rotting in jail or put in some mental ward to be studied. It is only more recently where everyone was fit for University and could be saved.

[@kynchan3332]

People have different abilities. There are many different bags of goodies - not just one. Different people and different bags of goodies. Education should go hand and hand with work. If a person finds joinery and carpentry to be their forte they should work and be educated in those fields. Concentrating and becoming highly specialized in those narrow fields is where value is created fastest. If we took carpentry there is no end to the learning either eg types of wood, techniques, process, tools and new knowledge. The student gets to keep on practicing those skills to really create value and then experiment to turn new concepts/insights into reality. There is a real pleasure in acquiring wisdom, working with it, making it useful to others and further learning in that narrow field to develop and improve what is currently in existence. Looking at the world many of the innovators and entrepreneurs have come from apprenticeships or were self taught. Many had very little formal education. Notable examples include Johnson and Johnson, Soichiro Honda, Lee Kum Sheung, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and so many others. Traditional education just makes everyone the same. A world with everyone the same is not a world that works.

[@knowledgeandpleasure]

I think you missed the point a bit regarding the “essentialness” of the bag of goodies she’s talking about. They would be universal. Specialization would still be an option in addition to the essentials, but the essentials should not be abandoned because they allow a foundation for success in specialization anyway.

[@kynchan3332]

​@@knowledgeandpleasure ​ The core essentials are reading, writing, arithmetic, some additional lessons on values (especially those pertaining to surviving/thriving through hard times), putting students through hardship to bring out those values and always emphasizing networking. Traditional education is too slow in a rapidly changing world. The majority of politicians and teachers are too slow to recognize how fast the world of work is changing to be able to add real value. What's more many have some strange theoretical picture of what the world of work demands and are happy to craft curricula to suit that but bears little to actual reality. If education does not prepare children to face the reality of work what actual purpose does it serve except for employing teachers and making parents feel warm inside. When you join a school as prestigious as Eton, it is the connections you make that really adds value. If students are not making connections they are largely wasting their time and their parent's money. Such an institution will prepare students to pass exams but that is a tiny piece of its true value. (Few people will ask you for your grades at school past your first job, although a single endorsement from a contact will almost always be more useful. No bank asks you for your grades at school when deciding to give you a loan in most cases. When buying a business, listing a business on the stock exchange or issuing bonds no one asks for your grades - they could not give a damn.) Now, should you not have contacts you will really need to prove your ability, what else you can add and all that requires a degree of specialization to set you apart. A really powerful pairing would be both connections and value enhancing specialization relating to the work.

[@kynchan3332]

​@A Z Few people write letters, it is something relegated to the past. Communication via email is usually very brief and to the point. You do not need to write a long letter to buy a business for instance, nor to sell it, or even for setting up contracts, invoicing, allowing credit, chasing up debt (in many cases there are templates for each situation) etc. A broad variety of subjects unto the ages of 14-16 is usually fine, then specialize in what needs doing.

[@iamarugbyfansa1031]

@@kynchan3332 Not everything is about Business Business Business !!

[@kynchan3332]

@@iamarugbyfansa1031 If you are rich already and don't need to work you can enjoy the free time and leisurely pursuits. Most people have to climb and concern themselves with work and business or they won't even be able to provide a good life for themselves never mind their families and then there is retirement to be concerned about.

[@Hereticalable]

@tonowicz1 You've obviously had no military training if you think anyone can make an army. A well run army is a lot more open than you think - but there is structure, discipline and order - something we lack in modern society. Why can't proposed solutions be simplistic? Why can't ideas from the past be examined if they worked better than what we have now? What are you afraid of? A little bit of conformity? She's hardly proposing we become a military state run like Nazi Germany for goodness sake!

[@sixtiksix]

Would love to get her over here in 'merica...after the school system, she could straighten out the Department of Defense and then maybe run for POTUS...

[@burleybater]

I think America is going to have to find its own version. She's far too busy over there in Wembley. But hell, I'm sure America can flush out that certain someone to kick start the engine.

[@Binman186]

My friend, might I suggest something? Wikipedia profile for the speaker - tells you that she lost her job talking at the Tory party conference about how bad the system is. You can actually youtube the video /watch?v=XekkQ3HG2lg Regarding language vs ICT, its been long known that language learning is a powerful way to open neural pathways. ICT, in fact, is so redundant because many kids are, somewhat, computer literate from home. The rest takes about 2 days - crazy to spend so long teaching it.

[@theartofhealthycooki]

Gruesome wasn't saying he wanted to learn Shakepeare at all...

[@JLaw954]

Couldn't agree more. He was just being a jackass.

[@robertthomas3777]

Don’t throw baby out with the bath water - 😂😂😂😂. You said it. Just add some warm water.

[@JuneAdams-li9sy]

School without books? Sounds nutty. But it's true. The Calgary Board of Educattion built a school without a library space. No books allowed. No book budget. Some of the teachers came to the book supplier where i worked to buy books for their students, using their own money . They did this because some of their students couldn't absorb knowledge ftom screens.

[@ragyfish]

damn right. UK really sucks now

[@speed.runner9852]

Deadd vidd

[@philiplancaster9668]

Lefty urban 'teecher's response to the first comment Birbalsingh says: "Ee-ohh! NO child is un-teachable!" And there we have the nub of the problem. When I first started teaching in state schools some forty years ago, you might have 2, maybe 3, primary-age children who were deemed 'slow readers'. By the time I left teaching in 2005, you'd get a class of 30 9-year-olds, and 10 or twelve of them were 'slow'. Wtf is going on? How were we asleep on watch?

[@hasib4joy]

What ever you say what ever you do, children should not study more then 4 hours a day in total.

[@JLaw954]

I hope she isn't holding up David Cameron and Boris Johnson as exemplars of a terrific, traditional education. Those two clowns have held the highest office in the land through reasons other than intelligence. Eton gave them the 'Golden Ticket' that allowed them to seek contacts who would promote them way above their ability levels simply because they had the right background. Boris was a joke as a journalist, a part-time Mayor of London who could only work to the background noise of clicking cameras, and now he is a floundering mess of a part-time Prime Minister surrounded by other braying, clueless toffs.

[@tonowicz1]

I think you mean treated 'simply', rather than 'simplistic'. In order to create a truly simple system first you must personally navigate a plethora of complexities. One must be aware that a system will never reach a conclusion. The capitalist culture is fundamentally flawed, so although one can achieve superficial success through force, eventually one's system will self-destruct. I see nothing new offered here - only singularity, linearity and literality. Address selfishness and selflessness.

[@tonowicz1]

A rose-tinted over-reliance on the assumed greatness of the past, is just as pointless as an over-reliance on the technology and philosophies of present day. Her intentions are well-meaning, but this seems too simplistic. I don't hear any solutions to problems here, I just hear reform through regression. The answers to such complexities are never neat and tidy standards of parenting, teaching styles, government policies and so on. Anyone can make an army, but is that how we all want to live?

[@jaydaksy4094]

Yet it’s working for all the children who go to her school.

[@burleybater]

@@jaydaksy4094 Yes but you know some people will argue all day long with success. Just on a technicality, don't you know. A lot of very strange people have recently put in an awful lot of work figuring out how to endlessly complicate simplicity. It brings them a strange shoulder-dropping sense of diminishing anxiety, and jaw-dropping self-aggrandizement, to create some vague sort of proof that years of brain-numbing thought salad have not been in vain. The kids just don't get a break, it seems. Even what works is decidedly too good for them. Apparently.

[@wanefelicia8779]

So glad i never went to her school

[@a81758]

Her students are very lucky to have such an amazing leader.

[@NickName-di3wp]

Absolute rubbish! Out of date out of touch tosh!

[@delaslight]

Absolute truth. I am a therapist i have worked with school. She is right on point.

[@a81758]

Up to date and in touch does not necessarily mean better. In fact, it's worse.

[@Guardian898]

God she makes me sick! Doesn’t deserve any of the sympathy she is receiving! It’s disgusting the way that she allowed a child at her school to be shown, named and ridiculed at a party conference. Who does she think she is?! If people knew the real way she had acted she wouldn’t have half as much sympathy from anyone. Absolute disgrace to her profession!

[@buttheclouds]

Cleary YOU can do much, much better. We hold our breaths.

[@burleybater]

Ahhhhh, well now. I have to remind myself that this reaction is 11 long years old. How times change. Evidence laughs back. Some very strange thing, we're not sure if it's animal, vegetable or mineral, crowds the landscape and for some strange reason, is determined to hold the common schoolchild hostage to a great and pandering need for common mediocrity. All in the name of....? It was never about the kids at all, was it?

[@rogeralsop3479]

None of my teachers were that attractive.