In this episode of the Ger Graus Gets Gritty series, Professor Dr. Ger Graus OBE tackles what he calls "the most underestimated aspect of a child's learning and growing up"—the role adults play as models in young people's lives. Through personal stories, including his daughter's early obsession with "Mrs. Poole" her nursery teacher, and insights from his global work with Kidzania, Ger reveals how children unconsciously absorb behaviours, values, and dreams from the adults around them, often in ways we never notice.

This conversation goes beyond the surface of role modeling to question the fundamental structures of modern education. Ger and host Mark Taylor examine why schools still operate on an industrial-era framework—early start times that conflict with adolescent sleep patterns, restricted bathroom access, rushed lunch periods causing "collective indigestion"—and explore what education could look like if we redesigned it around how children actually learn and thrive rather than outdated factory models.

"If we want a world that is respectful and that is kind and considerate and that is inquisitive and curious, then we need to begin to lead by example. That is the most important part of our job description when it comes to our young people."

Key Takeaways

1. Adults are role models whether they realize it or not. Children absorb everything from the adults around them—teachers, parents, neighbours, and community members. This "copied behavior" is one of the most underestimated aspects of learning, and adults must become conscious of the example they set in values, kindness, curiosity, and respect.

2. Lead by example, not just instruction. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. Schools that demonstrate values through everyday behaviour—greeting people warmly, showing kindness, opening doors—create cultures where children naturally adopt these behaviors, regardless of socioeconomic background.

3. The industrial model of education is outdated and failing students. Current school structures—rigid schedules, minimal breaks, locked toilets, rushed lunches—are remnants of the Industrial Revolution designed to prepare workers for factories. This model no longer serves students' needs or prepares them for modern life.

4. Schools should be community-owned "more than schools" Educational institutions need to transform into community hubs that serve broader purposes, with flexible hours (perhaps 8am-6pm), adequate meal times, and involvement from employers and community members. Schools should measure and value different outcomes beyond traditional academics.

5. Careers education has failed generations and continues to fail. Adults consistently report that their careers education was either laughable or non-existent. Despite this universal acknowledgment, little has changed. Meaningful change requires creating experiential learning environments where young people can explore possibilities and develop authentic aspirations.

Chapters:

1. 00:00 - Introduction to the Series
2. 01:18 - The Role We Play in Children's Lives
3. 13:20 - The Role of Teachers as Role Models
4. 21:39 - The Importance of Values in Education
5. 33:06 - The Role of Role Models in Education
6. 42:21 - The Impact of Role Models in Education
7. 55:40 - The Influence of Role Models on Youth
8. 01:08:30 - Rethinking Education: Beyond Traditional Models

https://www.gergraus.com

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Hello and welcome back to Education on Fire and the Ger Graus Gets Gritty series with Professor Dr. Ger Graus OBE.

Now, each of the seven episodes are based on a chapter from his book Through A Different Lessons from A Life and Education, which is published by Routledge.

Now details of how to get your copy are in the description and we would love for you to get involved in this using the hashtag #educationonfire in your social media posts.

Now you can send your thoughts, comments and messages via my website at educationonfire.com or join me for a live show every Wednesday at 5pm UK on YouTube. At the end of the series, Ger will be joining me for a live discussion with Q and A.

And you can be part of that show by just signing up to the newsletter on the educationonfire.com homepage. Keep inspiring and thank you so much for being part of these incredibly important conversations.

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Fire 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. So hello, welcome. We're back at episode five of our Gare Grouse Gets Gritty series. It's been absolutely fantastic discussing all the things so far.

Today we're talking about the role that we play, a really insightful chapter and I think something which is something that we feel like we can all get involved in no matter what part of a child's life that we're involved in. So yes, Gare, where did you want to start with this?

Oh my God.

To say that it's probably that the role we play, the role model we are, if you wish, is probably the most underestimated aspect of a child's learning and growing up, that kind of copied behavior thing. And how, what always strikes me is how little aware we are in general of that role that we have.

I mean when I worked at Kidzania globally and you have these cities built for children and that whole make believe of real airplanes and flight simulators and hospitals and hotels and all those activities that go on newspapers and, and TV stations and you name it, YouTubers and, and I used to say, and, and where did children come to, you know, age 5 to 14 to learn independently, self initiated, self directed and self sustained.

And I used to always say to, to my colleagues at whichever Kazania I was in, particularly those who worked directly with the children who were the pretense pilots or the pretense camera people or newsreaders or weather forecasters or surgeons or whatever. I always used to say to them, you have no idea. But at some point today some of those young people will want to be like you.

That's your responsibility.

So if you, if you need anything to do your job properly, there will be a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old who for a fraction of the time will go, God, I wish I could be like her or I wish I could be like him. And. And from my kidzania colleagues that was always if people would come back and go that was the icing of the cake.

Once you realize how important that is to the young people.

But I think we in our day to day rigmarole of parenting and uncling and aunting and grandparenting and being a teacher or classroom assistant or whatever we are, we kind of forget that. And I'll always remember my eldest daughter Anna when she was very little.

It would be fair to say that for the first few years of her life the words daddy were probably the words that were uttered more than any others. Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy this, daddy that, daddy the other daddy, can we do this? Daddy, daddy, daddy.

And then she started to go to little school as we used to call it to the nursery. And the very first day she went, she came back and she did this. Mrs. Poole, Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole, Mrs.— Poole.

And I'm sitting there thinking what's happened to the daddy, daddy, daddy thing? You know? And I actually said to her what's happened to the other daddy? Mrs. Poole, Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole says Mrs. Poole does. Mrs. Poole wears.

Mrs. Poole's favorite color is Mrs. Poole's got earrings on. And she used to get her dolls out and her books out and kind of get into that world of play. And she used to pretend to be Mrs. Poole the teacher.

And I think we don't often enough realize how important we are as grown ups to our children and actually how, without wishing to sound in any sense Machiavellian, but how we need to use this to our advantage.

Because this is not just about Mrs. Poole being the teacher, but this is also about Mrs. Poole being, in my daughter's words, kind of it's about Mrs. Poole being pretty. Mrs. Poole, all sorts of things, right? And.

But if we want a world that is respectful and that is kind and considerate and that is inquisitive and curious, then we need to begin to lead by example. That is the most important part of our job description when it comes to our young people.

If you Go to my wife's school, which is a primary school in a pretty disadvantaged part in the north of England, an urban area.

And I always think the behavior that I see, the everyday behavior that I see and witness from the children is not what the stereotype might lead us to expect. If it's a tough area, the behavior has got to be poor, blah, blah, blah.

But I walk into school and these days these little people will go, good morning. And they'll go, how are you today? And they'll open the door for you and they'll always have a smile and they shake your hand and.

And of course, that doesn't just happen. That comes from somewhere and that doesn't come from a textbook either.

That comes from the example and the values that schools as organizations then have. And, and there is of course a great deal of sense in, in us as parents working with the schools on that to create that level of consistency.

So, so for me, that's kind of where the role we play sits. And to, to exploit this further and to also exploit that.

This, in terms of some of the Kidsania research that we've already talked about, some of the aspirations that we might drive by being the facilitator of learning experiences as opposed to being the teacher.

So to quote Loris Malaguzzi, you create certain environments and certain situations whereby things will happen, good things will happen, curious things will happen, funny things will happen, whatever. And those aspects are very important. And I've made a whole list.

And I was sitting down kind of thinking about today and thinking, well, my goodness, if I look at my life, how many role models and the role models every day, some of them are celebrities. Because that's certainly at the moment, that's kind of half of the course, isn't it?

If there isn't a celebrity in it, my celebrity in it, my goodness, we failed. But some of them are neighbors and aunts and uncles. And interestingly, I look at my.

So I look at my children and there are aspects of their being where I think, wow, I wish I could do that. I wish I had them. Look at my youngest daughter in particular.

I wish I had the technology confidence and I wish I could experience the joy as opposed to the frustration the minute I turn on my laptop or my phone or iPad or whatever, whatever it is. So in the broadest possible sense, yes.

And I look at James Neal, who is my all time favorite pupil, and I see how his life has been lived so far and I think, wow, how amazing, right? And incidentally, that thing about favorite is something that we might perhaps also touch on today because it's a dirty word in the minds of many.

And I think it's brilliant that we have favorites. It's funny, isn't it? That thing about. I have first. So James was my. I taught James 40, nearly 43 years ago.

Wow.

And. And we stayed in touch on and off. And we're in touch probably now more than. Than ever. And we've done some stuff together. And.

And it was James, like his sister Rachel. Kind of brilliant people, fabulous family. His mum and dad were just amazing. And he was my favorite pupil in so many ways because he was.

He was a spark, he was funny, he was kind. He had something about him. And people go, oh, my goodness, you can't have favorite pupils. What about all the others? As if. Right?

As if any professional would go, I have a favorite. And therefore I now am deliberately going to treat all the others less favorably. I don't get it.

Children will have their favorite teachers and teachers will have their favorite students. Pupils. And it's perfectly okay, right? Because that's kind of life, isn't it? You get on with some better.

But the furore that statement has occasionally caused. But I have a favorite pupil. I have a favorite school. I have favorite friends. I have favorite books and music and holiday destinations. I had favorite.

I had teachers who were. Come to that. Teachers who were my favorites. And what makes you a favorite is about connecting.

I think my favorite football player and my favorite quotes. Oh my goodness. And. And I'll come to the favorite quote. But as well, the only thing, I don't have favorites. I don't. I have three children and I don't.

They are truly the only thing in life that is equal. They are. They have character traits. They. That there are bits about them that I favor from one more than the other.

A sense of humor, a dry sense of humor, kindness towards animals, whatever it is. But overall I can genuinely say that. So I think the favorite thing by and large is a good thing.

And I think also like you say, it doesn't deter from everybody else because it's always like personality led, isn't it? Like you say. And a particular pupil that kind of understands you, you have like, say you have something that you see in them which you're able to.

To kind of explore and develop and support in a way that maybe for whatever reason doesn't quite happen in. In other circumstances.

And just one thing I wanted to pick up on from what you said at the beginning about that sort of being a role model is there Kind of sort of a duality with this.

In as much as it's important to think about what you're doing all the time in order to set the scene, in order to make sure that what we're doing as a mentor, as a teacher actually is being a positive thing, but also on the other side forgetting all of that and just being who you are in the moment organically so that you can actually just authentically have these ongoing things which you think has got nothing to do with anything other than who you are. But your personality traits from that sort of inspirational point of view in just the here and now has to happen at the same time.

So it's kind of like a. Like a 360 understanding of yes, I need to understand that I want to be kind. The sort of person I am, is someone I want to be all the time.

But then almost leaving that to. To one side and then just I'm turning up today and I'm just doing what I'm doing and not overthinking it at that point.

Also totally. It's also, it's also I think a little bit like the difference between teaching and learning, isn't it?

We, we sometimes go out there as teachers and we want to model certain behaviors, for example, and that's cool. We do that because we've thought that through and we're professionals and that's for the right reason.

That doesn't mean to say that what we set out to model becomes the focus of the child's attention. You may walk in and you, you want to talk about kindness and you use all sorts of examples.

But in the child's mind it goes, I really like the jumper he's wearing. Do you day or that, you know, and you. Some of that you can't control. And, and so, so that you have to. I think you have to be yourself.

And, and the other thing about it is I think honesty is very important. That bit that goes. It's okay to say, I don't know. Yeah, it's okay to say, you know what.

What good role modeling is to say I've got the answers to everything. I got that wrong. You have no idea how many mistakes I make every day. It's okay. I try to learn from them. I think I'm quite good at it. But not perfect.

It's the whole shebang basically that matters in that and particularly I think in this day and age where I don't like the word influencer.

But, but our children are influenced by so many things so fast because there's social media and this tick tock and there's Instagram and there's God knows what else there will be tomorrow and all these things get fired at them and and somehow the role that perhaps we sometimes fulfill is a place of calm and stability. The bit that I do it with my youngsters and did it when they were younger to sometimes say so we just put the phone away.

I've just noticed I've been on mine all the time while you were talking. I think it's really bad of me. And shall we just go for a coffee or shall we go for a walk or shall we do this? And. And because.

Because it is also within our power to create those moments. That's really important moments but we have to remember particularly as teachers.

I mean says the person who became a German teacher because of my German teacher totally and says the person who would never in a month of Sundays would have become a mass teacher because of my mass teacher and and James Neil incidentally my I love saying this. My all time favorite pupil.

So you know that saying if you're a teacher 50 years from now someone will mention your name and, and what they will say is is up to you. I mean that's not necessarily a given that that's positive. You have to work at those things. Right.

So so I, I stand and will go Mr. Bureskin's I became a German teacher because of him. And here is my story and the story at the other end is that not that many years ago I was given a keynote address at BET Asia in Kuala Lumpur.

And as is my want I go into into the room first a good time beforehand to just check out the room and see how full it might get what the sounds like at the back. So I just stood at the back and there's this guy talking at the front.

There's just huge venue in the Mandarin Hotel in the middle of kr and and he stopped talking and he went Ladies and gentlemen, the reason I stand here today is because of the man who's just walked into the auditorium. Christ James, it's you. And I hadn't seen him for a while before that. So I had my moment that that and.

And it makes me sad sometimes I wish every teacher could witness their moment could actually be there when it happens. Trust me, it will happen. But whether the teacher Mark is actually so lucky that he's going to be there when that happens. The chances are not.

I was just really lucky and felt incredibly proud. And sometimes I also wish we were a bit more honest about the whole role model thing.

It's difficult for youngsters to kind of express that sometimes, but I think as older people and that it changes. So my role models have changed. When I was a little boy, my role models were my granddad. I wanted, I wanted, so wanted to be like my granddad.

You know, that bit that you sometimes see from very little children that they copy the gesticulation of another person.

And I remember somebody saying to me once when my granddad and I used to walk along the dirt track with the little dog up to the cross into the crucifix in the field, and people used to laugh because apparently I walked like him. That, that kind of copic stuff, I'm very. Makes me very happy now. But my granddad, I wanted to be like him. When I played football.

I wanted to be either like Johan Cruyff or like George Best, but more like Cruyff, because Cruyff, I think, was more like John Lennon than George Best was. Cruyff was outspoken like Lennon was. He was a rebel. I think you, you have, you, you get certain ethics, certain behaviors.

So, so such an important thing that happened.

And again, I think in terms of the behaviors that influences in, in that whole, in football, for example, I remember when I, when I taught at, at Tavam High School in Norwich in the early 80s, and, and it was probably in the, it was in the days of John McEnroe's great time and, and Alan Bond, who was, who was the head of PE at the school at the time, used to curse John McEnroe because she used to say all the kids are copying that behavior, that, that shouting and smashing a racket and all that kind of stuff. And so clearly those influences are there.

But I think we copy not just behaviors, but we copy values and, and, and the ethics and, and one that always springs to mind for me is one that Pep Guardiola, the famous now manager and of course former Barcelona football player under Johan Cruyff, who was his tutor and his manager, said once and, and it, and it's, it's one thing that influenced me and I know many other people when he came to manage Barcelona for his first match. I'll just read this bit, it's from the book.

And, and he said to his players in the first match, I won't tell you off if you misplace a pass or miss a header that costs us a goal.

As long as I know you are going to give 100%, I could forgive you any mistake, but I won't forgive you, if, if you don't give your heart and soul to Barcelona, I'm not asking results of you, just performance. I won't accept people speculating about performance if it's half hearted or people aren't giving their all. This is barca.

This is what is asked of us and this is what I will ask of you. You have to give your all.

Imagine if a teacher stood in front of a class, actually said that in, in this, in this world that we occupy where, where too often we go, if you don't get an A star or you don't get a 9 or whatever, 10 out of 10 or whatever it is, then it's not worth it. It doesn't get talked about at all.

So there are certain things that are the right things, that as schools and as teachers, in partnership with parents and guardians, we can agree that they become our values and our ethics and our morals. And we can, we can deliberately try to pass on some of that goodness onto the children and we can deliberately lead by example.

And it saddens me sometimes when I do my.

I'm a professor of practice at the University of Cumbria and I work with, I don't know, every year with about 200 teacher training students and I have to try very hard not to talk to them about how to start the lesson or how to end a lesson or getting an A star or whatever and actually talking about who the young people are and, and, and what goodness, what positivity we can give them, we can give them optimism and we can reject certain behavior. We should actively have an anti bullying policy in a school. And when you look at them, they've worked at them very hard.

But it doesn't very often say lead by example. It doesn't very often recognize that importance of copied behavior. That bit that says this is just not what we do. Like Guadiola says, this is not us.

Here are our values, here are our principles. Your mom and dad's guardians have signed up to them, all of us have signed up to them. And here are the reasons you should sign up to them.

And if you don't sign up to them, then there are consequences. And send that you will find that you don't feel as if you belong here.

I think we need to have that discussion, that ongoing dialogue much more from a much younger age, rather than these behavior gurus and silent corridors and all that nonsense that is around it that quite frankly makes me feel slightly nauseous. Silent corridors in a secondary school where we are preparing young people for the world of work. Mark Twain.

Tell me which office or factory or whatever it is you've worked in where you weren't allowed to speak in your own time. So I think we just need to begin. What messages are we giving in those places? Actually, I tell you, the message we're giving.

The message we're giving is that we don't really care about them. And actually, the other message we're giving is that we're a little bit scared of. Yeah, yeah. Because that's when you begin to do that, isn't it? Yeah.

You shout louder. The more. The more worried and scared you are, the louder you shout and the more you stop them from doing so.

It's an interesting thought, I think it is.

And I just want to follow up on what you said about the work you're doing in Cumbria, because how do you find those conversations and the impact that what you're teaching there is with those students? Because it doesn't fit into the. When I go and do practice, I need.

Like you said, I need the lesson to start like this, or I need to format it like this, and my planning needs to look like that. How does. How does that sort of impact them or how do they kind of take that away when it's.

There's more to it than, I think what everything's trying to get through with the curriculum and what they have to learn in such a short space of time, effectively.

So. So a couple of observations around this one is. It's challenging. Yeah, Because.

This is what everybody shall be taught and this is when they shall be taught it, and this is where they shall be taught it, and this is how they shall be taught and this is how we will know that they've taught, that they've been taught it well. So that that regulated thing, right, that's become narrower and narrow.

Then you get an inspection regime offset in the UK and in other places, other inspection regimes, and they begin to define for us, not with us, they begin to define for us what is good and what is outstanding and what's a failure. So our teacher training, over many years now, over 30 years, We're not far off 40 years in terms of the National Curriculum. It's a regulated thing.

If you do this, this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens, and it doesn't focus on the person, it doesn't focus on the role model, it doesn't focus on any of those things. It doesn't focus on all that positivity that you can bring all those things.

So when I start talking to the young people at Cumbria, the aspirin teachers, I focus on the children. I actually I, I say to them light heartedly but truly I'm actually not that very interested in you.

I'm much more interested in what you are going to do for and with the young people who will be with you for such a long period of time. And, and, and so you begin to talk.

And the other thing is when I give, give the annual lectures then because I tend to do two big ones every year, then I, although the audience is quite large, I let them interrupt whenever they want to interrupt. No questions at the end because I've never understood that nonsense so. Because if you're anything like me, I've forgotten what I was going to ask.

But it's almost certainly be out of context, you know, in the third minute, after an hour, in the third minute you mention this. So, so I kind of try to lead by example a little bit and it makes it a bit messy sometimes, but we get there.

But in the end and, and we need to measure what we value rather than anything else. In the end when they sent me the message saying We've named our WhatsApp group after you, I kind of thought bingo, something stuck. Right.

So I still need to find out precisely what it is that stuck. But, but I am quite confident it's something good.

So it's quite difficult because the agenda has been hijacked by the apparatchiks in departments for education and offset and inspection regimes and nobody talks about the child. So I focus very strongly on. I am 8, I am 11, I'm 14.

And, and, and one of the things you know, that I talk to, to them all about is, is that, is that issue of how do you know that you're making the difference? How do you know that you're getting through? How do you know that you've got that relationship? How do these things manifest themselves?

And how do you think about teaching and learning? And a very good one, it's the two most important words. I use this all the time.

The two most important words you can use in a lesson are the words, for example, so the minute you've mentioned an abstract that should be followed by comma, for example, by which you make the learning visible, at which moment in time the purpose and the passion will follow you very rarely get. If you mention an abstract concept you will very rarely get the. Got a question about the abstract.

Once the, for example has followed you very often get all sorts of hands going up Going, can we talk about this? Can we talk about that now? I understand. Right, so, so I'm trying to work with those teachers on the child and who is the child in front of you?

And there is no such thing as a child, they're all different. And actually who are you as a teacher? And there is. Neither is there such a thing as a teacher. You're all different as well.

And that concept about learning from each other and having, having those discussions.

So I, I, I, I treasure that time at the University of Cumbria and I, the interesting thing is, you know, although it's a professorship of practice, I probably learn more from them as aspirin teachers than, than they learn from me because, not least because of their questioning because once you, once you get into the child and what education, schooling means for the child, the questions become really interesting and you then very often, or certainly I do then very often refer to, I don't know, the likes of Carla Ranalio, the likes of Ken Robinson, that bit about, well, why do we have primary schools and secondary schools? Why are there these transition points? Why do we make it deliberately difficult? It's a good question, isn't it?

Yeah.

If we know that, that those are such crucial points. Eight, age 11 in some cases age 14, age 16, age 18. Why do we make them deliberately difficult? Because it doesn't serve the youngster.

So, and, and the concept of role models does come up. We talk about that, we talk about particularly and, and I, I'm reminded of this.

So when I started teaching, kind of forget when I started teaching a level I was probably only six or seven years older than my students. So that's a strange concept, isn't it really? And, and it's not just the 8 year olds and the 9 year olds that go, I want to be like you.

It may well be that it's the 17 and the 18 year old who goes, I want to know what you know, I want to go to all the places you've been.

And so, so I suppose in a way something that we, you and I have talked about very often, Mark, is this ongoing debate, discussion, this ongoing narrative that should sit around teaching and learning and the teacher and, and the learner and how joyous that can be.

And then you become not just the teacher as in I will teach you 1, 2, 3, but you become the teacher and the advisor that says, have you thought about, you should go there? I used to, we used to do all sorts of stuff when I was a German teacher.

It was easy when I learned English, you see, when I was a youngster and grew up in. In the Netherlands because everybody wanted to learn English and all the music was in English. So I tried to recreate some of that.

We used to watch German films and we used to listen to Herbert Groene Meyer and bup. And all. And all those. Those quite. And kind of analyze the lyrics and they'd go, wow, that's really good.

And they'd come back and then somebody would say, did you know that they've got Herbert Groenemeyer's latest album, Bokum, in Andy's Records? And I mean, I had no idea they've got that in Andy's Records, which was one of the main record stores in. In Norwich at the time. So.

So that constant narrative. But much of that was always about looking at each other and some. And sometimes looking up to the other.

And I just wanted to go back to the. The role modeling where people don't actually know that's happening. So one.

One thing that we always did as a family was there were never any mobile phones at the dinner table or whenever we were eating. And it was just a given. No one ever questioned it.

It gave us always a chance to come together at whatever meal that happened to be, so that there was a real chance for discussion and just chatting about life and an opportunity to do that, which was always sort of there as a chance to do that.

And it's only with hindsight, then, looking back as our kids have sort of moved out of home and then suddenly experience these different expectations in different households or different with their friends when they've gone to university. It's like they. It's like, oh, that was really weird.

We were just having dinner and everyone's just on their phone, there's no conversation or oh, is that what other people do? And. And these.

What was amazing was the fact that they sort of came back with such a positive feeling of what we did and why we did it, with that benefit of hindsight of understanding what the. The space created for us. And I think that's an. That's an obvious example.

But there are so many small things that we do, so many small ways of being and communicating that all sort of add up to what that home is. And I think it's certainly, as I've got older, it's that sense of when.

When our children come home and they want it to be like this because it gives them that sense of, oh, this is what I know and this is what I love about it.

And I can also then sense that from My past as well, you know, the, the sense of going home was something which you think, oh, I understand why this felt good, why the, the modeling of this was a positive thing for me. And I don't think there's necessarily always a right and a wrong way to do that, but understanding that principle is incredibly important.

Yeah. And the other thing that happens is, I mean, there's that thing that's kind of a bit spooky, isn't it? But you're being watched, Mark, right?

You're constantly being watched. That's the thing, isn't it? And, and I, you pick these things up. So there are certain things that, certain behaviors.

Confidence is such a good measure. There are certain things where our young people become more confident because of the role that we have played.

So my, my youngest one is now at Oxford studying French and, sorry, studying Italian and Spanish and therefore travels. She goes to Spain, she goes to Italy, and next year is her year abroad.

And all those things and the ease with which she knows how to book flights and hotels and get insurance sorted in comparison to her peers is quite remarkable. So I said to her last summer, I think it was really cool how you do that.

You went on Expedia and Trivago and you did all the price comparisons and wow. And she went, what do you mean, wow? I've watched you, I've watched you for the last, for the last God knows how long, dad, if I, if I can't do it.

But I've never sat down and gone, Come and look and I'll show you what the Expedia website looks like. And, and there is that thing about we are being watched and subconsciously they will, those young people will take. And we're the same, aren't we?

I think we, we watch. I, When I was a teacher, my goodness.

Paul Nevins, Richard Taylor, my two idols, I tell you, from high school, I, I used to stand outside Richard's classroom and listen to him teach. And I literally think, oh, my God, I wish he never knew that, by the way, until the book, until the book was published, right?

But because somewhere I, I, I got feedback from the youngsters from my tutor group. They would literally go, we've got English this afternoon. And I'd go, I take it you like English. Oh, Mr. Taylor's brilliant. Why is he brilliant?

And they'd give you 500 reasons why.

Because he was kind, because he's funny, because he knows what he's talking about, and because I never forget when he's told the story, all those things So I used to go and stand outside his classroom and listen and kind of think, my God, I wish I could do that. Or Paul Nevins, who taught geography and, and, and if you taught a class.

So if I, if I had a class, lesson five on Tuesday or Monday or whatever, and they'd been with poor lesson four, they would invariably be late to my lesson. So go, you're late today. We didn't want to leave Mr. Nevins's class.

I don't know quite what that said about mine, but they certainly didn't want to leave Mr. Nevins's class because Paul was brilliant. Right. And the one thing I learned about Paul, I watched again. And you learned. So they were my role models.

Paul Nevins never set homework that was unnecessary. Paul Evans would be the one who said, if I set a homework that says, finish off what we've done in the lesson.

I've, I've planned badly, so I will only set homework if it enhances. And, and you used to differentiate the homework.

You do that, you do that, you do that, you just go home and think about what's happened today was brilliant because he made an effort, knowing the youngsters. So there's so many role models professionally and, and bits in people. I, I worked with a guy called David Johnston. He was the first of all.

He was my, my deputy chief education officer in Manchester.

Then he, he moved to Salford, the city of Salford, as chief education officer, and I followed him and became senior inspector and then I moved back to Manchester where I was education director in South Manchester, and he was still chief education officer in Manchester.

And one of the things I learned from David, I learned many things from there, but one of the things I learned from David was how important it was to be good with people. David Johnston, if he visited a school, he would know the names of all, all the people he was about to meet, including the staff in the office.

He kept notes and he had notes in his filing cabinets in those days. And he would walk into the school and he would knock on the office little window and he'd go, mark Taylor, how are you?

It's been about four years since I was here last or two years or one year, whatever. How are you? Your youngsters must be about 12 by now, the youngest one. Is that right? These people felt recognized by the chief education officer.

He gave them a sense of importance. And people go, oh, that's terrible. No, isn't. It mattered because actually it mattered to the people.

So, so you pick, you pick up bits from the Role model thing isn't just an entirety, but I want to be like you or. But there are bits and pieces that's quite brilliant. I'll take that. So I prepared for my visits as a result.

I was always really well prepared for my visits. Nothing to do with me, everything to do with David.

And I think the theme that runs through that is that personalized understanding and that relationship, doesn't it? And I think the same from when you were saying about your students in the.

And the people you were teaching in Cumbria, is the fact that I think ultimately when we realize that we're having a real interaction with two people that are able to connect on something that matters because it matters about those conversations, those understandings.

You know, people who are going, who are training to be teachers know and want to be the person that makes the difference and they want to connect with their pupils and they want to share what they have, the curriculum and all those things aside.

So I think what seems abstract in some ways, actually, when you understand and you talk about it, there's, there's a natural connection and a light bulb moment certainly within what you're doing that makes you think, oh yeah, that must be the case.

And as you were just talking there, it just struck me, certainly when I'm teaching my sort of drum and percussion lessons in a school, immediately when you just remember that this particular pupil had a, had a rugby match on the weekend or they, they, they said they were visiting their grand. Hadn't seen for a while and you just think, I'm interested, you know, how did the match go? You know, how was your visit?

And then away they go and the lesson is completely different than it would have been, kind of.

Right, okay, so we're going to start on page this or we're listening to this or play along to that and, and those touch points all the way through just make a really important for me as a teacher, as someone who's trying to support young people as well as, as their experience too.

And that's such a different thing, isn't it, to the, to this silent corridor, factory approach. And then you would become scared, wouldn't you? Because, because if it's also detached. So I totally agree.

And I think the other thing is that, you know, there are so many other.

I listened to that speech whenever I could get hold of him because I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. I'd never heard anybody quite speak, not just the content, but the whole delivery, whatever went with it.

And interestingly, but that's on reflection, that's with the benefit of hindsight, it never crossed my mind that he was black. It seemed totally irrelevant. So I didn't kind of go, that's my black role model and that's my white one. Never, never became part of it.

I wanted to be like Christian Barnard, the man who performed the first heart transplant in the Cortescue Hospital in Cape Town. Because I thought what that was the most magnificent thing to do as a, as a, as a youngster. I thought, my God, this man.

There was such a big thing about saving lives of people and by doing the impossible, I so wanted to be like him.

And when I, when I visited many years later when I flew into Cape Town to meet with Mr. Tutu Desmond, the Archbishop, I got, I got to the airport and I asked the driver to drive me past the old school hospital just because it just, it stuck and, but I also remember wanting to be like Anne Frank when I was about 12, 13, I wanted to be able to write like her because When I was 13 I read the diary of Anne Frank, who started her diary when she was 30. And I was acutely aware of the fact that she was infinitely better at writing than I was. And I wanted to write like I wanted to be able to do that.

And then I think back on my childhood and certain television programs now, many of these you might not remember, but Bonanza is western thing. I wanted to be like Little Joe. I wanted to have the white speckled horse and I wanted to be the good looking cool guy.

But, but the interesting thing about those characters was they were always good people, weren't they? So there were elements of role modeling in there. Robin Hood, if.

So if you watch Robin Hood the TV series or Ivanhoe or whatever it was, you never wanted to be the Sheriff of Nottingham. That came many years later when Alan Rickman did so brilliantly. But that, how is the difference story altogether?

But as a youngster, he wanted to be like Robin Hood. Of course you did. Or like Ivanhoe. So there's an interesting thing about fictional role models.

And you think of the whole Star wars thing and you think of the Indiana Jones thing. Yeah. And, and, and, and I, I, I sometimes joke with My.

With my youngest daughter's boyfriend, who's studying archaeology at Oxford and kind of call him Indy. And we have a joke about that aspect of it and whether he was influenced by the Indiana Jones film.

So I think that the fictional role model bit is important. And then. And then, of course, also the obvious.

We already Talked about John McEnroe, but also the obvious role models that sit in film and particularly music, pop music. Bob Galdo was a role model for perhaps. Perhaps even less so for music reasons, as for his Live Aid goodness, his Band Aid goodness.

But certain musicians, you behaved in certain ways. You had your hair cut, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what.

Barbers, men's barbers must have earned a fortune when David Beckham was around, because one, he had a different haircut every week, and secondly, all the youngsters would go and copy the haircut. So all those things come into play. And only so few of those things get taken into account by us when we work with children and young people.

So I think we need to spend much more time focusing on that aspect as part of our teaching and as part of engaging with their learning.

And I think the other thing that I was thinking as you were talking about that was the recent Eras tour by Taylor Swift, because there were so many people that went to that in terms of just the sheer numbers.

But I think from all the things I've heard from various interviews, that celebrities who went to see it with their families was that whether you like the music or not, whether it was your favorite artist or not, there was something about the atmosphere and what a lot of the young people got from that as a. As a collective experience, as about the energy that was with it.

Something comes from just what you're putting out into the world, as well as your sort of artistic merit, as it were. And I think it's at that point you start to realize everything that we do, if we're passionate about it has a role model element.

It has something that you're putting into the world that people identify with. And so when we talk about sort of the narrowing of the curriculum, for example, it's that kind.

But what about all those people who will make a massive difference to the world because of their real passion about this?

You know, you spoke about Star wars, you know, George Lucas kind of imagined what that was going to be like when they first started doing it, and all those people that put all those scenes together at the beginning of that technology, all of their passions about that, which didn't come from sitting in this behind a school desk at one point, but having that freedom and that opportunity to take that forward and to make the world a very different place and such an influential place, just based on what they're really passionate about and how they wanted to project themselves into the world.

Yeah, they're just really interested. I met some years ago, I met Francesco Demosto, who is a Venetian, he's a TV presenter.

He presented all sorts of programs on the BBC, travel programs predominantly. And I met him because I wanted to talk to him about a possible Venice Sheffield school project.

And he became, or an aspect of him became very quickly became a role model. I've never met a man who loves the place where he lives so much as he does when he speaks about.

I literally came away from there thinking I must move somewhere where I can feel the way he feels. Right. He just every, every bit of his city he fell in love with. But.

But then similarly, you know, I spent a fair bit of time in hospital in the last 12 months or so. And you look at those nurses in the cancer hospital in Sheffield, Aston park, or you look at the surgeon or the oncologist and people, unbelievable.

And I look at them now and think, there are bits of what you do that I want to have. I want to be like. So we must also remember that actually the whole role model thing, if we're really honest with ourselves, actually never stopped.

But it hasn't been me.

And I'm sure I'm not on my own, but that's important for our children to know that as part of that dialogue, that I'm not just there as some 60 odd year old who knows it all. But I'm. I'm still just like you. I'm going through exactly the same process on a daily basis.

And maybe there are certain events like the Taylor Swift thing you mentioned. So every year my wife and I go and see Jules Holland around this time of the year, November, December time, and his and his big band and his guests.

It's. It's almost like a. A precursor to the Hutanani thing. There is no more joyous music event in my life that I go to than a Jules Holland concert.

If you had, I swear to you, if you had a cold and a flu and you felt really miserable and you felt the worst day at work in your life. If you turn up at 7:30 in the evening and you go to one of those dudes, you walk out with a smile on your face.

I think certain events and, and we can think of big ones. Live Aid, Live it Made everybody both angry and, and fairer. I think the, the, the death of the Princess of Wales as, as one big one.

But, but, but in our lives they also happen as smaller things, very personal ones.

When my, when I was a 12 year old boy and my granddad died, the worst thing that had happened to me in my first 12 years and, and for many years afterwards when I've got two little dogs sitting next to me here now do little wire hair duck on they, when we got those, the joy that they brought. Unbelievable. And, and, and, and the kids now call me Dr. Doittle because I talk to the dogs.

Right, but so I think there are events and other circumstances that positively influences and we could, we could see as some sort of a role model and I think the ethos and the culture in a school attached to its values and principles is that if you go into a happy school you are very likely to encounter happy children who behave in a certain happy way. If you go into one of the factories with silent corridors and huge fences around them and shouty adults, what do you expect?

What do you expect in return? So I don't get these government gurus on behavior who, who, who first and foremost don't seem to like children. First conclusion.

Tom Bennett hates kids, right? And then you build your strategies from there.

You don't, you don't like them, you don't trust them, you're a bit scared of them if there's a few, if there's a good many of them. So you become like the nasty police people. Not my scene. You go into a happy school, comes a different thing.

People will open doors for you, they will ask you how you are. And incidentally they will not be perfect because it says in a teenager's job description I am not perfect, just like it says in mine.

So sometimes we need to have a sense of reality that, that wonderful quote from the Little Prince. Antoine de Sand Exuberie. All grown ups were once children, but only few of them remember. It is one that we should have printed as lapel badges.

I think I get it all the time.

The youth of today, when they go home, the first thing they do, they sling their bag in the corner, they kick their shoes in the other corner, they go to their room upstairs and then they immediately get on the phone through their mates they've just left behind. They've barely said hello to me. Terrible. God knows what will become of them. I, I get that. I got that at some big parents conference.

Okay, let me tell you a story. So when I was 14, I used to cycle home from school because I grew up in the Netherlands. Psychopaths and bicycles and all that stuff.

He said cycle home. I used to walk through the door, sling my bag in one corner and my shoes in the other. I didn't used to go to my room.

I used to sit on the stairs because that's where the phone was and it was attached by a wire to the wall. And I used to ring the mates that I just left behind. And my mother used to sound exactly like you do, member of the audience.

And there's a big difference was in my day, phone calls cost a lot more than they do today, basically. So I think we need to get real sometimes. Yes. And this is one to play with. I mean, play in a. Not in a derogatory term.

How do we arrive at a point where our young people become positive role models for themselves? We know from sad experience that the negative role model sitting, for example, around drugs, sitting, for example, around knife crime, sitting.

We can come up with loads of things. We know that peer to peer role modeling exists.

I understand that much of the focus of that in the media is negative because I've met some good kids, doesn't sell newspapers. But I think we need to work with our young people on that conundrum of positive role models. So.

Because if we could get positive influencing amongst the young people, positive role modeling amongst the young people, sometimes guided by us, then I think bullying in its broadest sense would look quite differently. I think we have to try this, but we can't try this in the silent corridor schools.

We can only try that in the schools where trust and happiness prevail. Good learning, brilliant teachers, amazing young people. Not that. Not that the youngsters in those silent corridor schools are not amazing.

They are amazing. They just ended up in the wrong place in many, many cases. So I think that's one to tease out. I don't think we've. We've even. I think we're.

We're in the, in the foothills of trying to work that one out.

And that makes perfect sense in as much as, like I say, the number of times you sort of hear governments talking about, now we're going to do this and now we're going to try that and nothing really changes. You're just sort of reinventing the same square wheel that doesn't quite go around as you expect it to be.

And we've talked in previous episodes about, you know, having a. Having a sense of this is what we want our young children to experience going forward.

This is what we want our education system to look like over 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years, whatever that's going to be.

And that's as we said from a political standpoint, is very difficult to do and also then becomes less important because there's a million other things happening in the the world except it is the most important thing if we want to change the world in the next 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years as we go forward.

And I just think that sense of how you put so brilliantly about those schools with the silent corridors, it paints a real picture because I think everyone can immediately feel the difference in what that school feels like to the ones with happy children in. Do you think that will change organically as people start to understand?

I just think the way the system, especially for people in secondary school as teenagers, you know, we want you to get to school at this time.

And you know, there have been examples of schools that just start an hour later which makes a difference in terms of them getting up, getting enough sleep.

You know, that sense of, you know, you're going through this massive hormonal change, but we still expect you to work in the same way as everybody else.

And it struck me recently there's been lots of talk about sort of work and within schools with, with women who are going through the menopause, for example, and they want a different sense of how their work and their work life looks and, and how they feel about it. And it should be taken into consideration about what the day to day life looks like based on someone going through a different stage of their life.

And I completely think that's a great discussion to have and a really important thing for our development in, in the workplace.

But you can't have that does that discussion and still say to teenagers when they don't, they've got no perspective of what they're going through, let alone the fact they're going through this sort of hormonal change in such a big way. But you're still going to go to school in the way that it was.

And we're not going to even mention the fact that you're going through, through that important part of your life and still do school in the same way.

It's an interesting one. I mean, just a couple of observations. So my wife's school, the mantra is her mantra. Every, every child is everyone's responsibility.

If we want to get this right. It's, it's a societal, it's a collective responsibility. It's not the school doing it, it's not the teacher doing it.

Neither is it, the parents on their own doing it, you know, so it takes a country to educate a child. It would be desirable if we had politicians who want to be Secretary of State for Education.

I genuinely think that in most cases, in most countries that the people who become Secretary of State for Education see it as a stepping stone to higher office as opposed to actually being in there because they want to make a difference to the kids. It is terrible. It's a terrible example, a terrible example to set. I think the schools with the silent corridors versus happy schools.

The picture that springs to mind is it is the difference between Hogwarts and Azkaban, right? If I think of the schools with, with silent corridors I go cold, I literally, I shiver. If I think of Hogwarts I, I get, I get a warm feeling.

I know where I'd rather be, right? So. So I think all of those aspects are incredibly important. But we do need to think about what we do with secondary school youngsters in particular.

I remember that conversation with Tim Brigauer some years ago. So we make them get up at a time when they don't really want to get up and they're not very with it.

Then we get them to come to school and we give them one break to go to the toilet, which is too short, which is mid morning. We actually don't want them to go to the toilet at all otherwise because we lock the toilets.

Then at lunchtime we give them collective indigestion because actually we're so worried that they might misbehave that we condense the whole lunch experience into 50 minutes.

We give them pretty awful food in most cases that we ask them to get down their necks as quickly as possible and then we get rid of them early afternoon as quickly as we can, preferably around quarter past three, half past three and, and I know that Tim. No, no, I don't know actually he was half joking and probably much more serious than I realized at the time because it's true, isn't it? If.

Let's just say that you started the school at 8 o' clock in the morning and you finished it at 6 o' clock at night. And within that you have certain people turn up at certain times, including a flexibility for teachers.

But to go back to Ken Robinson, we're still in this industrial revolution model of. Here's the building. The building has little sub buildings, we call them classrooms to fit the same number of people.

They all face the front, they're not allowed to speak, they have to put their hand up Nowadays they're Not even allowed to go to the toilet anymore. They're meant to listen and then go away. We do that for the next number of years and we give them pieces of paper.

And then what happens in the non grammar and non private schools schools is, as Billy Connolly would say, the doors to the shipyards open at the same time as the doors to the school open and one moves to the next. We haven't changed much, except there are no shipyards or coal mines or steel factories or whatever around anymore for mass employment.

So now the doors open at the age of 16 or 18. Many of them don't know where to go and have no purpose. So, and that's awful.

We haven't kept up, we haven't reinvented, we haven't been creative enough. But we are, in every country that I know we are politically and that I've worked in, we are politically badly led.

So I think, you know, you go back to it. I would call again for a societal ongoing debate about the importance of education and schooling.

And let's not wait for the politicians to tell us because they don't know and they can't. And when they try to do it badly.

And if there wasn't a reason to let us know what your experiences are, then I, I don't know what is, because it just gives us that sense now, no matter what you're calling, no matter what your circumstances, whatever it happens to be, that you want to get across to the world from a learning and an education and a young person point of view, you know, that's the reason we've put this podcast together, is to sort of celebrate what everyone is doing.

So hopefully that societal debate, that kind of understanding that this brilliant thing is happening over here, you know, even if this silent corridor is what is not working, but is over there, at least we can kind of get a full picture of what's happening and what's possible and those people that are taking that action and making a difference so that we kind of at least feel like we can take ownership of where we are in a true sense.

And then like we say, have a movement, create some pressure, have a conversation that's actually gonna have real benefit in terms of it just, you know, if there's 80% of the country that thinks it should look like that, you know, kind of think that eventually at that point someone's going to listen or someone's going to at least come up with an idea that's going to change that. Because as you were speaking about the sort of the 8 o' clock to 6 o' clock time frame.

If you even take the view that school's there partly because we need child care and it needs to look like this because of other reasons that are not really necessarily even educational related, well, that then you get rid of the whole wraparound idea because actually you're there learning it through that whole time, that works for you. So those people that can drop their children off later, when they get to school later, it works for them.

Those people that needs to be later, then there's all sorts of stuff going on there and just that whole sense of what it is that the, the school as a, as an entity is and how you learn in that entity.

Because if we then suddenly had an hour and a half for lunch because you could actually eat properly and actually then had enough energy in the afternoon to do. Whether it's an academic subject, whether it's music, whether it's sport, whatever it happens to be.

But it's all part and parcel of what we do, which is what many families do already. It just doesn't look like that within the traditional setting.

But if it was able to be sort of under an umbrella of we give you this opportunity, you can do many of these things in the school environment that normally you'd be going elsewhere to do then.

And then there's a society and collaboratively you've got people coming in and out of schools to help provide whatever that learning happens to be following that passion, then you sort of solve that sort of time restraint as well as the, the sense that it needs to look like this, because it always has done.

It's interesting. I, I agree. And it's interesting, you know, all over the world. So in 25 or so places where there's a kidzania, they organize adult evenings.

So the adult gets to be the child, gets to become the pilot, gets to become the, the brain surgeon or the window cleaner or whatever. And, and this takes me back to, and to understand exhibit. You know the bit about all grown ups who wants children, but only few of them remember it.

Please remember. And then, so when I visit those on, on many occasions, I asked the adults what they think, it all goes brilliant. I wish this had been around.

The phrase that goes is I wish this had been around when I was a kid. Right. So my next question is, so what was careers education like for you? And one of two things happen.

They either begin to laugh or they begin to swear, right? And then we all have a little giggle and go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

But over all those years, nothing's changed and we've not been prepared to learn the lesson. So the key issue needs to be that it has to happen through schools, but different schools. We.

It has to happen through a concept that is more than a school. A school needs to be more than a school. Like Barcelona Football Club was Mesca Un Club more than a club.

It is owned by the community, community defined in whichever way we want to define it, including employers and whatever else. Schools need to be owned by their communities. They need to become Mesca una escola.

And when you deliver schools like that, then you also need to measure differently what you value, because you've just declared that you value different things. On a good morning, on an optimistic day, I become hopeful.

When I see in England, for example, the proposed introduction of a new national curriculum, when I see the introduction of the new education plan in, in India, when I am part of the curriculum work and thinking that's going on in Sharjah and the wider United Arab Emirates, then you think, something's happening, something's bubbling away, something's brewing. I just hope, genuinely hope to be around when it's starting to happen, because. But we absolutely need to change the way that we think of our schools.

We need to move away from what Ken Robinson described as the first Industrial Revolution model, and we need to move to the model that says this is more than a school and it measures the new values.

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