GGGG Ep 1 – The benefit of hindsight and lessons learned

Mark Taylor 00:00:00

Hello and welcome back to Education on Fire. Now, later this year marks the 10th anniversary of the podcast and we're also going to reach the milestone of 500 episodes. So I really wanted to celebrate this journey in a way that had meaning but also had a sense of purpose. And the question was always going to be, you know, sort of how and what that was going to look like. Then Professor Dr. Ger Graus OBE reached out to me about recording a series of podcasts following the release of his book through a Different Lens, Lessons from a Life and Education. Now, it's a real privilege and humbling full circle moment for me and a real highlight for Education on Fire and just seeming to be the perfect way to celebrate this 10 year anniversary. Now we've decided to name the series Gare Grouse Gets Gritty and it's an honest take on education in schooling. We will use each chapter of the book as the starting point for the first seven episodes, which will be followed by three episodes with expert guests covering early childhood, school schooling and then further in higher education. Now, while we discuss many of the issues we are currently facing in education, we want this series to be a catalyst for good. We want you to be involved and help raise awareness of the incredible kind, caring and supportive learning that has children at the heart of what we do. So whether you're a parent, an educator or a mentor, this is a chance to make a real difference in the global conversation we need to have about supporting children in their learning. As the phrase goes, it really does take a village to raise a child. So here are five ways that we can make a difference. If you have a positive story, a person or an organisation you'd like to share with us, please let us know. You can email mark@educationonfire.com and put Ger Graus Gets Gritty in the title, you can leave a short voice message educationonfire.com/message join me on the education on fire YouTube channel for regular live streams where we meet as a community and you can share those stories and information in real time through the comments or as a guest. You can use the hashtag educationonfire on your social media posts. And so that means that everyone can see how you are supporting children. Make that positive difference. Now, to wrap up the season, I'll host a live show with Gare and it will be shown on YouTube, but we'll have a limited number of people who can join us in zoom and have the opportunity to ask Gare a question in person. Now, to be one of those people, you'll need to be on the Education on Fire email list, which you can join@educationonfire.com so while we continue to hope that those with power start to understand and develop an education system fit for the modern age, not just the industrial revolution, we also want to make sure that we can make a difference together today. So my wish for this 10th anniversary year is that we can come together as a village to guide and celebrate each other and, and provide that learning environment every child deserves. If you haven't read Through a Different Lens, it's published by Routledge and we have details of this and how to get involved in the description. Thank you for everything you do and let's Make a difference Together. Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast, The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best, authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Fire podcast. We're not doing this as an interview. This is an ongoing season. We're going to have the heart of your book at what we're discussing, and obviously the insights and the journeys. And we've got some fantastic testimonials for people who were part of. Part of the book as well. So I'm really looking forward to where this is going. And we're just going to have this in the way of trying to bring the whole community of people who have children at the heart of their lives, whether they're teachers, whether they're parents, whether they're involved in education, and try and give us a chance to all come together to have this movement of maybe making education, at least from a conversational point of view to begin with, to be something that we can all rally around. And I think that's. That sounds like something we both want to be involved in.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:04:05

Thanks for having me, Mark. I think. Absolutely. I think we need to make education and schooling and the connection between the two. I think we need to make it much more of a societal dialogue. It feels to me that for many, many years there's a couple of people somewhere hidden in an office in London who decide what the rest of the country does. And then they spend a little bit of time pretending to ask people, mostly over the summer months, so that nobody replies. And then we have a policy that everybody's agreed with, apparently. And actually the education of our children needs to be a positive, sometimes difficult, ongoing dialogue, be that about the Youngsters themselves, because that's what we should talk about most, but also about what do we do with mobile phones in schools? And, and what are we going to do with AI? Are we going to scare our children or are we going to get them excited about it? I mean, I'd vote for the latter. And so the ongoing dialogue around that is incredibly important and it needs people like you, through your podcast to lead on this, to actually ignite that fire through Education on fire. Boom, boom. There you are.

Mark Taylor 00:05:22

Exactly. And away we go. And I think one of the really exciting things is that there have been lots of people in the media talking about their experiences with their own children. Has been quite a lot of sort of support and shows being made on terrestrial telly as well. So it's bringing all of those voices together. It's not about a particular part of education. It's like you said, having the child at the center. So why don't we get the conversation started in terms of you yourself, Obviously at the end of the book you mentioned your cancer diagnosis. How are you now? How was, how was that experience for you and take us into sort of that journey since we last spoke and. And obviously your experience with it.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:06:03

Yeah, thanks, Mark. It was so it's interesting how the cancer diagnosis and what's going on for the last 12 months is, is linked to the book. So I handed my, My. My draft, my final draft copy into Routledge to publisher on 1st December 2024. And on 4th December 2024, I went for an endoscopy, which is completely harmless because I just suffered from acid reflux. And my wife had convinced me quite rightly that I should go and have that seen to and get some medication and get on with life. What, of course, none of us knew was that when I went on that 4th of December, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, we need to have a word with you. You have cancer. It's. And it is where. It sounds really romantic. It is where the stomach meets the esophagus. It sounds like a date, doesn't it, really? And so, So a couple of things happened. One is you. You're completely bewildered and your head is in all sorts of places where you've never been in, in weird ways. You. You struggle with what you tell your children. You. You begin to write your will. You don't know whether it's spread or not. Stuff is going on. But bizarrely, I remember getting in touch with, with Bruce Roberts at the publisher at Routledge saying, I need to have the draft back because there's something to add before it gets published next year. Whoever reads this needs to know this. So I wrote right at the end of the book, page 186, I think I wrote that bit that says, this is what's happened right at the end. And, and then bizarrely, the whole production of the book, the proofreading, which photographs all those things, then helped me tremendously during those, those first couple of months, because what happens is people immediately begin to tell you, you've got to stop work now. So I tried that for about two weeks and I sat here looking out the window, going nuts, quite frankly. And then I said to my wife, look, I'm just going to carry on doing things as much as I can because at least it keeps my mind occupied. And the book was published on 11 April, and by which time I'd had my first round of chemotherapy. We'd had the PET scan. We'd been told on New Year's Eve that it had not spread, but we needed to be fast. On 28 April, I was in the operating theater for nine hours and then recovered, and then over the summer had another cycle of chemotherapy and on 24 October, was effectively signed off by the cancer hospital. So I'm now back under the medical care of the people who performed that very lengthy operation, and that recovery will take a while longer. And the book was very, very important at that time in terms of taking my mind off things and staying positive. That, that, that kind of, that almost unfrancked type of optimism. You know, I, I, I like the sunshine even when it rains. And, and so that bit happened. The book itself was an interesting project because Bruce Roberts heard me speak at a conference in London, I think, about six, seven years ago, and said, you've got to write your stories down almost in a kind of professional autobiography way. And I, my first reaction was, I hate writing. So I'm, thanks ever so much for asking me, but I'm not doing it. And, and occasionally they kept coming back and the answer was always no. And then a friend of mine, Rebecca Joecroft, who is the managing director of Westchester Westchester Education, then eventually persuaded me, knew Bruce, and the two got together. And I wouldn't say they ganged up, but they, they did persuade me and they were incredibly helpful in making it happen. And so Rebecca and I recorded long conversations which were then transcribed and became the baseline and the basis for the book. So, yeah, so the book and the illness go hand in hand in a good way. And there's A very important lesson. I'm very honored. I've been asked to speak at a conference of doctors and nurses next March, a conference in Sheffield. They're all cancer nurses and cancer doctors. And I've been asked to give the. Through the different lens of the patient. I'll probably be more nervous than for any other event, but I am tremendously looking forward to it because it made me realize how. It always makes you realize these things about how important the people around you are, how important it is, how important your mindset is, and how important optimism and positivity are and. And that you have to fight very hard to keep that. So I stopped. I. I started going to some support groups, for example, and one or two of those were moaning shops more than anything. And I stopped going because I knew I would get dragged down with. With it because that's what. What happens to me. So I deliberately sought out the positivity, and the book helped with that. So I shall be forever grateful to everybody who got me to do that. Long story, but I think an important one. And, and, and, and the cancer became part of the storytelling.

Mark Taylor 00:11:47

And I think there are. There are loads of things that just strike me hearing you talk about that. I think one of them is. One of the things you said about when we talked before was about when you ask children why they go to school, 80% of them replied, because we have to. So if you think back to that hope, what your enjoyment of life is, what we're actually doing to children as part of their education, if that's what they're thinking about at that early age, even then, it makes perfect sense to me that, you know, well, being mental health, how children learn, all of that, they're starting from that place of is, I don't know, downtrodden, maybe that's the word. But just. They're certainly not fantastic. I get to go and do this today, or I get to do that today, or what are these opportunities? If I'm just going because I have to, that's not a great place to start for any kind of learning. And, And I think the other thing that really strikes me is the fact that, I mean, I've been involved. I was involved with, With a hospice, and I was going in as part of their chaplaincy team. And I'm not any particular religion or anything like that, but there was an amazing person who was in charge of that, and I've been involved in somewhere, and he asked me to be part of the team. And I had the absolute pleasure and privilege of being able to speak to many people who were really suffering. And one of the most important things was one to be incredibly grateful for everything that happens in your life and understanding how that's all part of our journey, but also that every little thing that happens to you is something which you can, like you say, you can look at it a certain way and hopefully that optimism is a positive thing, no matter what the diagnosis or where you are. But the biggest thing, I think, was really that sense of what is it that we want to do? How do we want to make sure that our life looks from now on in? Because the reality is, is that it becomes a real focal point when you get an illness. Because that means that I think there's a finite amount of time that I have, and, you know, some people may be given a finite amount of time, it might just be that this is classed as an illness and we'll see how it goes or whatever that happens to be. But of course, the reality is, is that we're all on this planet for a finite amount of time. And so actually, the mindset is very much the same for everybody. What do I want to do today? Who do I want to be with? Who do I want to be around? How do I want to show up in the world? How do I make my life better? How do I support other people to have their. Their lives be the best it possibly can? And it's the. And I think as soon as we can focus anybody's attention on the fact that it's the same for us all, it's just whether it's right at the front of your mind or further back, then we should be making a difference now. And, and I think from our point of view, in terms of talking about children and education, it's not going to be any good having it for certain people in five or ten years time. My kids have been through the education system now and they wouldn't be much different than it was when they all started, sort of 15 years or more ago. And so.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:14:43

But the interesting thing, Mark, is so before I forget, is that the interesting thing is if you bring those two together, right, so. So first and foremost, those people who work in the NHS unreservedly, the people I've come across in the last 12 months, they, they are angels walking on earth. Every single nurse, every single cleaner, every single cook, every single consultant doctor, whatever these, registrar, whatever these people do, their level of commitment to people who are very seriously ill and the positivity with which that's done is completely and utterly mind Blowing the sense of purpose that these people have is admirable. I was gobsmacked every single day. And every single day I was thinking stem, not because I'm a great believer in STEM as a curriculum thing, but I was thinking, how brilliant would it be if you could have 8, 9, 10 year olds meeting some of those nurses, some of those surgeons, some of those consultants, and actually getting them into a dialogue, into a dialogue, that 8, 9, 10 year old, with the consultant, with the nurse, about stem, about the science and the purpose of science and how it saves lives and how they do their job and how they might pass on, almost infectiously, their passion. And that 80% marker comes down. I mean, we might actually live in a world where everybody wants to become a nurse and wants to become a doctor at some point, whether they then pursue that or not. But in terms of widening horizons and opening eyes and actually doing that with empathy would just be quite brilliant. So one of the things I will be saying at that very large conference in March is there'll be some QR code that I'll put up saying, if you want to be in touch and working in your local schools, let's have that ongoing dialogue. Almost going back to the beginning of our conversation, let's have that ongoing dialogue about how the brilliant things that you do on a daily basis in hospitals can infect children and young people into thinking differently around Korea. Because if you, if you believe the press, and particularly the right wing press, then the NHS is entirely bad. I've seen nothing. Nothing. I swear to God, in the last 12 months there's been nothing. Because there were people in that NHS and quite senior level who would say if anything gets in the way or you think it goes too slowly, said one of the top consultants. Here is my mobile number. You ring me any time of the day or night and I will make sure that we remove that blockage. And they did so. So perhaps a couple of things. One is don't believe what you read in the papers, and secondly, let's infect and then think what, what we can do with all sorts of other professions to do exactly the same. Because the interesting thing is when you talk to a pilot or when you talk to cabin crew in their own right, they are as passionate about what they do, so many of them as, as were those doctors and nurses. So it's given me a sense of optimism and. And I can't wait for March, for that conference, because I just have a sneaky feeling that there are going to be lots of people who are going to say yes to this. Brilliant.

Mark Taylor 00:18:22

Many thanks to John Cosgrove for this message of support and he's a retired headteacher from the UK.

John Cosgrove 00:18:29

I've never met Ger, I've never spoken to Ger. We have linked up over social media. I've written a number of blog posts about my experience and my views on education. And I believe that the reason Ger asked me to have a look at his book when it was in draft was because my views, my experience, my, my take on educational matters chimes with his very, very strongly. And I think his, his book is a very important work. I think it's coming at a crucial time for education and I say that because from his life, from his experience, from the wide range of contexts that he has worked in, he is able to bring a breadth of knowledge, a breadth of experience and learning to his view of education which few people can match. He has worked as an advisor, he's worked as a classroom teacher, he's worked with governments, he's worked with the Children's University, he's worked in all sorts of contexts and he has worked with researchers from Cambridge University who have attested to the worth of what he's been doing, that the practical, the very measurable results and positive benefits of his way of working or the way of working that he advocates. And it's a crucial time because in the last decade or so, British education seems to have lost this interest in experiential learning, this interest in the well rounded child. There seems to be very much an emphasis today on getting children through academic hoops and establishing that through testing and hectoring and pushing children and insisting that they do this and they do that. Whereas Ger's approach is much more show children the possibilities, show children the experiences, give children the experiences, encourage children to explore their own capabilities and that will in itself transform learning.

Mark Taylor 00:21:11

So we're going to use the book as our sort of guide for conversation and debate, so to speak. And obviously here we are, episode one. So we're going to sort of walk through the introduction, we're going to walk through chapter one, and it's really an opportunity for you to sort of remind people what those, what those sections are all about. And then we can kind of dive into a little bit about maybe what those experiences meant and, and how it now looks like you say with that experience of, of hindsight.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:21:47

Yeah, brilliant. I mean, the other thing that happened, I talked earlier about the book and how it came about, what, what also happened was that there were then all of a sudden A number of people who, who certainly were my friends, but who also had immense respect for, who expressed and said, this is a great idea. You should have done this ages ago. This is brilliant. There's no way you need anything from us. And so that's why, why, why the forward was, was written by my, my very best friend and very sadly now, the late Carlo Rinaldi, the president of, of the Fondazione Regio Children. And the afterword was written by Andrea Schleicher, the education director for oecd. And there are many other people from Moscow to India to my all time favorite people, James Neal, who I told 43 years ago, who all chipped in their little bits. And what I really hadn't realized was that people had started over the years to see me as a storyteller. And I was slightly surprised by that when, when that word got mentioned more and more because I'd never seen it like that. I, I've always used lots of examples because I think examples are like journeys. So if you ex, if you. I say this to teachers, the minute you touch on an abstract in your lesson, the next thing that should happen is, comma, for example, the two most important words in that lesson. Because what that means is that you exemplify, you tell a story effectively, you take these children in mind and heart, you take them on a short journey and at the end they can buy into what you've just done because they understand and they understand purpose. So, so the introduction essentially is about the importance of storytelling. And, and, and of course is accompanied by that, by that great quote. Let's see whether I can find it quickly. That great quote from, from the late, great Alan Rickman, which says it is a human need to be told stories. The more we are governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from and what might be possible. And I think that's what storytelling, good storytelling is. So, so the first chapter, the first, the introduction is about the storytelling, the four examples, and therefore in essence begins to touch on the concept of experience based learning. Because that's what stories are. Stories are experiences that there may be virtual experiences, there may be imaginary experience, imaginary experiences, but nevertheless experiences they are. And then the first chapter is very much. And, and one of the things that has always struck me as slightly bizarre. So the first chapter is entitled the Benefit of Hindsight. And, and it's always struck me as slightly bizarre that particularly in, in schooling We've always said, oh, you mustn't mix the personal and the professional, which I think is complete nonsense. Because if you do that, then the minute you take anything that has to do with passion and anything that has to do with belief and principles and values and aims, you. You take that away. And what you become is you become a teacher rather than a facilitator of learning. And there are a number of things that are connected with that. Now, of course, the reason that nobody wants you to be compassionate is because there is such a lack of trust around schooling and around education. So no politician trusts a teacher. Teachers should trust children more and should trust parents more. Parents should just teach us more. The lack of trust gets in the way all the time. And it struck me that, that if we. If we look at the benefit of hindsight and that concept of connect, extend and challenge connect between the dry theory of being taught with the experiences we have, and for the child to make sense of it all and write their own narrative of the possible. But the benefit of hindsight is such a great thing, incidentally. It's very often provided presented as a negative. I've never seen it as a negative. With the benefit of hindsight. You would say that, yeah. Well, thank goodness, yes, because I've learned the lesson and a really important one. It's a little bit like people ask sometimes. You must. You must have had that. Lots of times when people say, if you look back, what would you have done differently? It's a very weird question, isn't it? Nobody's ever asked me, if you look back, what would you do? The same. So. So I think we just need to change that tone and the benefit of hindsight as a positive, as something whether where the personal meets the profession. I became a teacher because of my German teacher. I became a German teacher. I became a German teacher because of my German teacher because he lit a fire. He made me read. He got me to read, I should say he got me to read in such a way that I went back with the book that he'd given me, which is here next to me somewhere still after all those years, because he gave it me. When I went back, knocked on the staff room door the next morning and said, I finished that book like Oliver Twist. I went, can I have another one, please? And he said, I'm so glad you've come back. Keep that one. And always think of this moment and here is the next one. I didn't want to become a German teacher, really. I wanted to be him. There was something about role model in this. I wanted to be as kind as him, I wanted to be as nice as him. I wanted to be as clever and as funny. I wanted to be as good a German as he was. So all those things. And so that is very personal and without the personal angle in that, I don't think you could be quite that brilliant. So let's flow with more. And then, then the book taught. The first chapter talks a little bit about who I am, what my childhood was like, who influences your childhood and in a sense why you are, who you've become. And those things are, are important. And schooling, primary and secondary has a lot to do with this. And then the lessons that we learn from that and the application of the benefit of hindsight. So, so that's kind of the first chapter. It's a little bit like setting the context and then you go further and it went. What was interesting was that particularly because my childhood was certainly from my parents point of view was abusive and therefore unpleasant. It was actually the first chapter was probably the most difficult one to write because what I hadn't quite realized is how much we somehow as a defense mechanism, I guess, how much we hide and bury. And then if you, if you come to go through an exercise like that, then you have to open those curtains again and, and, and face those things again and then be reminded how difficult that was. So that was a, an interesting exercise, but a painful one. The other chapters were less painful.

Mark Taylor 00:29:41

And I think an important thing to, to sort of maybe discuss and think about here is the fact that like say everyone's, let's say childhood, because we were talking about sort of setting that scene is going to be different. You know, you were not born in the same country as me. You know, your, your relationship with your parents weren't the same as me. You know, your relationship with your grandfather was something which I can't express because that was a very important one too, which you can, you can take us into in just a second. But then in terms of what the schooling is like as well, you know, going to a village primary school is very different than an inner city primary school depending on, on where you live. So I think understanding that everybody's experiences are different and therefore you have to take like say the hope and the positives of what they are, you understand where you came from, you understand how that might be limiting in inverted commas because if you really want to be running around a field and you live on a council estate in the middle of a city that might be a little bit Harder and vice versa. If you want to be going to the theater and being embedded in culture and you live somewhere which is a, you know, 20 miles from the nearest town, let alone a city which has got those things going on, your experience is going to be different. But that doesn't mean that that can't be part of it. As you grow and you expand and you get those experiences, as you said. So just take us into maybe like say those personal relationships and in terms of what that meant to you, but also how that sort of embedded in how you then became the person you were as you grew up through it.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:31:11

So first and foremost, I think when you're a teacher and you have your 20, 25, 30 children walking through the door in the morning, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to those children to remember that each single one of those has had a different experience in over the last 12 or so hours. At home with their friends, their dog may be ill, all those things, and none of that must be played down. And one of the things where we'll come to that, and it sits throughout the book, is the distinction between education and schooling, but also the distinction between primary education and secondary education. So when I went to primary school, it was a small primary school in a very conservative Catholic coal mining area in the south of the Netherlands. The small is really important. Everybody knew every child and knew something good about. This was not about knowing the child, the naughty one, or the one with a special educational needs or disability or the very bright ones or, or whatever we get and secondary. That changes because increasingly as children go through the system, the decision we make, the word child is heard less and less and less. And the decisions we make are increasingly economical and they are not educational. There is not a single educational reason anybody can give me why you would have a school with two and a half thousand children, for example. That doesn't, just doesn't exist. They are economic decisions that are made. Many decisions around special educational needs reviews, in the end are economic decisions because the cost factor plays a role. So when I grew up in this, in this very conservative Catholic village, in a family home, that was very difficult. I remember as a child being aware of the fact that I didn't like going home. I remember being aware of the fact that my parents didn't like me, or at least that's how it felt. My parents were also physically abusive. So I was, I was, I was beaten, got, got a good thrashing and, and all those kind of things that are meant to shape you, but, but actually well, they do shape you, but not as people think that they do. And, and so very quickly you learn as a child because you're clever as a child. Children are very clever, much more than we give them credit for, for. So I, I made a choice at some point along the line quite early on that I would become a pleaser. So I, I tried to work out the characters and I tried to give them what they wanted so that they liked me. I did it with my teachers, I did it, I tried to do it with my parents and probably the only person I didn't do it with was my grandfather because with my grandfather who lived just across the railway line from my parents home. So it was literally a five minute walk. My grandfather loved me and he's the only person I never felt that I had to please him because he was always so pleased to see me. So I spent a lot of time with him and the time was nothing brilliant. He was an old man by then, he was a coal miner, his lungs weren't very good, he had arthritis and he had a big garden and we used to go and walk with his dog backwards and forward and I used to spend time with him and he used to tell me stories and I loved going to sleep there at the weekend and he had one of those, one of those beds in my, my little bedroom which was in the attic and it was an old bed. And when my granddad, when my granddad tucked me in, I was in exactly the same position when I woke up in the morning because he tucked me in in such a way that I couldn't move, you know, so you, you kind of, you were almost mummified in this bed. But I loved him, I adored him and, and spent as much time with him as I could and the trust was completely there. I loved my primary school. I had some very good teachers and teachers who, I know this is almost like a cliche, but teachers who were first and foremost teachers of the child, almost in a regio emilia approach. Teachers who we went on school visits, we went on trips, we did all sorts of things and the trust was great and I loved it. I loved that primary school and I loved my teachers. Very different people, but they believed in me. And then I transitioned to secondary school and I look back at that now and I look back at my own children, how they've reacted to certain of those transition points during their school careers. First and foremost, I'm convinced now that I was not ready for the move from primary to secondary and that I could probably, would probably have benefited from another year at primary in the Netherlands we had what I call the bridge year. So technically speaking, at least this had just been introduced. Technically speaking, you weren't directly going from primary to secondary. Technically speaking you went to that secondary building, but you were in a bridge here. But because like, like in so many societies when these initiatives are new, everybody sorted through the policy people have sorted through. But what it means at 10 past 2 on a Wednesday afternoon, nobody got a clue, right? So, so, so we were part of that experiment, I guess. And again, being part of that experiment didn't necessarily help me. And then in the secondary school I didn't like the fact that I had, that I needed, I remember that really clearly, that I needed to change classrooms, change teachers that didn't really quite know who you were. They weren't particularly interested, some of them, because they'd like teaching the A level classes or the A level equivalent classes and they would say, so they didn't particularly like the little ones. So those experiences went, that experience, the schooling experience went from very stable, very caring, challenging in a good way. You know, can you do this? What's the next bit into a much more systemic, systematic approach to which I didn't take. And I became very naughty. And, and there is no excuse for that. I mean I can, I can, I can give you. Also could give you all sorts of reasons. But at the end I made the decision as a 12, 13, 14 year old to be not very pleasant. And, and the one thing I am lucky, I was lucky was that the school was patient. So I was at some point at the verge of being excluded when I was given particularly in German. I love German, I was really good at it. But the teacher I had was dreadful because he taught to the middle, he was lazy basically. He taught to the middle. He did. He, he made no real effort to get to know his young people. And then I was given. So what happened was I got sent out a lesson and then he would only let me back in when it was test time. And then I still got top marks in the test, which he hated even more and I got kicked out even more. So at some point I think I told him in no uncertain terms where to go and, and I shouldn't have done. And then I was, as a last chance, I was given this German teacher called this, this newly qualified teacher called Munir Burskins. And halfway through that first lesson he said to me, I'd like to see you. He only spoke German. That was. He just walked in, just spoke German. He Refused to speak Dutch. You, you, you were good enough.

Mark Taylor 00:39:25

You were.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:39:26

You'd lived 12 years near the German border. You were good enough to cope with. That was his view. He was right. And then he said to me, alfred, you're in lesson. I'd like to see you at the end of the lesson, please. And I literally thought, oh Christ, here we go again. So, hands in my pocket. I went up to him at the end of the lesson and kind of said, said what? And he said, I'll never forget this. He said, you were really good, you are really good and you should begin to read. So I've got a book for you here. Heinrich B comes to Nashba and he gave me this book of short stories. He said, you should read it and then tell me what you think. And I went home and I read the whole book that evening and then went to the staff room the next morning and knock, can I have some more, please? And I wanted to be like him. And so, so schools also do that. And, and from there I wanted to become a German teacher. And my life became easier because he gave me an immense purpose. He didn't just give me enjoyment and purpose of going to school, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And, and Mania Burskin is now 82 years old and he, he lives in the old people's home and still. And the next time I visit I will take him a copy of the book and thank him. So. So it was a real mixed feast. And, and what also didn't help growing up in that area was it was a Catholic school and I must have been one of the very few students in that school who got excluded, at least temporarily, from religious education lessons because I just asked what was seen to be difficult questions. So this guy stands there and he goes in his priest outfit, whatever thing, and, and he goes, well, there was Adam and Eve and there were Cain and Abel and that's where we come from. And I genuinely went, well, that can't be right. Excuse me, but that can't be right. You're having impure thoughts. Smash. Smash. Whatever. Excluded. And then we had the same guy at secondary school and it was worse this time because it was Noah's Ark and it was Noah and his wife and their children and the animals, bestiality potentially came into it here or whatever. And, and at this time I did it deliberately and he recognized me and, and I thought from that time onwards, even I was 14, 15 at the time. And, and I thought at the time, what's Religion doing in school to this day, I, I would go for the French model at any time and separate the two. If people want to do religion, brilliant. Right? It's great. If people are happy with it, fantastic. If they want to learn about religion and they want to go to religious school, let them go on a Saturday and a Sunday. But let the state system be exempt from that influence. It's wrong. And I think, I think the world for young people and for their parents would be, would be a better place if, if those two factors, state education and religion, didn't meet in school. And that was a lesson I learned quite early on and, and, and nobody's ever been able to convince me otherwise. So my schooling was a. Yeah. An interesting period. And, and with the benefit of hindsight, you can then come to those conclusions. I was a naughty boy and I should have behaved differently. But the system also didn't, didn't accommodate. And that's, I think for me is what the benefit of hindsight is. You learn those lessons and when you then move forward with a hope of foresight, you should be able to change things. But you must do more than just condemn. You must be able to learn. And that is something that we must gift our children as part of their schooling and as part of their education. That ability to learn lessons. Yeah. And actually including in that the opportunity to make mistakes combined with the ability to learn from them is a, is a brilliant strictly come living partnership I think would work fantastically. But we don't do that very much in our schooling system because we haven't got the time to get it wrong. Because I've got to get through this stuff that I've been told from on high I must deal with. Well, I'm sorry, you know, I stuffed that. Quite frankly, it's wrong.

Mark Taylor 00:44:25

And I think this brings up probably the most important thing that I think will be an overarching conversation over the next few weeks is the fact that it's actually complex in terms of a conversation, isn't it? Because there's part of me that thinks, you know, if we had that silver bullet and schools looked very different and like you said, probably secondary schools to begin with. Let's think about how we educate our children differently and how that looks from a building point of view and a subject point of view and all of that kind of thing, that would make all the difference. But what you've just so eloquently explained is the fact that one person and one person's conversation can transform someone's education experience and that's the. That's happened with the school staying identical. It's just that one, one revolving door. You know, you went into that German lesson with one teacher and it was a completely different room than when you went in with a new teacher. And so we all have to make those decisions in a way that's absolutely. We should champion the big changes and the big conversations, but it's also about the individual things that we do as well. And I think the other thing I'd mentioned about the hindsight thing is that, that you don't need to have the benefit of hindsight when you've retired or when you've done X amount of years in whatever you're doing. The hindsight bit comes in almost every thought that you have. Because the thought process that I've done today should be reflected on what I did yesterday or last week or last year, not over a career period or an amount of time at a particular school. And that continual analysis of what you're doing, doing and why you're doing it, and a real thought into what, what that's benefiting everyone around you. Those micro course corrections are what's going to change any given tanker, certainly within the education system, because the more people that are doing that. And again, the reason why we're having this conversation in the. This podcast is going to be such an important series, is that if you had 95% of teachers all doing that on a daily basis, the system would look very different. Whether there's any government or any state sort of involvement or not. We would be making those differences because the relationships would be different, peer to peer and pupil to teacher. And whatever level the benefit of hindsight.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:46:45

Is 0 to 99. The child who accidentally. The one year old who accidentally slightly burns his or her finger on a radiator will never do that again. That's the benefit of hindsight. I've learned. I've learned that lesson. I think the other thing to remember is that I don't want to. I don't want to be a secondary school basher because I think that would be very sad because. Because what we live with at the moment worldwide is we live with a consequence of policy. So there's political bullying going on that manifests itself through in England, through the Department for Education and particularly Ofsted, people are forced to behave in a certain way. What we don't see enough of and we see more of at primary level is the courage of a secondary school that says, I'll still Ofsted, give you what you want, dfe. But I'm going to do it my way. And my way is I don't exclude. Yeah. And you may then come and. Come and inspect my school and occasionally see behavior that doesn't tick your boxes. So be it. So when we're, in your terms, not going to be outstandingly compliant, because that's what that outstanding means. People. People buy these banners. An outstanding school is wrong. The banner is wrong. The banner should. We are outstandingly compliant. That's what it should read. Didn't make them better than others. So. So, so the courage to actually say, so what. What's actually happened is that we are having schools which are. Now we've got schools that are off rolling children that are making children disappear, that exclude young people, all in order to be compliant. Was somebody at some point, just think with an, with an amazing opportunity missed in, in a review by Ofsted, that they didn't have the courage nor the wisdom nor the benefit of hindsight to actually change any of this. Right. But. But the bottom line is, surely our aim was. Our collective aim must be that no child is excluded from schooling. Now, where that schooling then happens and how we solve that problem, we leave to the professionals. I don't need somebody in an office in London to tell me what good behavior looks like or what bad behavior looks like. No, but what the one thing that we are. And when I was in charge of the Education Action zones in Widdonshaw in South Manchester for a number of years, 29 schools in what would be deemed a challenging area, we agreed as 29 schools to set collective targets. And, and it worked because all that became. And the heads agreed. And what happened was that there was a phone call from one to the other saying, I've got a youngster here and we're at our wit's end. And the other one would say, I've got space, I'll come and talk to you. It's possible, but I'm afraid that after 14 years of conservative government where, where, where the mantra has become, you look after yourself and not after anybody else. So. And that's why. Why, why the current labor government in the United Kingdom has been such a disappointment, because it, it really doesn't take a year to start shifting that culture, if that's what you want. So, so it's made me very sad because the Blair government of 1997 did, through education Action Zones, through Excellence in cities, those initiatives forced that level of collaboration and actually we enjoyed it. It was not easy, but we did it. And it certainly looked better than it does. Now and effectively what the Conservative government did from 2010 onwards, it created Academy trust for political purposes, because the aim was to disempower local authorities, many of whom in inner cities were labor controlled. So it was a political exercise. It had nothing to do with young people. And the evidence, you know, if you look now, all the money spent and you did a. Plenty of people have done this value for money analysis. Academies have made no difference. The difference they've made is a political difference. And of course, there are quite a lot of mainly white men in suits who now get paid an awful lot of money and probably get paid more than directors of education from local authorities did 15 years ago. So all of that has become a political exercise and away from children. And I think it's a shame. And the longer that lasts, the more difficult it will be to turn that around. But we have to have that will of collective responsibility as well as individuals, institutionally, that is, as well as individual responsibility. And within those institutions it works the same way. We have collective responsibility as a group of teachers and educators and classroom assistants and cleaners and whatever else lives in it in. In a school as well as individual. And we have to know the children we work with in order to achieve that. In an age where we increasingly talk about personalization, we are trying so hard to move away from a personalized approach. And it really is another brick in the wall, quite frankly, except in primary school. So I get the bit that it's hard for secondary schools. But what I would accuse secondary schools of many secondary schools is of a lack of courage to go and swim against the current occasionally, because that's what we need. They need to stand up for their children rather than for the institution. And what we have become is accountable to the system and not accountable to the child. No child should be excluded from education and the schools that do so should be penalized for it. So I don't know why we've got offset, quite frankly, apart from, of course, it's a control mechanism, a political control mechanism that can go top down. I can condemn you, you're brilliant. So I hope that that was gritty enough for you there, Mark.

Mark Taylor 00:53:33

For a.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:53:33

Little while, but passionate about it because. Because we are there to serve the children with all the complexities and all the difficulties and incidentally, all the joys and all the laughter that comes with that. Because being in education is still the best job, and I wonder now, probably it is the best job alongside being in the nhs, but that they're the two. They're the two Best, best set of jobs because you are serving, you are serving the child and you are serving the patient and in most cases you are not serving the system, somebody else's job.

Mark Taylor 00:54:16

Yeah. And I think what you said there about change is really key and you know, I don't want to always get too political, but I think you're right. I think having seen one government, a Conservative government being controlled for so long and shape the education landscape as it were, in such a way, to the point that so many people wanted change, for another government to then come in with a really sort of big majority to be able to really convince people, partly because people had voted for it, but also because people wanted a change to happen, to not really step into that is disappointing. And, and that there was a time there where something could be different and with all the sort of, the recent sort of things that have been released, you know, change, you know, the curriculum reviews and those sorts of things, you just think a lot of it's just talk. And surely if you're going to make a difference, then do something that's going to make a big difference now because all it's doing is just sort of going.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 00:55:18

Even the Labour government of 1997, which, which wasn't it had a new, an enormous majority and there was money in the bank. They still weren't quite courageous enough. So they knew they were going to be in front for at least two terms, if not three. So they could have come in 1997 and said, here is the 15 year plan, that's what they could have done. They did it a little bit with sure start, they did it a little bit with education action zones, they did it a little bit with excellence in cities. But in the end, if you look back with the benefit of Hindsight, they had three five year plans, they did not have a 15 year plan. The conservatives had a 15 year plan. And that 15 year plan was effectively the destruction of local authorities. It was a political plan, it was not an educational one. And the current Labour government has not got a ten year plan. It barely has a five year plan. I, I, I get the bit that by 2028 we will have a new national curriculum. It kind of looks okay because it does talk about purpose a lot, but I worry that when it gets into the hand of the apparatchiks that it gets wrecked. It needs to be influenced by teachers, by people who know the children and it needs to be given enough license to play with. It actually also needs to, I'll give you an example, it needs to be Contextualized. The national curriculum needs to be contextualized because it will look very differently in whole than it will in London. So I was on the National Curriculum Working Group, Modern Foreign Languages in the early 1990s when there were 19 languages under statutory orders. And at the end of the day, because it was a London centric policy and a London centric government, my argument always was that if you live in Hull, you should be learning Dutch or Danish and if you live in Dover, you should be learning French. It was a very practical thing because in Hull P and O Ferries was one of the largest employers in the city and the Ferries run to Rotterdam and around Scandinavia. And it made complete sense. Why would you learn French if you were in Hull on a day to day basis? It made no sense whatsoever. So the national curriculum needs to be allowed to be contextualized and that you're back to trust. So you have to trust the schools in the context of the locality to make it work for those young people. And of course it still needs to have a national framework, but within that relevance and purpose needs to be allowed to be developed. And, and I fear I already see that the discussions are not going down that route. And that's a great shame. Yeah. Because there is a real opportunity, another opportunity about to be missed, I fear.

Mark Taylor 00:58:44

And I think these sort of global, kind of, sort of far reaching examples are important. I know we're sort of talking a lot about the UK and I know people will be listening around the world, but in, in terms of how things could look, you know, I think the one thing that almost every parent and certainly majority of teachers would say is that the way that everybody's tested within the education system is not being particularly supportive for many children. And so even with a curriculum review, one of the things which has come up is that they want an introduction of year eight reading tests. I can't think of anything I'd rather have done less as a year eight person. And I was just thinking with that benefit of hindsight, like you said, in terms of your 12, 13, 14 year old self, looking back to your experiences then and the idea of exclusion, you know, you would have been excluded because there was life going on that meant that the system wasn't working for you and it was a change in personality that made that difference. And so if we're extending what's happening at the end of primary school in terms of exams into then taking that through to year eight for people who may be already struggling, then it just seems to me that the opportunity again to do things differently even in a system which maybe is going to take longer to change, if indeed any government would really wanted it to. It's actually just recreating the will, but making it even harder for those children that are struggling. And if they are worried about people being excluded and not actually being supported by the system, all you're doing is making that worse, as far as I can see.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:00:24

Do you think that somebody has gotten onto the fact that Year eight is a problem here and that if we put something in it, we might. There are elements of that and I think I was very. One, I was disappointed that the reading thing was even being mentioned. Two, I was quite happy that it wasn't introduced into Year seven, because we used to have that kind of Year seven testing going on to prove that the primaries hadn't done their job properly. That more or less is what it felt like to me. And the whole collaboration, I mean, the whole transition issue is a nightmare.

Mark Taylor 01:01:01

Right.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:01:01

And I think is done very badly. And so there should have been a focus in this curriculum review on how can I get that transition between primary and secondary better. If you need introduction of a bridge year, look somewhere else as well. So you're quite right. I mean, we've talked about. We haven't even talked about the UK a lot. We've talked about England a lot. Yeah, but, but many countries in the world are looking at what goes on in this country. If I look at the Middle east, for example, if I look at India, if I look at Pakistan, the views are still there. And it is for those countries, as it is for England and the UK is to look at other places to see how things are done. Not necessarily do that silly thing that says let's do what they're doing in Singapore or let's do what they're doing, doing in Finland. But there's no harm in looking and learning. So there is something about, of course, the benefit of hindsight, but there is also something about. With the benefit of research, let's have a look and, and, and let's stop pretending. And I mean, I have this conversation occasionally with Andrea Schleicher is about the PISA league tables. Anything that's about league tables, I think is dangerous because, because the, the, the aim of the league table is not to say, what can I learn from the others? I wonder what they're doing, I wonder how they're doing that. I wonder what we could do, what can we copy, what can we learn? It's never about that. It's, it's, it's about being top of the pile only and, and everything else is a failure and it just doesn't work. I see. I saw that in Scotland. So there was a Scottish Review curriculum review that, that's, that's taken place partly because they were so low in the PISA league table. Well, that's the wrong reason. The reason should be that it wasn't good enough for the youngsters, just own it so that it's, it's, it's complex and, and many countries are in that sense making the same mistake because everybody's over tested and everybody's testing for the sake of it and everybody's inspecting for the sake of it. Ofsted was originally created, the Office for Standards in Education was originally created to make it better. It's not made it better, but by any standard it's not made, it's made it more compliant, but that doesn't mean it's made it better for the young people. And you might say the same about KHDA in Dubai, for example. So the lessons to be learned are probably similar, although I think England has been particularly expert at getting it wrong at times when it comes to serving the young people.

Mark Taylor 01:04:00

Well, I think that's something we all, we need to keep coming back to because I think what we'll find more and more is that it's not about serving the young people. I mean, the reason that so many young people are in school from such an early time in the day to such a late time in the day is because there needs to be child care, because both parents need to be working in order for the economy, well, not to survive or not to thrive, but to survive, you know, in its current situation. So, you know, I'm not. Imagine if we decided that schooling, if we were going to recreate that today, we think someone should be in before 8 o' clock in staying till 5, 6 o' clock or whatever might be the end of a school day if you're aged 4, 5, 6, 7, let alone if you're going to be older than that. And so we sort of come to that question of, you know, which we will do later in the series in terms of what schooling all about. But it's not certainly about what can we do the best for the child, because is the child at the center of education? And more importantly, is that really what the government want it to be about? Because you could even argue that when the system was set up all those years ago, it was about creating a workforce and creating a society that was then in place to do what the government then wanted. It wasn't necessarily about doing what was best for the child. It was what was best for the country and what was going to help us do what the government wanted moving.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:05:22

Forward constantly economic decisions aren't they. We saw that during COVID and government reactions to that and what happened with schools and it takes it, it, it easily takes us back to, to, to my friend the late Ken Robinson who, who argued that so beautifully that we are, we are still in the first industrial revolution in terms of our schooling and because actually one of the things that we should have learned as, as a friend of mine, Dr. Mary Ashun who's the head teacher at, in Accra in Ghana, Mary rang me up after about four or five weeks into lockdown and said my school will never be the same. My A level equivalent students will never do a five day week again. They will do three and a half days. In a day and a half they can have online surgeries with their teachers and assistants. And because that's much better, she had the courage of the conviction to be push that through when in many countries including in the United Kingdom the minute Covid was over we couldn't get back to 2019 fast enough. We've, we've learned no lessons. There are, there's very little left over and perhaps we too should have gone to a system that says I don't know when they're 16 or at least halfway during that, that year 11 and then when the 17 and 18, they're doing four days a week and one day a targeted, targeted appointment and surgeries from home. Actually we can't do that because we're back into that child minding thing or young person minding thing, whatever, whatever you want to call it. You're quite right. And that's where the bit the question needs to be asked is the decision you're making making an educational decision or is an economic one? And then please be honest and transparent and tell us at least the public is owed that and certainly the children are, oh, this is what we're doing with you for these reasons. And, and no and, and my, my youngest daughter was at home. She was, she was in year nine at the time when, when Covid hit and she didn't enjoy being taught. Her happiest day of 2020 or 2021 was when she went back to school. That doesn't mean she wouldn't and she wouldn't have liked occasionally one day a week to have worked from home targeted with her Spanish teacher or targeted with her English teacher or her maths teacher or whatever she was doing for, towards her GCSes at the time. We could have done things differently. We missed an opportunity to change things. We had the wrong government because, because we, we had Johnson as Prime Minister which, which was an embarrassment, it was an intellectual embarrassment. But, and, but it's a great shame, it's a great shame that, that the profession itself didn't stand up and say, hang on a minute, some of these works. We did that really quite well. Because actually if you look what happened during COVID it was miraculous, the reaction of schools and now people are going, oh, with the benefit of hindsight, we got some of these things wrong. Yeah, blimey, of course we did. But actually, in terms of being ready for something that nobody warned us about, there were no alarms, there were nobody saying, here's a six week warning, this thing is coming. It was spectacular what most of the schools did and how they responded. Brilliant. And then we let all that go. And I thought that was a real shame that we didn't, we couldn't even have the discussion, the societal debate that should go with some of that worth keeping.

Mark Taylor 01:09:12

And I think again with the benefit of hindsight, the saddest thing about that is that if you take the tanker analogy, it's that kind of we need to make all these small changes and all order to sort of steer it in a direction we would hope as an improvement. And then you suddenly get something like Covid happen where it literally just explodes the world into a completely different facing version of what the world is. So at that point you have the situation where you can make these radical changes because it's, it's not something that's incremental because it literally happened overnight. And at that point we still didn't have the strength or the, or the determination or the understanding that it was an opportunity. And you just think if that's the case in those particular scenarios, it really is hard to keep faith that anything's going to change. More generally, based on what we sort of talked about in recent times as well, I think unless every person takes that responsibility. And I think one of the things I've learned recently from some of the, some of the people in the media that have created TV shows about maybe their children that are struggling. I know that Jamie Oliver did one based on dyslexia. It's like, okay, so if I'm not being supported in school, what am I going to do now? What am I doing now? For me, what does it I have to do for my child? And I think it will be that collective movement that makes a big difference. And enough people getting behind the fact that we can't keep doing this because actually we talk about well being as being an important thing in school, but it seems to me that the whole system is actually being unsupportive, it's unwell being to every child that's there. And with the benefit of hindsight, we did lots of things to children in the previous hundreds of years that was deemed to be okay and normal and the way the world works that we would never be able to do now. So why are we not questioning that in the immediacy of kind of. Well, as we've said, probably because of the political, the economic and the fact that no one's actually brave enough to do it. But I think we want to hear from all those people that are doing something different from those people that actually are really keen to be able to share their stories. Because I think if we collectively realize that such a large proportion of people in the profession, parents, people that are working with young people have got these ideas, views, ways of working, that is making a difference. If we feel like the majority of people are already doing that, it feels like a much easier job to make a difference than like say, taking that kind of media, political stance all the time that everything the same as you said with the NHS is just in disarray and the world's not working in any particular positive manner.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:11:54

I mean, the interesting thing about the COVID time was I felt from personal experience as well that personalization probably worked better during the COVID period than before or since. Certainly my daughter felt that her friends felt that they had the opportunity not just to be taught online, but to learn online and then to go back and ask questions. Can I speak with you afterwards? Can I have some surgery time? All those things worked particularly well in her school. And the minute Covid was over, they were back in 25 in the class, face to front kind of approach. And it's such a shame the opportunities we missed there. It's such a shame because, because the personalization agenda is so important and, and we lose that, we've lost it. I think in primary, we're still quite good at it. And, and because of the way that we work with young people, I go into some primary school, it's, it's just mind blowingly brilliant. But then the minute you don't, you talk to those youngsters six or seven months into their secondary career and, and they've become different young people, not because they've changed so much in the, in the six, seven months, but, but the environment in which they now function and live and learn or are being taught as opposed to learn has changed a great deal. And you know, children can only aspire to what they know exists. And if we in our provision, keep putting the flea in the jar thing, if we keep putting lids on, then we're at fault from the outset and there are more lids being placed on young people in our secondary system than there are in our primary system. And that is where I was a try. It's interesting. I was a trained secondary school teacher, I became an advisor, all those kind of things. And I look back now and see that all the issues that we had to contend with came from earlier and which then when I became Languages of Advisor in Manchester all those years ago with a lot of European funding, one of the first things I did was introduce languages into primary schools with the support of the teachers who we trained through European money in all sorts of ways. And including abroad in Claremont, Bologna, Madrid, wherever else we. St. Petersburg, even Leningrad, as was for a little while. And that's the bit that were not personalized enough in the world that we're moving in with. Personalization is everywhere. It's on their mobile phones, it's the whole life. Except when you go to school, it takes you back to Pink Floyd's the War. And that's such a shame because then the aspirations of our children are affected by the jars that we place them into and, and it's a sad thing and we need to break those things as part of the. Part of the conversation needs to be who are these young people? Where do they want to go and how can we help them get there? What can we help create? And who else do we need? Because this is not just the school's job. Who else do we need to bring in and work with in order to make that happen? Certainly the world of work has its part to play from a very early age in that.

Mark Taylor 01:15:31

And I think that takes us beautifully to the end of this conversation and sets it up lovely for on our next conversation. In terms of, like I say, children being able to only know what they know exists, what they can aspire to. I'm a complete test, I can attest to that because I'm a professional musician, because I had that opportunity at school. It wasn't something I was looking at, wasn't something that was part of my home experience per se. And so I'm really looking forward to being able to dive into, into that when we, when we Come back again for, for episode two.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:16:09

Of each episode is that teachers need to understand how incredibly important they are. You know, every single teacher, at least once a day there will be a child who for a moment wants to be you. That's, that's I, I remember it so clearly. When my eldest daughter Anna was about 4, before she went to little school, as she used to call was Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. The first day she went school, she came home and she went, Mrs. Poole, Mrs. Poole, Mrs. Pool, Mrs. Poole, Mrs. Poole. And I'm going, what's all this? Who's this Mrs. Poole? What's happened to Daddy? And, and there is that saying, isn't there? If you're a teacher, just realize that 50 years from now someone will say your name. Just like I did today with MANILA B. That's 50 years ago. Or James Neil, my, my all time favorite people who I taught 43 years ago. And James and I still meet up and are in touch. This applies to everything. What those young people say depends on you. That's your responsibility, whether to say good things or bad things, nice things or not so nice things. That's in your gift and that's in your hands. And, and, and it's singularly the most important part. It's more important than being compliant. It is the thing that matters, the role model that you are at some point to most children you come across. That's the parting shot always. I don't think we quite realize as teachers how important we are.

Mark Taylor 01:18:02

Now if you have a story, if you'd like to get in touch, if you have a comment about what we've been talking about, we're really wanting, like we say, to create this movement, to create this conversation, to kind of have enough people involved in this that people will listen to like say that sense of trust, that sense of actually stories and experience that so many people have certainly here in the uk, but further afield around the world as well, we have a people listening all over the world. So if you'd like to send us a message, there are a couple of ways of doing that. You can always email me, that's markducationonfire.com and also if you want to leave a voice note, then you can do that. If you go to educationonfire.com message you can leave us a short 90 second audio clip and we can share some of these on the show. We can share them through our social media, social networks and all of those things as well. And if you want actually to share this with everybody and make sure that people know that we're having this conversation on any social media that you're using, anyone that you're sharing it with. If you make sure that they've got a hashtag of education on fire, then that way we can start to collate all those different conversations and share those stories that way as well. So thank you so much for listening today, Gare. I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks as we, as we share more and more of these stories. And yeah, thanks so much for today.

Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE 01:19:21

Thank you, Umar.

Mark Taylor 01:19:23

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.