Latest / Teachers Talk Radio / Should Schools Teach Patriotism? Flags, Kings & the Curriculum Debate: Points of View

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Should Schools Teach Patriotism? Flags, Kings & the Curriculum Debate: Points of View · Teachers Talk Radio

• 0:00
  Welcome to TKO Talk Radio! Thank you for listening!
• 0:20
  Hello there and good evening to this St. George's Day, which comes to you from an Irishman.
• 0:28
  Happy St. George's Day. Happy Day of the International Saint of Georgia,
• 0:32
  International Saint of Malta, International Saint of Barcelona,
• 0:35
  Saint of Milan, Saint of Leprosy.
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  If he walked down the street today, I wonder how he would receive.
• 0:41
  If Jesus at St. George walked down the street today, how would they be received?
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  Would they be welcomed with open arms? So all those people saying,
• 0:48
  well, go let's have St. George, keep me English.
• 0:50
  I wonder would they actually welcome St. George on their streets these days
• 0:53
  or would they have a problem with him because he would look not exactly how
• 0:57
  they would expect him to look.
• 0:59
  So, controversially, I've had one of those days where as an Irishman,
• 1:02
  I get people saying to me, why do we not have St. George's day today?
• 1:05
  And, of course, reform, being as they are bombastically populist,
• 1:09
  think that the solution to our school problems is a flag and a portrait of the
• 1:13
  king. Of course, it's no obvious sign that patriotism seems to be on the rise these days.
• 1:19
  Kafka cannot confuse patriotism with nationalism.
• 1:22
  Patriotism, love your country, perfectly fine. Loving your country,
• 1:25
  respecting your country, thinking your country's brilliant, no problem with that.
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  Nationalism, as we well know, is the belief that your country is intrinsically better.
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  And quite simply, we know what that leads to. That's what the N stands for, a Nazi.
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  And we all know we fought against that. So we have to separate patriotism from
• 1:41
  nationalism. So that's what we're going to be debating, first of all,
• 1:44
  and then we'll look at our story, which we were going to lead with,
• 1:47
  which was about the reduction in SLT.
• 1:49
  But we sense the amount of points of view is about, obviously,
• 1:53
  what is topical, what is generating some traffic out there.
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  And we as individuals want to give our opinions on that. We sort of think that
• 2:00
  that story is, well, it's getting a lot of notice on this day of St.
• 2:04
  George's Day. And of course, remember that St. George himself would have been
• 2:09
  a Palestinian knight, I think Palestinian-Turkish-Roman knight,
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  who was chosen by Alfred the Great, an Anglo-Saxon.
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  Of course, Anglo-Saxons came from Germany to be the patron saint of England,
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  mainly because he was a popular saint at the time, and that's why St. George was chosen.
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  In fact, St. Patrick, St. George, St. David, and St. Andrew,
• 2:28
  who's the odd one out? Quick question to start with.
• 2:31
  Who's the odd one out? St. Patrick, St. George, St. David, and St.
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  Andrew. Of the four patron saints of the home nations, who is the odd one out?
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  In what sense? Well, just give me any sense about which one of them is the odd one out.
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  It's like abstract thinking, isn't it? I'll give you the answer.
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  I'll give you the answer, and then we'll see. Can you come up with why?
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  St. David is the only one that is.
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  Is he actually from here? Correct. St.
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  David is the only patron saint of the four Hmong nations that actually was from Wales. St.
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  Patrick, we believe, was a Roman, particularly, actually, ironically,
• 3:11
  most of the evidence points towards a Roman welchman.
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  St. Andrew was the brother of St. Peter and was a Palestinian running around
• 3:19
  in Judea at the time of Jesus.
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  And, of course, St. George was before the century night. So you've literally
• 3:25
  got the only one of the home nations of Patriot Saint is St.
• 3:30
  David. There's the correct answer. So as we always know, Elson George's Day
• 3:34
  is an interesting theme about what we define as Englishness, etc, etc.
• 3:39
  And in the last few years, there's been a lot more conversation about that.
• 3:43
  Foreign shows today to decide that they would actually say that they want to
• 3:47
  reintroduce a patriotic curriculum and that they want to get rid of all the
• 3:51
  woke stuff and that they want to
• 3:53
  basically teach our children a version of history to love their country.
• 3:57
  So they've basically suggested that we, and I'm speaking on behalf of history
• 4:02
  teachers here, are teaching woke history and that we're teaching a wrong version of history.
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  Not in virtue of the fact that history up until now has been taught pretty much
• 4:10
  exclusively in a Govian way, because they forget in 2016 Michael Goh changed
• 4:15
  the history of curriculum to ensure that 40% of the curriculum must be British.
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  But we had Michael Goh on to our actual show, and he ensured that this had been
• 4:25
  done before. So this is nothing new. We've had this before.
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  We've had this discussion before. And the majority of historians out there are
• 4:33
  teaching the majority of British history.
• 4:35
  To a point where I would even suggest that our curriculum has become extremely narrow.
• 4:40
  Raise your hands if we still study World War I and World War II.
• 4:43
  Raise your hands if the most popular options in history are still World War
• 4:47
  I, World War II, the Treaty of Versailles, and pretty much the same history you're taught.
• 4:52
  Sorry to interrupt. I love how you say that. Say it again. World War I and World War II, yeah.
• 4:58
  Or as I have to call it, England versus Germany part one, England versus Germany
• 5:02
  part two, because a lot of people seem to think it's England versus Germany.
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  I have to spend a significant amount of time going, there were 49 nationalities
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  in the British Empire at the time, and it was the British Empire.
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  People were one and more.
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  You know, the Fiji and the New Polly's, you know, all those Burneys,
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  all those people from the Indian subcontinent and all those 49 nationalities,
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  you know, they really didn't do very much except the heavy lifting.
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  Well, hey, that's what the British Empire, so they really want to teach a patriotic curricula.
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  There's a little caveat to this. It would then be the performer have to acknowledge,
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  and here comes the real kicker, if they really want to do this,
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  you have to acknowledge the contribution of people across the empire who both
• 5:41
  migrated from here to other parts of the world and vice versa.
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  So if they really want to do the patriotic curricula, I am well and happy to
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  hand-in-hand tell them about Britishness.
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  Now, if they want to then decide what the difference between Britishness and
• 5:55
  Englishness is, that is a very different question.
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  And I think that is a national question that needs to happen.
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  I.e., what is the distinct difference between Englishness and Britishness?
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  Because when you hear people talking, they sometimes go, well,
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  English, British, you know what I mean? And you go, actually, no.
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  It's kind of the same as confusing the Soviet Union with Russia.
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  In the sense that Russia was the larger part of the Soviet Union.
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  But when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukrainians and all those other independent
• 6:23
  republics were very quick to reserve their independence.
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  I do agree with what's going on in a similar scenario.
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  Because if you do look at other parts in the UK, they are asserting their own identities.
• 6:33
  So this is about identity politics. It's about what's going on with weaponizing identity politics.
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  When you take the flag debate, and is this a cynical ploy before the next council
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  elections to basically say we're patriotic?
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  I get it. And there is some evidence in some schools that teachers are teaching
• 6:52
  alternative versions of history.
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  God forbid there should be more than one interpretation of history because that's
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  what history always is, by the way.
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  It's always interpretations. It's always open to interpretation.
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  And it's never a fixed setting.
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  It is always evolving and changing. The same goes as you would say for literature.
• 7:09
  So I'll open to the floor. Are we sponsoring? Should we do our sponsors and
• 7:12
  then we'll open to the floor, Liz?
• 7:13
  Yeah, I'm happy to refer to our sponsors and say a big thank you to Hachette Learning.
• 7:20
  This show is brought to you in partnership with Hachette Learning,
• 7:22
  who are publishers of professional development books and resources that support
• 7:26
  great teaching and learning in schools around the world.
• 7:28
  You can level up your professional development today and visit www.hachettelearning.com
• 7:34
  to explore the full range of titles.
• 7:37
  And as we enter exam season, you may like to check out AQA because you may be
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  ready to make an impact beyond the classroom.
• 7:44
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• 8:11
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• 8:16
  aqa.org.uk forward slide forward slash apply.
• 8:23
  So that's that's my introduction to the patriotic curriculum.
• 8:28
  I'm more than happy to take questions as a historian to the rest of the crew tonight.
• 8:32
  I can tell you I've planned the curriculum recently. I have
• 8:35
  taught British Empire slavery very tastefully balanced
• 8:38
  it all out because I am very mindful in the
• 8:41
  area that I currently teach there are people who would
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  question and I've had people question when I'm
• 8:47
  teaching slavery I have no problem you know saying I teach a broad and balanced
• 8:51
  curriculum and it goes so far as to say I recently had a debate first time I've
• 8:54
  done it where the class split themselves in the two and the question was was
• 8:57
  the British Empire a good thing or a bad thing and I gave evidence for both
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  sides and the kids made a free choice and what I actually then did was that
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  four students who were undecided
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  and what you had on one side of the room was well what about the Bengal famine,
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  what about the Amasar massacre, what about the potato famine in Iraq,
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  which I actually think there was no famine, there was no famine when you got.
• 9:17
  Send it through somewhere else well what about and
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  they are saying what about the sewer systems what about the railways what about
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  trade and then come back the other way oh no no
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  they built railways in india because that was to extract the resources okay
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  the british empire was good for and literally technology what about
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  sewer systems what about water systems what about the modern world
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  what about democracy i had these children i would say
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  to you probably better engaging than i can see a
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  national debate and at the end of it students around
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  say to me can we do more of that and i says yes maybe you could do more of
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  that but understand we could do that because as
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  a former man not want to hear this i taught the children all sides
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  of history all sides of the debate and they were free at the
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  age of 13 to make up their own mind now of course as an
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  axe where i'm from if you want to say if
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  i'm pro the british empire as i said to the students really sorry
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  to tell you i'm a star wars fan and in star wars the empire
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  are not the good guys maybe i'm part
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  of the rebel alliance take him away but from my
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  perspective i'm on the side of the little guys now the
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  kids know that they have another history teacher in my department who has
• 10:20
  got completely the other so the two of us have different statements where they've
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  got one teacher saying one thing another teacher saying yeah and that mirrored
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  the classroom so i have no problem telling the children how i personally feel
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  about it but i also tell them why i feel that way but i also make it that they
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  are allowed to choose whatever side they want with no judgment i've done the
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  same with Oliver Cromwell,
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  telling me that Oliver Cromwell is a hero.
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  No chance. But at the same time, I will show how he was heroic.
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  I will show how he wasn't heroic. And I did the same thing.
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  Now, if a forum come in, I wonder would they allow me to do that?
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  Or would they just turn around and say to me, you must only teach the positives of Oliver Cromwell.
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  You must forget that he genocided my people. You must forget that he sold people
• 11:02
  in slavery. You must forget that he banned Christmas as a Christian.
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  He was a hypocrite. You must forget all that and only do that.
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  Same as, are we to teach slavery by just saying, oh, the British Empire only
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  abolished slavery, but didn't do it in the first place.
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  In other words, do they want me to go back and change history for them?
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  Because I don't know if I can do that. Are they genuinely interested in me doing
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  exactly what I did, which is to teach a broad, balanced, and thorough,
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  showing all sides and allowing the children to make their own decisions?
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  I don't think they've thought that much into it.
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  I genuinely don't think these people have actual policy ideas or concepts of
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  what things would look like.
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  They just look around and go, what are the angry people shouting about today?
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  How can I turn that into a statement to get us ahead in the polls?
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  I really do think that's all it is. I don't think they have a single flying
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  clue what any of their ideas would look like or how they would function in practice.
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  They haven't thought that far ahead. They don't care.
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  It's, they're just totally discrediting themselves by anyone who's got half
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  a brain, I think, to question anything.
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  It disturbs me the fact that people rally behind this and think it's the best possible idea.
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  I think the language that was used in it about version,
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  the patriotic version of history, I just think,
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  well, as soon as you're using the word version, you're talking about subverting
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  some element of truth potentially, or you're channeling something out,
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  or you're teaching a reduced version.
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  And so they're doing the very thing, but the version that they want to give
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  rather than the version that's perhaps being given in schools of that version
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  that's being given in schools at the moment.
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  And it's like everything seems to be a manipulation.
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  And it's hypocritical because that's the very thing that they are saying is
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  happening in schools at the moment.
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  They're saying it's all woke. Teachers are indoctrinating.
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  How is this not indoctrinating? How is this not a plan to indoctrinate young people?
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  In a particular way i i don't understand it even
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  even their their own phrasing acknowledges it
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  wouldn't be the the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth it would
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  be a version of it would be a filtering of the truth so like what yeah the hypocrisy
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  and the just self-contradictory statements and and just general thoughtlessness
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  are off and you read the comment sections are we Exactly.
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  Look at the support and then ask, are we surprised?
• 13:49
  No, I don't think it's thoughtlessness. I actually think it's very like.
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  Strategic like not in a good way but I do feel
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  like it's something that yeah a lot of thought has
• 14:01
  gone into and I do feel like
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  a lot of what reform are doing is just because you
• 14:08
  know essentially black and brown people or I
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  guess the more correct term would be the global majority
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  like I do feel like it comes from this
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  hostility that you know the global majority are able
• 14:21
  to call Britain their home or their country and
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  you know I think a lot of things are rooted
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  in this idea that I think woke is just code
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  for only the English should
• 14:34
  have a good and comfortable time in England or you know that England belongs
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  to the English and nobody else which historically is quite weird because English
• 14:46
  is a German language the English people are by definition people I Maybe took
• 14:51
  the England football team, which people will celebrate.
• 14:54
  There will be three England players, if it was not for one of their grandparents,
• 14:59
  qualifying for the England team.
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  But yet, as we saw last time, when penalties were missed, three England players
• 15:06
  of colour were roundly booed.
• 15:09
  And I knew when those three missed those penalties, we all held our breath and went, oh, God, no.
• 15:16
  Because we know that's coming. And you're right.
• 15:20
  I was talking about that exact situation today.
• 15:24
  Genuinely, I was talking about that today. like I
• 15:27
  remember when those three players missed
• 15:30
  the penalties in I can't remember
• 15:33
  if it was Euros or World Cup I think it was Euros yeah it
• 15:35
  was against Italy it was the Euros and I just remember within minutes seeing
• 15:41
  people on social media commenting like monkey emojis and all sorts of racial
• 15:46
  abuse in their on in the comments on their social media pages for all three
• 15:51
  of them I think it was Rashford,
• 15:53
  SACA, and I can't remember who the third one was. Anshul.
• 15:57
  Yeah. And honestly, I just think for me, a lot of the policies just come from
• 16:04
  this idea that why do you know spreading asthma?
• 16:08
  And I saw something recently I never thought I'd see in my own country,
• 16:11
  a Nigerian, a person of Nigerian extraction playing for Ireland.
• 16:17
  And he was born in Ireland. And it's funny that, you know, some of the people
• 16:22
  in Ireland didn't have a problem with people like Bondiaki, who's from New Zealand,
• 16:25
  are coming from the sort of traditional countries.
• 16:28
  But this person was Nigerian, and he was getting all sorts of online abuse.
• 16:32
  And you're like, whoa, whoa, what's that all about? We don't have a problem
• 16:35
  when somebody who's Australian togs out for Ireland.
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  And we have got Australians and New Zealanders who tog out for Ireland,
• 16:42
  who weren't even born in Ireland, who don't get the abuse.
• 16:45
  And I think this is starting to go global there's set there's something happening
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  and if you tie in this story to.
• 16:51
  What's happening in italy or france or across america
• 16:54
  there's a definite pattern isn't there it's this this rise
• 16:58
  and i i said at the start and it's not patriotism any longer let's call it what
• 17:03
  it is it's starting to become nationalism and i know some of the homeschoolers
• 17:08
  were very upset with me weren't they when i said about how some right-wing groups
• 17:12
  were trying to you know say Now, they said, where's my evidence?
• 17:16
  I could get you to put three words into a Google search and show you how people
• 17:21
  are taking their children out of school to teach them a patriotic curriculum.
• 17:27
  And that patriotic curriculum is exactly what you're talking about, Yasmin.
• 17:31
  It says, here are the English people. They are white. Here are the English people.
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  They speak this language.
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  And it's basically a false narrative
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  of history which selectively chooses a sort
• 17:42
  of narrative which even in its own self completely ignores
• 17:46
  the parts of history which don't fit that narrative and
• 17:49
  that is what's dangerous remember you know he who controls history can control
• 17:53
  the future because if you can control the narrative of the past you can then
• 17:57
  create this sense of injustice and unfairness and i think this narrative is
• 18:01
  becoming very dangerous the great replacement theory is becoming mainstream
• 18:05
  so when people are starting to say let's start waving flags in school,
• 18:09
  My spidey senses start tingling a little bit because, historically speaking.
• 18:14
  Education, if it starts to get co-opted, starts to become a very dangerous thing
• 18:19
  to co-opt the young in order to brainwash them.
• 18:22
  So, as Liz was saying, if I was to reject this, would they then turn around
• 18:28
  and do what was done in other parts of the world and say, you're one of the
• 18:31
  enemy, you're the enemy within, you're the fifth columnist,
• 18:33
  you're one of those people you're talking about because regimes go after intellectuals all the time.
• 18:39
  They go after the thinkers, they go after the teachers, they go after the doctors,
• 18:43
  they go after those individuals, because those are usually the people that put
• 18:46
  their hand up and go, this smells off a bit, doesn't it?
• 18:49
  Yeah, I don't think the flag itself is like brainwashing, to be honest.
• 18:53
  I think there are times where it's totally normal. Like, it's a flag,
• 18:57
  it's a country, you know, and it's a country with a huge history and,
• 19:01
  you know, so many different achievements in the past and present.
• 19:05
  And, you know, there's times like, say, in a football, in the World Cup.
• 19:08
  It's normal to see people in England shirts you know
• 19:11
  to see people waving the England flag it's actually quite a nice time
• 19:14
  I feel like football is actually quite a good vibes time in
• 19:18
  general in London you know it's just nice like everyone's
• 19:21
  rooting for England but I just
• 19:24
  think for me it's very hard to ignore how this
• 19:27
  flag now has become synonymous with
• 19:30
  hostility I don't have an issue with the
• 19:33
  flag but I also can't ignore the fact
• 19:37
  that I do feel like it's being used for the wrong reasons it's
• 19:40
  the context of the flag isn't it I think that's the thing I think when it is
• 19:45
  when it's flown in a genuinely patriotic manner at football matches whenever
• 19:51
  that's that's fair enough you know obviously we lost the queen in 2022 it was
• 19:56
  the queen's 100th birthday this week wasn't it?
• 20:00
  You know, things like that, I can kind of understand why we would use them.
• 20:05
  I think when they were hung from every flagpole,
• 20:08
  it wasn't that wasn't patriotic that was that was sending a message.
• 20:16
  Although it is a little bit of a tangent you know
• 20:19
  people have so much the general public
• 20:22
  have so much sympathy for people like lucy connolly who
• 20:26
  you know was inciting racial hatred i believe
• 20:29
  was the phrase that was used when people in that
• 20:32
  period of time when people were flying flags and you
• 20:35
  know things escalated into riots and you know
• 20:38
  for some reason people conflate having
• 20:42
  genuine patriotism or even you know people are entitled to like I feel like
• 20:49
  if people want to protest about something or if people want to raise a national
• 20:53
  issue fine you know do it but like I feel like people are conflating that with
• 20:58
  hostility towards particular groups.
• 21:00
  But if your patriotism is just about firing a flag, are they out litter picking?
• 21:05
  Are they out volunteering to be local councillors? Are they going down to the
• 21:08
  local care home and looking after old people?
• 21:11
  Are they out, you know, painting over graffiti in the community?
• 21:14
  Are they a part of the neighbourhood watch scheme?
• 21:16
  And if they are, fair enough. But are they asking, here's my key thing,
• 21:21
  when reform says they're going to force, no one, and let me be very clear,
• 21:26
  is ever going to force me to fly any flag?
• 21:28
  Because I can tell you from a lived-in experience when you start forcing people.
• 21:35
  That is not what this country is meant to be about. You know,
• 21:38
  the Magna Carta wasn't about it. It's about democracy. It's about rights.
• 21:41
  It's about permission.
• 21:44
  It's about consent.
• 21:45
  Countries talk about policing by consent.
• 21:47
  If somebody consents to a flag outside their house and the community consent
• 21:51
  to a flag outside their house, goes to the local council, vote on that at the local council.
• 21:55
  If people don't like that, that's the democratic way you do things.
• 21:57
  But when people turn around and say, I'm putting a flag up here,
• 22:00
  and if you don't like it, tough.
• 22:03
  That's enforcing themselves on other people and
• 22:06
  the irony is they're the people who are saying we've had this enforced
• 22:09
  on us now you might say that's a backlash today i think
• 22:12
  about the culture of the country being and overrun
• 22:15
  etc i would say the culture of the country needs to be better defined because
• 22:19
  most people cannot tell me the distinct difference between the englishness and
• 22:22
  britishness if i give you a list now and says it's english or british the majority
• 22:26
  of people would not be able to tell me the distinct difference if i said if
• 22:30
  you had a saint george's day today and people say,
• 22:33
  what parade do you have? We've still got a medieval knight.
• 22:35
  By the way, dressed up as King Richard.
• 22:38
  King Richard was French. The lions on an England football jersey are French.
• 22:42
  Do you ever think there were lions running around here?
• 22:43
  They're falsely cold for lions. Let's be frankly honest with that.
• 22:46
  So when you look at the culture of this company, it's connected to the rest of the world.
• 22:50
  People seem to have this mentality of the drawbridge went up and the country's
• 22:53
  frozen in time in a kind of kitschy version of a theme park that never exists,
• 22:58
  like Hobbiton, for God's sake. I don't know what they classify as Englishness.
• 23:02
  And that's what the country needs to have this conversation.
• 23:04
  What is it? Is it queuing? Is it being pleasant?
• 23:07
  And if you look at it a different way, you take St. Patrick's Day.
• 23:11
  You can clearly define Irish culture, Irish heritage, Irish language,
• 23:15
  all of those things, Irish sport.
• 23:17
  Who we are. I could go around the world at St. Patrick's Day parades and there will be a commonality.
• 23:23
  So I think the national psyche needs to have a conversation with itself and
• 23:27
  say, what does it mean to be English?
• 23:29
  And I think it is good to have that conversation. It is good to love your country.
• 23:32
  And by the way, there's a hell of a lot to love about England.
• 23:36
  I mean, you've got everything from the Beatles.
• 23:38
  Shakespeare's birthday today. My God, you think about it. If anything,
• 23:41
  England's got too much to celebrate.
• 23:42
  And in fact, what they do end up celebrating is the wrong kind
• 23:45
  of stuff with its wars why does that have to go back to wars and
• 23:48
  world cups and all that nonsense when you've got so much culture so
• 23:51
  much heritage painters directors i mean hollywood mary
• 23:54
  and sweet joseph practically hollywood how
• 23:57
  many actors how many playwrights how many how much of
• 24:00
  around the world but from sport to
• 24:03
  culture and yet the weirdest thing is the country in
• 24:06
  the world that's probably given the world a lot itself doesn't
• 24:09
  even recognize what it's done itself and it gets boiled down with a small handful
• 24:13
  of people who bring it down to some medieval knight prancing around in their
• 24:16
  holy land's breast as a crusader what the hell is that the problem is it's because
• 24:23
  we are a formal colonial power, I say we clearly I'm not from here,
• 24:27
  clearly I'm a filthy immigrant but when I say when I say we, I mean in Britain we.
• 24:33
  I've been here 16 years. It's habit now. The sun used to never set.
• 24:38
  And now it's just dwindled and dwindled and dwindled. And you have all these
• 24:41
  people that have been raised with this mythology of empire.
• 24:44
  But they look around and there's such a stark disconnect between that mythology
• 24:48
  and the reality on the ground, particularly now in the past couple of years.
• 24:53
  And that does something to you. Things don't line up. The cognitive dissonance is too much.
• 24:58
  So they look for things to blame. you don't have like
• 25:01
  i'm i was born in canada i wasn't raised there but i was born there
• 25:04
  and we have a perpetual identity crisis it's a running joke
• 25:07
  what is a canadian not an american who the hell no so i i once had my my american
• 25:12
  my american friend's parents show up to some canadian event in the bahamas where
• 25:17
  we all lived and my parents and i went up to them and we're like why are why
• 25:21
  are you all here you're not canadian and and they went well the mom went I'm American,
• 25:26
  and my husband's British, so together we're Canadian. We thought we'd come along.
• 25:29
  And everyone was like, awesome, great, cool, here's a beer.
• 25:32
  Like, it's just we have no concept of ourselves, but we've managed to figure it out without.
• 25:37
  Completely i mean the atmosphere is getting a bit darker nowadays
• 25:40
  but without turning into this vile racist cesspit that
• 25:44
  so many places are because we've never
• 25:48
  been in the position of being on top we've never fallen we never had that mythology
• 25:52
  where we're raised with this ideal that then we looked around and went well
• 25:56
  what the hell is that what am i supposed to be i've been lied to i've that many
• 25:59
  i'm angry i need to blame somebody i'm going to turn on we never had that so
• 26:02
  the the atmosphere is very different.
• 26:04
  Canada is known as this cultural mosaic, right? And it's very welcoming.
• 26:08
  Sometimes stereotypically, it's not a utopia.
• 26:11
  Racism exists. But it's very different, is my point. But Britain,
• 26:14
  as the colonizer of Canada, used to be on top, and now they're not.
• 26:19
  And people are like, and I really do think that is a huge, huge, huge part of it.
• 26:23
  You haven't had those conversations, those national cultural conversations of
• 26:27
  who are we if we're not oppressing other people who are we what is this place
• 26:32
  if everything doesn't depend on.
• 26:36
  Grabbing other people's resources and planting a flag on every corner
• 26:38
  of the earth like what what is this what does it and that's the
• 26:41
  point where i'm trying to say about if i'm trying to teach the children this
• 26:44
  i'm trying to filter that through and say look you should be proud of some of
• 26:48
  the achievements of your country but you also have to mix that with some of
• 26:52
  the horrible things your country does but it's the same way i'm saying to a
• 26:55
  german child the german child should not walk around and feel guilty for the
• 26:58
  Holocaust, but they damn well need to know about it.
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• 27:59
  You know what I mean? They can't carry the sins of the past,
• 28:02
  but they have to be aware. But they do, and the same things happen.
• 28:04
  Every German person I've spoke to about this has said the same thing.
• 28:06
  They're keeping apologetic about it. Completely, yes. Yeah, but there's a backlash.
• 28:11
  People push back. It got to the point where, and this was like 15 years ago,
• 28:15
  20 years ago, this conversation with a German person in particular that I'm thinking.
• 28:19
  And she was like, we have been guilted for so long for what happened, rightly so, to a point.
• 28:26
  But then it just kept going and kept going and kept going. And they developed
• 28:29
  this deep national, like, you were horrible people, you did this horrible thing.
• 28:32
  And future generations kind of woke up, looked around and went,
• 28:36
  how are you talking about?
• 28:37
  My, you know, that's not, my opa did that. I didn't do like,
• 28:43
  and they, and they got really angry about it, which is understandable.
• 28:47
  So again, you have this former really powerful nation that isn't anymore,
• 28:52
  very different mythology, very different history, is it? But they're having
• 28:57
  kind of similar identity crises and people pushing back against it.
• 29:01
  And a lot of that is coming out as blaming vulnerable groups,
• 29:07
  blaming immigration because it's interfering with their like still very much
• 29:10
  developing idea of self.
• 29:13
  So it's Germany experiences it as well, not quite to the same degree, but no.
• 29:18
  I think you're right. All former colonial, France has got the same issue.
• 29:22
  France has got, Italy's got the same issue. I think all of those former colonial
• 29:25
  sort of powers that had empires have had the same issue. And we track them.
• 29:29
  And it's interesting. We track
• 29:31
  all the football teams at the World Cup who will have aggressive fans.
• 29:35
  There is a direct correlation between those countries who have had been former colonies.
• 29:40
  You take your British thugs versus your Russian thugs versus your Italian thugs,
• 29:44
  your Italian altars, your Dutch and Germans.
• 29:46
  The Dutch and Germans cannot play a football match without it getting really nasty.
• 29:50
  But you take Sweden versus Switzerland, or you take Luxembourg versus Belgium.
• 29:56
  You take Ireland versus, if we ever get to a World Cup. You take Jamaica.
• 29:59
  It's interesting, the former colonies are different to the former,
• 30:03
  as you say, big countries.
• 30:04
  And if you retract, say, the World Cup, where will the trouble be?
• 30:08
  The trouble will be an Italian match for, the Italians are not going to be there, ironically.
• 30:11
  So it is those countries. And I think that is across the Western world that
• 30:15
  does seem to be that push. And if we take the whole, those critics who are for
• 30:20
  it would say, well, it's our country's flag. They have no problem flying that in America.
• 30:25
  Other countries, it's a bit of a disgrace that you can't fly your own flag without that comment.
• 30:30
  And my honest answer to that is, and I think you were alluding to that earlier,
• 30:34
  Asma, is actually embrace the flag.
• 30:36
  In fact, not underuse it, literally make it so normal that you see the flag
• 30:40
  that you go, actually, you know what, that's fine.
• 30:43
  But it's got to be done with people's consent, not just up a flagpole.
• 30:46
  You sully and you actually demean your own flag when you stick it at a flagpole
• 30:51
  just to annoy people, whereas if you used it in the correct, appropriate manner.
• 30:55
  And I'll give you a really good example. This is an Englishman.
• 30:59
  So 1990, Republic of Ireland were in the World Cup. The whole country was completely mad.
• 31:04
  Before that, the Ireland flag, the Irish tricot was co-opted by Irish Republicans,
• 31:09
  synonymous with the likes of the provision of IRAs.
• 31:12
  After that, there were so many Ireland flags, the whole country.
• 31:15
  He completely depoliticized the Ireland flag.
• 31:18
  And many historians look back at that moment and say, that's the moment where
• 31:21
  that nation came together. Exactly what you were alluded to earlier on about
• 31:24
  the power of the community.
• 31:26
  And people, ordinary people saying, that's not your symbol.
• 31:29
  That's our symbol. We own this, not you own this. And that has to be ordinary people do this.
• 31:35
  But you cannot do that. If the government says, right, we're in the World Cup.
• 31:39
  We're mandating you all fly a flag you ungrateful
• 31:42
  thing i mean what are you going to get people have to do this together as a
• 31:46
  collective consciousness and they have to do it together as a group of people
• 31:51
  i don't think this country's at that point yet because what's starting to happen
• 31:55
  if all my history is telling me correct and all my academic as a social science is telling me correct.
• 32:00
  Purposely people are being divided symbols are being used to divide people and
• 32:04
  the flag is being used to divide.
• 32:06
  So when a political party in norms, it's going to wind people up.
• 32:10
  It's not being inclusive here.
• 32:12
  It is basically saying, this is what we're going to do. If you don't like it,
• 32:16
  get out. If you don't want to teach in our school, get out.
• 32:19
  And the reality is, that's probably what they want. They want people to make
• 32:23
  a them and us. And that comes down to that.
• 32:26
  It is a them and us. And that really worries me. If they come down to them and
• 32:30
  us rather than we, it is a very dangerous prerogative of that. Very dangerous.
• 32:36
  There's so many things you said there that I wanted to comment on,
• 32:38
  but I feel like I'm feeling a bit tired and I can't hold thoughts in my head for too long.
• 32:45
  But that comment you just made about football and like, personally,
• 32:50
  I just think there's like a male violence issue, to be honest, in football.
• 32:54
  And I think it's actually really common across many countries.
• 32:58
  And also amongst fans, not just players or whatever, or just people at the match.
• 33:04
  But isn't there even a statistic? I remember being told this in school when I was a student,
• 33:10
  that rates of domestic violence actually increase after like football,
• 33:16
  like huge major football tournaments and particularly ones that involve England.
• 33:21
  Well, I guess it was based on like England.
• 33:23
  But I think, I mean, there's a lot I wanted to say, but I kind of forgotten.
• 33:27
  But another thing that I did want to talk about is that, you know,
• 33:31
  when you were saying, Brent, that, you know, make the flag normal,
• 33:35
  I think there's no way to make it normal without addressing British history.
• 33:40
  You know, it means different things for different people. And there's no shame in that.
• 33:44
  Like, I don't think anyone that exists today is responsible for what's happened
• 33:49
  in the past. But I think it's really important to respect the fact that every
• 33:54
  community will have had a different history.
• 33:57
  And it's not for anyone today to decide how people feel about their own history
• 34:03
  or their interpretation of their history, irrespective of whether or not different
• 34:09
  people from the same community might have a completely different view to them.
• 34:12
  You know and I just have always found it
• 34:15
  a little bit weird that we spend so much time
• 34:18
  in schools learning about American history America did
• 34:22
  this wrong America did that wrong America had the civil rights movement I didn't
• 34:26
  learn anything but I didn't I'd never even heard of Stephen Lawrence Day until
• 34:30
  I became a teacher and I think that was yesterday you know I'm responsible for
• 34:35
  PSHE and SMSE at my school it's one of my responsibilities and I was putting
• 34:39
  together the resources for our children so that,
• 34:41
  but I didn't actually ever hear about Stephen Lawrence Day until my adulthood.
• 34:45
  It's not something that I was ever taught about in school, but I could have
• 34:49
  told you loads of stuff about what happened in like the Bronx,
• 34:52
  even though I've never been there, you know?
• 34:54
  So I think for me, it would be really nice to see.
• 34:59
  A balanced representation of history and for it to be normal for people to have
• 35:06
  had a different history.
• 35:07
  I don't think there's anything wrong with people being proud of their heritage,
• 35:11
  you know, being English, being British.
• 35:13
  And I also don't think it's wrong for people
• 35:16
  to feel resentment or to feel like their
• 35:19
  history was affected by colonialism and
• 35:23
  all of the things that came with it you know but I'm
• 35:27
  looking at part of my curriculum allowed me to do that and also I
• 35:31
  think another thing I find kind of complicated about Britain is
• 35:34
  or Britishness is the fact that it's made up of multiple nations anyway and
• 35:40
  they will have a complex history with each other you know it's not even it's
• 35:44
  not just the global majority it's not even just colonial colonialism and all
• 35:48
  of these things it's also amongst you know the British Isles as there are differences.
• 35:55
  I grew up with Welsh people who would really hate to be referred to as English, or even British.
• 36:05
  Do you know there's a Cornish independence movement where Cornish people are
• 36:10
  saying they're not English?
• 36:11
  There's an independence movement for Yorkshire. Go to Liverpool,
• 36:16
  it's the independent republic of Merseyside.
• 36:19
  You know, the Scouse people are no longer in the same way that Texans would
• 36:23
  go, I'm Texan first, I'm not the United States of America.
• 36:26
  And we often, again, you sort of say to yourself, well, define Britishness, define Englishness.
• 36:31
  I mean, what identity people have is sometimes the strongest identifier.
• 36:35
  It might be go to Newcastle and tell me that the people of Newcastle,
• 36:38
  they're Geordie's first, aren't they?
• 36:40
  Now, you might get some commentators saying, no, I'm an, they might be Geordie
• 36:43
  then, they might be English. It's layered, isn't it? and that layer.
• 36:46
  And ironically, what's really amazing about it is if you actually track why
• 36:50
  are the Cornish the way they are? They're Celt. Their DNA is Celtic.
• 36:55
  So they are because they're Celt. The Romans never went that far in.
• 36:58
  The Anglo-Saxons didn't want that far in. So that's why Cornish shanties are
• 37:02
  very sounding Celtic-Irish because there's such a strong connection.
• 37:06
  I've got strong connections with Brittany, parts of France, Northern Catalonia
• 37:10
  and Spain, But there's Celtic fringe all there.
• 37:13
  And you get that. I go to Scotland, I feel, at home.
• 37:16
  I mean, we've got Glasgow Celtic versus Glasgow Rangers. What's that all about?
• 37:19
  One's green, white, and orange. It's white, red, and blue, you know.
• 37:23
  It's multiple layers. I think this is what really bothers me about it all,
• 37:25
  though, because I just feel like there's this push to look at things in complete isolation.
• 37:31
  And we don't operate in isolation from the rest of the world.
• 37:35
  Our history doesn't operate in isolation from the rest of the world.
• 37:38
  Our literature doesn't operate in isolation from the rest of the world.
• 37:41
  Nothing that we do operates in isolation.
• 37:45
  And so to teach things in a way which suggests that we are isolated and different
• 37:51
  and superior to the rest of the world is misleading at best.
• 37:58
  And I just feel really uncomfortable with it. I mean, history particularly,
• 38:02
  everything that's happened in history has happened as a result of our interaction
• 38:05
  with other countries, no matter what form that takes.
• 38:08
  So by extracting this idea of British history and teaching it in a particular way.
• 38:15
  Just makes me feel really, really uncomfortable. I've said on this show before,
• 38:19
  I've said on our channel before about something that really,
• 38:21
  really struck me about from the poet John Agard.
• 38:24
  And John Agard said, history did not begin until the white man entered.
• 38:28
  And it really, really resonated with me because it made me reflect on my own
• 38:33
  experience of learning history at school and thinking,
• 38:37
  oh my gosh, how has it taken for someone to point this out to me,
• 38:41
  that I have learned history in such a way that it's been manipulated to make
• 38:46
  me only see things from that perspective.
• 38:51
  And it was such a powerful statement and it sticks in my head.
• 38:55
  It lives rent-free in my head. Every country has that, Liz. Every country has.
• 38:58
  I mean, the key word in history is story.
• 39:01
  If you actually look at the word history, it's a story, it's a narrative. It's a story.
• 39:05
  And that story is told over and over again, oral history. I was told certain
• 39:10
  histories when I grew up. I knew who Cromwell was when I was four.
• 39:13
  And of course, we exaggerate what he did to us, but he becomes the kind of Hitler
• 39:17
  figure, the way everybody knows about World War II.
• 39:20
  And if I ask British children what's interesting, you're right about the Americanization.
• 39:23
  If I ask them to name American presidents versus British prime ministers,
• 39:27
  they always name more American presidents than new British prime ministers.
• 39:31
  So there's something in that about
• 39:32
  not knowing their own history or not connecting to their own history.
• 39:35
  And it comes down to this very selective amnesia, parts of history,
• 39:40
  which is, again, It's characterized in the media.
• 39:42
  It's the second award, Spitfires, it's the Blitz.
• 39:45
  I was teaching the Blitz the other day, funny enough, and I was teaching about the Blitz spirit.
• 39:49
  I played Churchill's speech, you know, We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches,
• 39:52
  showing how great a speech that was.
• 39:54
  But I also tapered it with Winston Churchill was also a person who was quite complicated.
• 39:58
  He was a great politician at that moment in time, but he got unelected in 1945
• 40:03
  because he didn't want to give the NHS to poor people.
• 40:06
  And that's what you've got to be able to do sometimes. And that's not,
• 40:08
  people say, how dare you speak about that?
• 40:10
  But that's an analysis and evaluation. You've got to be able to,
• 40:15
  being patriotic also means criticizing your own country.
• 40:18
  That doesn't mean you hate your own country. It means you want your country to be better.
• 40:22
  And you aren't allowed to do that any longer. It's almost as if you dare question some people.
• 40:25
  You're a traitor. And that's not how it should operate. Because if a country
• 40:29
  cannot reflect on its past, it will not learn from the lessons.
• 40:32
  And it will make the same mistakes over and over again.
• 40:36
  I can tell you, as a person who grew up with history, lived through it,
• 40:40
  that one of the most important things a group of people has to do is have that
• 40:44
  conversation. As you said, like the German people.
• 40:47
  Germany has been involved in practically zero conflicts since 1945.
• 40:51
  How many conflicts have Britain and America been involved in?
• 40:53
  How many wars has it literally?
• 40:56
  And if you go to America and ask them about, you know, let's talk about Vietnam,
• 40:59
  it didn't happen. I mean, I'll give you this example.
• 41:02
  Where's the national conversation about Afghanistan? that? Where's the national
• 41:05
  conversation about the war on terror?
• 41:07
  Where's the national conversation about what happened in the last 20 years with
• 41:11
  Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq?
• 41:13
  It's almost, and that's actually so disrespectful. Even watch what Trump was even able to do.
• 41:18
  And brilliantly that people defended it, Trump was able to almost airbrush Britain's
• 41:23
  participation in Operation Enduring Freedom.
• 41:26
  But because the country hasn't talked about it, even COVID, where is the national
• 41:30
  conversation? We all sit down as a country and go, What the hell happened during COVID?
• 41:34
  How were there some people buying pasta and bog rolls and getting away with
• 41:37
  it? And where the hell are we not commemorating? Where's the statue to the nurses?
• 41:42
  Where's the statue to the nurses? Where is that? We don't do this.
• 41:45
  We don't have these conversations.
• 41:47
  We just let things go. Nobody talks about it. And then we heartwack the World War II.
• 41:52
  We've got a question from Rogers History Live.
• 41:56
  That says, America is an interesting comparison. I feel like Americans and lots
• 42:00
  of other countries don't have the same sort of problem with patriotism or whatever
• 42:04
  you want to call it than Britain does. Why?
• 42:07
  I think, you know what? I don't mind trying to answer that.
• 42:11
  I think what makes America different is their kind of national identity was
• 42:17
  built after this independence where everyone kind of accepted they were an immigrant,
• 42:24
  you know or they were new to maybe
• 42:28
  not everyone but that they were most communities were
• 42:31
  new to the land right with the exception of like the indigenous people
• 42:34
  and so because of that shared history it became
• 42:38
  really mainstream to be able to just say that you're
• 42:41
  American you could be American first before you
• 42:44
  have any other identity whereas it doesn't
• 42:47
  really work like that in Britain and I do feel like part of
• 42:49
  it is because most people don't learn anything about British history
• 42:52
  most ethnic minorities in britain learn about
• 42:55
  british history through their own families and
• 42:59
  their own cultures you know both the good and
• 43:02
  the bad about it whatever their history might be not you know
• 43:05
  no ethnic minorities are not a homogenous people everyone's got
• 43:09
  a different history you know but that that's
• 43:12
  often how people learn about it so for me it's just the thing
• 43:14
  of I feel like a lot
• 43:17
  of good comes from discussing or talking about
• 43:21
  history objectively whatever the history
• 43:24
  may be you know and however it's interpreted and
• 43:27
  using that as a starting point to move forward it's really difficult because
• 43:31
  like I was saying earlier like even in Britain different countries you know.
• 43:36
  That form Britain in the first place have complex histories and relationships
• 43:40
  with each other historically and then there are also loads of different and other communities who.
• 43:47
  You know might have been colonized or whatever like a lot of
• 43:50
  different things happened like I would never when I
• 43:53
  was in school again I never learned about any of the nations
• 43:57
  or people who helped in like
• 44:00
  who helped Britain in any war I never
• 44:03
  learned about people who in during colonialism
• 44:06
  had moved to were living in Britain
• 44:09
  and were helping you know build the country
• 44:12
  or working in really important industries and services
• 44:16
  or like risky jobs and I never learned
• 44:19
  any of those things until I grew up and kind of learned about it
• 44:22
  myself it wasn't something I was taught in school you know and again I just
• 44:27
  think until there is respect for the fact that everyone every culture every
• 44:33
  community and that's across all races including you know white people I do feel like that,
• 44:40
  until that's kind of accepted and people can be respected for the fact that
• 44:44
  they have different histories,
• 44:46
  then a lot of people will find it difficult to refer to themselves as British
• 44:50
  because it's not even just about them referring to themselves as British,
• 44:55
  it's also about whether or not other people accept it.
• 44:59
  Well, I know I was never accepted as British. So why would I be...
• 45:03
  A lot of people aren't. No, I wasn't. No, no, no. This was enforced.
• 45:06
  Why would I want to be part of a club that was discriminated against me?
• 45:09
  That was set against me, police, army, the whole system, that took my land, took my freedom.
• 45:14
  Why would I want... Now, as an Irishman living in England, I have no problem
• 45:19
  with teaching children their history.
• 45:22
  But also, what people don't realize, it's the equivalent of somebody,
• 45:26
  for instance, who's been through a traumatic experience.
• 45:29
  I am the equivalent of a Ukrainian going over to Russia now and teaching Russian
• 45:34
  children about their history.
• 45:36
  That's the equivalence I've got. And to answer Tom's question,
• 45:40
  the United States of America is patriotic at the moment, because United States
• 45:42
  of America is the most popular stroke successful country in the world.
• 45:47
  But do remember that Make America Great Again is an acknowledgement that every
• 45:52
  empire and country goes through a cycle America's on the downward they know
• 45:56
  they're on the downward they know they're on the downward.
• 45:57
  And in a natural cycle of countries, America, admitting that it wants to make
• 46:01
  itself great again, is trying to relive the 1950s greatest hits.
• 46:05
  It's done. It's toast. It's Rome. And Emperor Nero is knocking on the door.
• 46:10
  Britain has gone through that stage itself. All of this harking back to the
• 46:14
  great glory days and the greatest hits forgets another thing as well.
• 46:17
  The vast majority of people, even white British people, during the election
• 46:21
  of the Industrial Revolution at the height of the British Empire,
• 46:23
  got absolutely very little out of it.
• 46:25
  They were down the mine shaft they were used and
• 46:28
  abused and yet they're i mean peddled a version of history which
• 46:31
  their ancestors fought and died for side by
• 46:35
  side with members of the colonies treated
• 46:39
  exactly the same and yet the punching down
• 46:41
  is what's really upsetting me this concept that this country used
• 46:44
  to be great but the people have got the credit for it the
• 46:47
  people have got wealthy for it are sitting in the houses of parliament in the
• 46:50
  houses of lords to laugh on their heads off while the ordinary people
• 46:53
  sold this version of history who fought and died on the battlefields napoleonic
• 46:56
  wars remember lord wellington called his men
• 46:59
  scum of the earth but his scum of the earth
• 47:02
  it's only by the time he got to the battle
• 47:05
  charge of the light brigade and but that's behind the first world war that even
• 47:08
  soldiers were given any credit whatsoever and that relationship
• 47:11
  changed after the first world war and rightly so because again it was ordinary
• 47:15
  people across the whole empire in the same uniforms across the empire 49 nationalities
• 47:22
  But also remember there are only 22 countries in the world that have not been
• 47:26
  invaded or have fought a war against Britain.
• 47:29
  Only 22. On that note, JP, because it's personal grievance and education time.
• 47:36
  So Britain and France colonized the entirety of what is now Canada.
• 47:39
  Now, if we're not familiar with colonization and imperialism, Google's your friend.
• 47:44
  There was an enormous population of Indigenous people all across what is now Canada.
• 47:49
  That population was decimated and the survivors were oppressed over centuries,
• 47:56
  thrown in residential schools, again, Google.
• 47:59
  That lasted for generations. The last residential schools closed in the 70s,
• 48:04
  I think. The survivors are still alive.
• 48:07
  These people were stripped of their culture. Their hair was cut off.
• 48:11
  They were sexually abused. They were re-educated into appropriate white behavior
• 48:17
  and customs and lifestyle and culture.
• 48:20
  Families were split up. Kids were taken from their parents. Children were forcibly
• 48:23
  adopted into white homes.
• 48:25
  They grew up not knowing their culture, not knowing their history,
• 48:27
  not knowing who they were.
• 48:28
  This went on for centuries. The indigenous residents,
• 48:34
  population, cultures of that land have been oppressed since Europeans first
• 48:39
  set foot on that continent. and it is still going on today.
• 48:44
  If you want to do some further research, you can look up what life is like on
• 48:48
  res in areas that are specifically set aside, designated as Indigenous owned
• 48:54
  land, Indigenous managed, etc.
• 48:57
  It's a ridiculously small amount, percentage of the land of the country.
• 49:01
  They have a little bit more autonomy than they have previously because certain
• 49:06
  agreements have been signed, but it's shocking, I think, to outsiders.
• 49:11
  People don't realize what happened historically, what is still going on now,
• 49:15
  the generational trauma,
• 49:17
  the financial implications for people living now from things that have happened
• 49:23
  to their family and to their ancestors previously, how hard it is to get out of these cycles.
• 49:28
  You have Indigenous women going missing and being murdered at rates higher than
• 49:33
  any other group, any other population in the country. You have police ignoring
• 49:38
  reports of missing indigenous women.
• 49:40
  First Nations people are.
• 49:43
  Still oppressed on the daily in every possible way, as they have been for hundreds
• 49:48
  and hundreds and hundreds of years.
• 49:50
  And because the UK and France led that charge, that is how the UK has oppressed Canada.
• 49:55
  But to begin the process that the UK, well, Britain and France used,
• 50:02
  as they always do, the First Nations tribes against each other. They divided and ruled.
• 50:08
  They used them, they abused them, then they got rid of them.
• 50:11
  And the French were just as bad, Let's be clear on that as well.
• 50:14
  And in fact, if you take across North America, the Spanish did the same.
• 50:17
  The Dutch were there as well. You take New Orleans in Louisiana.
• 50:21
  The French pretty much left huge tracks of the American continent vacant and
• 50:28
  sort of let the trade it with the tribes.
• 50:30
  But when the settlers, the 13 original colonies wanted to expand,
• 50:33
  it's one of the reasons why there were issues between America,
• 50:36
  the American colonies and Britain is that they wanted to expand in.
• 50:39
  And it was when that expansion, those individual settlers were there,
• 50:42
  they were squeezed out they were put on reservations the same process happened
• 50:46
  south of the canadian border and even more so shocking the same process happened
• 50:50
  in aboriginal australia in fact the australian government did not recognize
• 50:53
  that aboriginals were human beings until 1971.
• 50:57
  And that's that happened across the empire but in
• 51:00
  in in all fairness and imbalance i often would
• 51:03
  teach the children this but i'd also go you really want
• 51:06
  to see an empire that did something evil have
• 51:09
  a look at King Leopold the Belgian oh dear god what
• 51:13
  they did in the Congo is way beyond but I
• 51:16
  also remember the first concentration camps in the world were in South Africa
• 51:19
  during the Pohor War you know so all empires and this is where the balance comes
• 51:25
  in all empires have committed atrocities because they are colonizing however
• 51:29
  then you have the conversation about what did the Romans ever do for us and
• 51:33
  I'm sure the world you know we could say you know look at America as country,
• 51:36
  there are benefits to America's culture, Hollywood, etc.
• 51:39
  So what Empire does, it has to be a nuanced conversation.
• 51:42
  But history, as Yasmin is pointing out, is sometimes it's the old adage,
• 51:47
  written for the winners by the winners.
• 51:49
  And again, Americans fly their flag because 62% of Americans believe God is on their side.
• 51:55
  I wonder if 150 years ago, if I asked British people how they felt,
• 51:59
  they're the world's superpower.
• 52:00
  Remember, it's God save the king. Why is God saving the king,
• 52:04
  the national anthem of the country?
• 52:06
  Because the majority of British people, when Britain was the most popular country
• 52:09
  in the world, flew the flag, were patriotic, and the same when the Spanish were
• 52:12
  conquering South America. I'm sure they were patriotic.
• 52:15
  And that's what happens, isn't it? You get that cycle.
• 52:19
  And Britain's at the cycle where, as you said correctly, Ray,
• 52:23
  they haven't had the conversation yet where there's a realization of its place in the world.
• 52:27
  It's a middle-ranking power now.
• 52:30
  But we've got these people who are waxing lyrical with the greatest hits,
• 52:33
  not wanting to live with the reality.
• 52:36
  Cue Brexit, let's be clear. And all of that's feeding into this narrative. We've lost something.
• 52:42
  We've lost this. That's true. But the country's also gained a hell of a lot
• 52:46
  in culture, heritage, language.
• 52:49
  The people are going and they're giving them a sense of you've lost this.
• 52:53
  And what have they lost? A fictitious version of a country that never really
• 52:57
  existed in the first place.
• 52:58
  And they've been told to grieve for something. But actually,
• 53:02
  the people that benefit from the empire weren't their ancestors because they
• 53:05
  were the ones fighting and dying in the battlefields or the ones down the mineshaft
• 53:08
  or the ones working in a factory 15, 16 hours a day.
• 53:11
  That's the irony of this. They're being sold this version of history which actually
• 53:15
  didn't exist. And that same goes in America, doesn't it, when you think about it?
• 53:19
  So should we summarise our last couple of words on that story then?
• 53:23
  Well, before we do that, sorry, I know I got distracted in the middle there for like five minutes.
• 53:28
  So I don't know if we discussed this question. So do you think reform are correct
• 53:32
  when they say the curriculum or teachers are biased and that we teach them to
• 53:36
  hate their own country without knowing it.
• 53:38
  And actually, it seems like a good time to kind of pop that up and see.
• 53:43
  Do we think? No, I think that teaching has all kinds of regulations and I think
• 53:50
  it's an insult to teachers to even say that.
• 53:53
  But again, it goes back to the point I was making about this idea that,
• 53:57
  you know, there's this belief that the country is being taken over by other people.
• 54:02
  And that's why even though like I mean I don't know what actually ended up happening
• 54:08
  with that school in the end and you know how like what actually happened but
• 54:14
  I do remember about a year ago there was that girl who went to school in the.
• 54:18
  In the flag dress for culture day and she got sent home i
• 54:22
  don't know what ended up happening with that in the end aside from
• 54:24
  i don't know what happened on the school side i don't remember
• 54:27
  i don't recall them ever releasing it was staged they
• 54:30
  did it on purpose the parents knew by doing that they wanted
• 54:33
  to get attention i would have just let oh yeah if the
• 54:36
  girl wants to wear a flag i think they had
• 54:39
  they had a letter i think the school had sent a letter home to parents saying
• 54:43
  no flags but you can wear a cultural outfit I think but you know that's why
• 54:48
  stories like that pick up and become so popular you know there is this idea
• 54:52
  that children and the future generation are being brainwashed into,
• 54:58
  I mean, who knows what. And the other thing is, going back to the bias,
• 55:03
  I never use the word bias as a history teacher.
• 55:06
  Everything's biased. Everybody's biased. It's the question of your conscious
• 55:10
  bias. I know I'm biased. I don't like empires.
• 55:13
  I have serious issues with the British Empire.
• 55:15
  How would I not have serious issues with the British Empire?
• 55:18
  I wanted to ask you, Brent.
• 55:20
  If I didn't have issues with the British Empire, I wouldn't be a human being.
• 55:24
  But the question is, but am I capable of teaching that from an impartial point of view?
• 55:28
  And also making sure that those students are getting a broad and balanced point.
• 55:32
  Absolutely. Do I check myself with my other colleague who else planned the unit?
• 55:36
  Absolutely. Do I tell the children he has got his point of view,
• 55:39
  I've got my point of view, and you are allowed your point of view?
• 55:42
  Quite much. Do I tell children to hate their own country? Quite the opposite.
• 55:45
  I tell them to love their own country, but love the parts of their country that they should be loving.
• 55:50
  And that is not just wars, winning wars. Congratulations. You won the Second World War.
• 55:55
  Well done. What do you want? I mean, this is the problem. We just boil it down
• 56:00
  to, as you said, masculinity.
• 56:02
  We won wars. You kill us, we kill you. What the fuck in hell?
• 56:06
  JP, I've got several questions for you.
• 56:09
  But who decides what someone should be proud of about their culture or heritage or history?
• 56:15
  And also, another question I have for you. Sorry, I'm going to ask you one.
• 56:19
  I was going to ask you this earlier. I feel like I've just been,
• 56:21
  my brain's been really scattered today.
• 56:23
  And I just haven't been able to get my points across as well as I wanted to.
• 56:26
  But I wanted to also ask you earlier, you were saying when you were teaching,
• 56:30
  I think it was, maybe you're talking about like British colonial history,
• 56:35
  but you were basically saying, you were saying this is what was done wrong.
• 56:39
  No, no, you were saying like, this is my view of what was wrong and what was right.
• 56:43
  Now you guys pick a side, like you basically were getting your 13 year olds to pick.
• 56:47
  What I wanted to ask you was, is that actual like school policy?
• 56:51
  Is that something you're allowed to do?
• 56:54
  And I mean, where do you draw the line between teacher opinion and here are
• 57:01
  the facts that you need to cover as part of the curriculum?
• 57:03
  That's just what I'm kind of interested in. And then also who decides what history,
• 57:07
  what parts of history someone can be proud of?
• 57:09
  What if someone is proud of a different part of their history to you?
• 57:16
  I'm just curious. You accept that because you accept where that comes from.
• 57:20
  Nobody's going to have my opinion about it. Nobody's going to have my set of
• 57:23
  experiences or my upbringing or my faith or my context.
• 57:27
  But it is allowing them to understand this is why I hold this point of view.
• 57:32
  And there are people who think like I think.
• 57:35
  But this is why others hold that point of view. I'm trying to get them to understand
• 57:39
  the mechanism of how it means to be it.
• 57:41
  Using experience, using your academic knowledge.
• 57:44
  And that's fine because it's about understanding and respecting.
• 57:47
  I have students saying to me that they think Oliver Cromwell's brilliant.
• 57:49
  I respect that. As long as they're saying Oliver Cromwell's brilliant because he had discipline.
• 57:54
  Oliver Cromwell's brilliant because he fought for democracy.
• 57:57
  Oliver Cromwell is brilliant because he left a strong parliament.
• 57:59
  He fought the monarchy. He fought for... And I go, that's brilliant.
• 58:02
  But they must also acknowledge that Oliver Cromwell went to Scotland and killed Scots.
• 58:07
  And it's nuanced. And I respect that. I've had a boy argue and debate with me.
• 58:11
  But that's what we want. We want the ability to do that.
• 58:14
  But would you tell them you don't like Oliver Cromwell?
• 58:18
  I'm not going to tell him that I got a little crumbling. He massacred thousands
• 58:21
  of Irish people in the draw. He killed a half a million of us.
• 58:24
  I mean, would you, well, look, put it another way. I just think,
• 58:26
  what, what, let's do this another way.
• 58:28
  What, what makes the Tom Rogers turn around and say in his classroom,
• 58:31
  yeah, you know, his, Hitler, Hitler was an interesting chap,
• 58:34
  but he wasn't such a bad guy after all.
• 58:36
  Would you give me two, would you stand very long in a British classroom and
• 58:40
  go, yeah, Adolf Hitler is quite nuanced, isn't he?
• 58:43
  But you know what? He did a lot of good policies on this. He did a lot of good policies on that.
• 58:47
  However, he did gas 6 million Jews, 5 million dollars, and start World War II.
• 58:51
  Would you? Would you expect? Well, of course, there you go. There's your pastor. No, but I just mean.
• 59:00
  The point I'm just trying to get at, and maybe I'm not getting at it in the
• 59:03
  best way, is where do you draw the line between your...
• 59:07
  Opinions as a teacher and sticking to the content that you're expecting.
• 59:12
  I'm sticking to the content as it's how you interpret it.
• 59:14
  I don't think there's like need. No it's all about interpretation there are
• 59:19
  multiple interpretations that's one of the start.
• 59:21
  Histography is one of the things about interpretations and how interpretations
• 59:25
  work is how you view the same material and that's what I want the children to be able to do.
• 59:29
  They've all got eyes on the same material and they've
• 59:32
  got eyes on the same material they are free to make and I
• 59:35
  make it very clear they are free because they trust me and in
• 59:38
  fact I want the students to disagree with me I want
• 59:41
  them to have a different point of view and I tell them you don't
• 59:44
  have to have the same point of view as me and in fact I would prefer that
• 59:47
  you didn't I want them to generate because I want them to be
• 59:49
  able to not have somebody tell them what to think and that includes me so if
• 59:55
  anything I'm trying to make them question think and be critical thinkers but
• 59:59
  I'm modeling that saying this is why someone like me would have this point of
• 1:00:03
  view because this is my set of experiences this is the things that I've been through, right?
• 1:00:07
  That's why this person would see the world in that way. That's getting them
• 1:00:10
  to be more tolerant of different views, not dismiss those views,
• 1:00:14
  but it is exposing them to different points of view. Absolutely.
• 1:00:18
  But of course, I could be accused of indoctrination, but are you serious?
• 1:00:22
  Are you think I've got that much influence and power over children?
• 1:00:25
  Everything we tell the children do, they're the opposite anyway.
• 1:00:27
  Yeah, don't do drugs. Don't do alcohol. Do that. They're flipping well. Listen to us.
• 1:00:31
  Come on. We give us a lot of credit. I see children once or twice a week.
• 1:00:34
  Seriously, when you consider the influences that are on our children,
• 1:00:37
  I'm getting them to question.
• 1:00:39
  But I'm also saying to them, I want them to respect their country.
• 1:00:42
  I want them to learn their history. I want them to have a sense of identity.
• 1:00:45
  But I want them to understand that there are multiple senses of identity and
• 1:00:49
  multiple interpretations that can exist in the same place.
• 1:00:53
  That it doesn't have to be all the same. And that is what I try to create.
• 1:00:58
  And yes, I'm sure if reform come in, they'll try and get rid of people like me.
• 1:01:02
  But they'll also get rid of people like me who are as you say yasmin
• 1:01:05
  also teaching the bristol boycott so like you recognize
• 1:01:08
  i don't teach in american history about martin the king
• 1:01:10
  i started teaching about the bristol boycott in 1963
• 1:01:14
  i started teaching about british black people about
• 1:01:17
  asian black people i started teaching about the first black counselor in
• 1:01:20
  nottingham who has a bus named after him and if they want
• 1:01:23
  me to stop doing that then they're not teaching about the contribution of
• 1:01:25
  british people who just happen to not be the same skin color so
• 1:01:28
  i started to change my curriculum to reflect the changing
• 1:01:31
  nature of society and absolutely we should
• 1:01:34
  start and that goes back to what I said earlier on why aren't we
• 1:01:37
  teaching about Afghanistan why aren't we teaching I had a conference on this
• 1:01:40
  why aren't we teaching about what happened in Iraq we don't reflect enough on
• 1:01:44
  our own history as it and Britain doesn't do it enough more than enough and
• 1:01:48
  it hasn't done enough because to me quite often there's such a narrow version out there in society.
• 1:01:55
  Win the war, empire, brilliant. There hasn't been the conversation yet,
• 1:01:59
  so people haven't heard different interpretations, and what you're getting is
• 1:02:01
  a backlash against interpretations that have come from different sources and
• 1:02:04
  different academics, because these days, most historians 50 years ago were like
• 1:02:08
  Dr. David Starkey, weren't they?
• 1:02:10
  They were all white dudes who have all gone to Cambridge and Oxford who went,
• 1:02:13
  oh yes, the royal family are fantastic and excellent. Oh yes, yeah, right.
• 1:02:17
  That world, that's gone. They can't live in that world any longer,
• 1:02:20
  But that narrative, Churchill wrote 12 history books of World War II,
• 1:02:23
  making sure that he told his narrative.
• 1:02:26
  And it's only afterwards that we trawled through the records and go,
• 1:02:28
  hmm, fireball in the Dresden. Bit of a war crime.
• 1:02:32
  Oh, they always do play a devil's advocate, Mr. Rogers. Of course they do.
• 1:02:36
  But I'm never going to lie to students. If students ask me what I think,
• 1:02:39
  I will tell them what I think, but I'll tell them why I think it,
• 1:02:42
  but I'll also ensure that they're able to think for themselves.
• 1:02:45
  Or what I'm meant to do. I feel like we don't have time, but I would really
• 1:02:49
  like to explore that more.
• 1:02:51
  Well, he asked a maths teacher. A maths teacher says this is the best method.
• 1:02:55
  Does the maths teacher come in and say, no, this is my method.
• 1:02:57
  I'm not going to, you know, my methods. You know, you would show what you think
• 1:03:00
  is the best method, wouldn't you? And the answer, your answer,
• 1:03:03
  but as you know, in different subjects.
• 1:03:06
  But interestingly on that, with maths, I think, I mean, obviously I'm not a
• 1:03:11
  maths teacher, so I may have this wrong.
• 1:03:12
  And if there are any maths teachers
• 1:03:13
  out there who are listening who can correct me on this, please do.
• 1:03:16
  My understanding when the new GCSE came in was that maths teachers were told
• 1:03:22
  that they had to teach students particular ways of doing things,
• 1:03:27
  rather than doing them in whatever way suited
• 1:03:30
  the students so even if they got to
• 1:03:33
  the result that they needed to get to and they showed their workings that
• 1:03:37
  it wasn't there was a particular way that it had to be shown that was going
• 1:03:41
  to be marked am i right about that i haven't just made that up that's what i've
• 1:03:46
  been told i lived with the master i can imagine so but i but i would also expect
• 1:03:50
  in a mark scheme if your answer's right and you're working out is right you'll
• 1:03:54
  probably they still get the marks, but yeah. I'm not sure.
• 1:03:57
  Sure, I'm not sure. I think it depends on the question and what the exam board expects and yeah.
• 1:04:04
  So even that's narrowing, isn't it? That's not kind of giving a broad...
• 1:04:08
  And that's just math. It's not the same thing she says.
• 1:04:11
  I don't see it as the same as history. I don't see it as the same as saying
• 1:04:15
  this is what my opinion is on this bit of history, but this is what you...
• 1:04:22
  And then I'm going to teach it.
• 1:04:23
  I don't know. I just... I would love to explore that, JP.
• 1:04:26
  Like, I'm just interested.
• 1:04:29
  Genuinely just interested. No, the thing is they're free. it's about
• 1:04:32
  when you when the kids trust you
• 1:04:34
  it's important as a teacher that you you aren't overtly influenced i get that
• 1:04:39
  at the same time i teach broad and balanced curriculum with the purpose of making
• 1:04:44
  sure they don't and allow them to freely choose so you take the example of cromwell
• 1:04:49
  i i've stood this enemy you know i don't like cromwell he banned christmas.
• 1:04:53
  You know, I had a situation, funny enough, when I was teaching Cromwell a couple
• 1:04:57
  of years ago, and it was around the Boris Johnson time of the party game.
• 1:05:01
  And it was quite interesting. I had one of the students turn around,
• 1:05:03
  and Cromwell's banned Christmas. He banned alcohol. He banned a lot of things.
• 1:05:08
  And the kids were looking at that and going, how can he's a Christian who's banned Christmas?
• 1:05:11
  He's nuanced. He's a complicated character. Historical figures are complicated
• 1:05:14
  characters. They'd be good. They'd be bad.
• 1:05:16
  I use the analogy of Darth Vader. Lannigan Skywalker turns out to be a good Jedi.
• 1:05:20
  He turns to the dark side and then chops his son's hand off.
• 1:05:22
  And then he comes to, you know, kills the emperor at the end.
• 1:05:25
  How do you judge him? He's complicated.
• 1:05:27
  People are complicated. History is complicated.
• 1:05:30
  And yet we want to boil it down to right and wrong, good and evil.
• 1:05:33
  And that's not how it should be. It should be nuanced.
• 1:05:35
  But I also say that. That's what I'm saying. I'm just. Of course it is.
• 1:05:38
  Yeah. And I'm nuanced. I'm a human being teaching history to them.
• 1:05:41
  I'm part of history. Of course I'm going to have opinions.
• 1:05:43
  But I'm also going to make sure that they have their opinions.
• 1:05:46
  And that their opinions, if they follow, that they've looked at the evidence.
• 1:05:49
  And that student around said, I mean, it was truly amazing.
• 1:05:52
  Freely, says, well, however, Cromwell banned alcohol, music,
• 1:05:55
  and all the rest of it, but at his daughter's wedding, he allowed alcohol and music.
• 1:05:59
  And this kid looked at me and went, sir, is he just like the prime minister
• 1:06:03
  at the moment, you know, who you said about not breaking the rules,
• 1:06:06
  who then broke the rules?
• 1:06:07
  I says, okay, you could see that. He goes, do people always in charge throughout
• 1:06:11
  history break their own rules?
• 1:06:13
  And you could say that's an opinion, but that's a child facilitating itself
• 1:06:17
  to the thinking, thinking along the lines of connecting the current world that
• 1:06:21
  we're living in to a politician who looked past and then saying,
• 1:06:24
  this is quite complicated.
• 1:06:25
  Now, I've facilitated that thinking. Now, some might say, oh,
• 1:06:28
  I shouldn't be talking about Boris Johnson in the classroom,
• 1:06:30
  but I allowed that because I want the child to think. They made the connection.
• 1:06:33
  So that's what my job was, to facilitate the learning, to encourage the learning,
• 1:06:37
  to get, as we do, as he said, devil's advocate, to get a little bit of juices flowing.
• 1:06:42
  I want a bit of controversy. want the kids to be motivated to learn you don't
• 1:06:45
  do that by going here's a very new history it has to be driven by a little bit
• 1:06:49
  of that so i do encourage the children to have aging provocateur,
• 1:06:53
  conversations i do have the children debate and discuss these things because
• 1:06:56
  that's what we need to happen at a larger level but i'm not going to have anybody
• 1:07:00
  turn around say when they leave school mr you know such and such he didn't teach
• 1:07:04
  me about this history or he didn't teach me about that i want to make sure that
• 1:07:07
  they are given a really good history curriculum that prepares them for the world they're living in,
• 1:07:12
  not the world that people want to create,
• 1:07:15
  you know, some utopian kind of flag-waving patriotic future.
• 1:07:20
  The world and the reality of the world they're about to enter that they themselves
• 1:07:25
  have to understand and they themselves have to figure their own identity out.
• 1:07:28
  It's not for me to tell people what identity they are. I know who I am,
• 1:07:32
  but I think a lot of our children need to figure out who they are.
• 1:07:36
  Oh, we're sponsored by Liz. You're going to talk about our lovely sponsors.
• 1:07:41
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I can talk about our sponsors. So we are sponsored.
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  We are delighted to be sponsored by Hachette Learning.
• 1:07:48
  This show is brought to you in partnership with Hachette Learning,
• 1:07:50
  publishers of professional development books and resources that support great
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  Level up your professional development today and visit www.hachettelearning.com
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  to explore the full range of titles.
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  And are you ready to make an impact beyond the classroom?
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  from an experienced team leader.
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  examining with AQA is a valuable way to develop your knowledge and join a community
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  of subject specialists.
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  You can join AQA as an examiner this summer still.
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  So visit aqa.org.uk forward slash, I'm going to say that right this time, apply.
• 1:08:45
  Well done i said it right i managed it correctly this time around you're so
• 1:08:51
  proud of yourself at the end of that i was just relieved to get through it correctly
• 1:08:56
  as i absolutely fumbled it last time.
• 1:09:01
  Okay it's my bedtime guys yeah we didn't yeah we didn't get to the second topic
• 1:09:07
  but we'll we'll have to we will have to actually do the topic that we advertise
• 1:09:10
  we were going to talk it's false advertising and obviously it's cruel and unfair.
• 1:09:17
  That was interesting though it was actually really nice
• 1:09:20
  to do this with a history teacher yeah you said there that i was thinking about
• 1:09:25
  but i couldn't keep up like you speak so fast you said so much i was like i
• 1:09:30
  i had at least a hundred thoughts and i haven't been able to explore them i
• 1:09:34
  think i think the important thing is is that the children get as you say yasmin
• 1:09:37
  At the back of my mind, I'm always thinking,
• 1:09:40
  I don't want the children to go up to hate their country, but I want the children
• 1:09:43
  to go up and be critical of their country and question their country.
• 1:09:46
  I want their country, because how can they grow as a country or as an individual?
• 1:09:50
  Same goes through everything else. Nothing wrong with being critical.
• 1:09:52
  There's nothing wrong with wanting the best. There's nothing wrong with having
• 1:09:55
  that reflection on the past in order to inform the future.
• 1:09:59
  And I do worry about some of our, especially the boys with this radicalization
• 1:10:04
  and the groups that are co-opting and changing history.
• 1:10:07
  And people have to embrace some of the horrible things in history.
• 1:10:10
  And that does mean then having those conversations. And I can tell you that's
• 1:10:13
  quite a healing thing for a country to do.
• 1:10:15
  And that means the country can grow. And I don't think we're at that stage.
• 1:10:19
  And unfortunately, bringing back to this policy, this policy being jingoistic
• 1:10:23
  does not address some of those underlying issues that we've been discussing, i.e.
• 1:10:27
  About identity, about culture, about what it means to be, I think,
• 1:10:32
  separating Englishness and Britishness.
• 1:10:34
  So I have people all along today saying to me, will you Irish celebrate St.
• 1:10:38
  Patrick's Den? I'm going, actually, you've got to understand,
• 1:10:41
  we didn't celebrate St. Patrick's Den through the 1980s in Ireland.
• 1:10:44
  It's all the Irish abroad.
• 1:10:45
  But the reason why it was celebrated abroad, because there was 96 million of
• 1:10:50
  us who weren't in Ireland any longer, has to do with our diaspora,
• 1:10:53
  has to do with our tragic story.
• 1:10:56
  And it comes back to, I think, what somebody was saying earlier on about America,
• 1:11:00
  for instance, America has got a story and narrative, the American dream.
• 1:11:03
  Has a vision for itself it had its you know constitution
• 1:11:06
  it had 1776 they know
• 1:11:09
  what their story is and i still think the story of this
• 1:11:12
  england hasn't been really told
• 1:11:15
  yet so in their time saying they want a patriotic curriculum
• 1:11:18
  just boiling it down to a portrait of the king and a
• 1:11:21
  flag i actually think that's unfortunately for
• 1:11:24
  them i think they're actually selling their country short and i
• 1:11:27
  would say that today of all days shakespeare's birthday why
• 1:11:30
  is nobody making a big thing how can you not have
• 1:11:33
  Shakespeare's birthday on the day of St George's day and not
• 1:11:36
  make something out of that I mean this is what the thing
• 1:11:39
  is why is there no parades I don't get it I honestly don't understand why people
• 1:11:43
  do not take to the streets and just have a party and say I'm proud to be English
• 1:11:48
  and there's a hell of a lot to be proud of but if they can have a go at me trying
• 1:11:52
  to teach them this history then say I'm the problem I'm not problem I am not
• 1:11:56
  the problem and school is not the problem.
• 1:11:59
  This has to happen at grassroots level. And if those guys out there think putting
• 1:12:03
  a flag up is going to prove their patriotism.
• 1:12:06
  I think it's got to be more than that and more than a portrait of the king and a flag. Thanks, JP.
• 1:12:13
  Good luck to them. I think they're just not reading the room and looking at
• 1:12:17
  what the real issues in education are.
• 1:12:19
  It's appealing to the populist thing rather than looking at the real debates
• 1:12:23
  that are in education at the moment, which is that we are chronically underfunded.
• 1:12:28
  We don't have enough staff to cover the need that we have in our classrooms.
• 1:12:34
  The send white paper has sorry i
• 1:12:38
  did there was a lag there i didn't mean to cut you off jp have you
• 1:12:41
  seen the capture on bbc like the
• 1:12:44
  fictional show i think you should watch that i feel like it's something you'd
• 1:12:47
  like the series three just came out season three just came out recently so i've
• 1:12:52
  gone back to watching it i saw it years ago i feel like you'll like it just
• 1:12:57
  thought i'd throw that out there and i guess the rest of you too if you haven't
• 1:13:00
  seen it i i don't know what What you just said there reminded me, I really,
• 1:13:04
  I couldn't tell you why. What I said or what Liz said.
• 1:13:08
  What you said there towards the end, it just reminded me. What did I say? I say a lot of times.
• 1:13:16
  One of the a lot of things you said just reminded me. Well, I can't say these
• 1:13:21
  things because this is a democracy and it's got freedom to speak because of the Magna Carta.
• 1:13:24
  There is another thing that could be celebrated. The Magna Carta.
• 1:13:27
  Why is that not being celebrated? You know, come on.
• 1:13:31
  Next year, I want to see a better St. George's Day.
• 1:13:35
  I want to see a better St. George's Day. Organize it. I can't organize it.
• 1:13:41
  You want me to organize this at George's Day? All right, okay.
• 1:13:44
  I'll tell you what. I'll organize this at George's Day. What will I have?
• 1:13:47
  We'll have Shakespeare, Magna Carta.
• 1:13:50
  We'll have the English language. We'll have the Beatles.
• 1:13:54
  I think a hell of a lot of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
• 1:13:57
  Let's go back to that. That opening ceremony.
• 1:14:00
  Wasn't it brilliant? Wasn't it amazing? That's the best thing this country is
• 1:14:02
  going to happen. The internet, the NHS, good manners, a sandwich.
• 1:14:06
  You could have hilarious Monty Python.
• 1:14:09
  Bloody hell, the Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne. Really love that M&S made that list. Oh, come on.
• 1:14:17
  I mean, tweed jackets, football, rugby.
• 1:14:22
  I'm not going to say cricket because I'm not a big fan of that.
• 1:14:25
  But there's so much. It's like, where do you start?
• 1:14:28
  Why does it have to be boiled down to the baseless instinct of winning war?
• 1:14:32
  And that seriously maybe it is something where people could just turn around and go,
• 1:14:37
  what should we have national competitions get it i think
• 1:14:40
  the government misses a trick go and have a national competition and say
• 1:14:43
  let's design the best st george's
• 1:14:46
  day and we're not including knights in this
• 1:14:49
  no no none of the knight stuff none of that none of the crusade let's
• 1:14:52
  go for the best st george's day so before we go then one thing you three would
• 1:14:57
  put on that st george's day parade go shoot one thing that represents england
• 1:15:02
  for this is georgia day so our response to to reform with a flag and a portrait would be what.
• 1:15:11
  I don't know, but we need to have prog rock blaring in the background.
• 1:15:15
  I'm an English teacher, so I'm going to say Shakespeare. Oh, why not, you know?
• 1:15:21
  Sorry, I missed the question. If you could have the perfect St.
• 1:15:25
  George Day, what would be the one thing you would include to say celebrate Englishness?
• 1:15:29
  Here you go. I think street parties.
• 1:15:32
  Like you saw during the Jubilee? Yeah, I think they bring people together.
• 1:15:38
  I think something like that. it's at a good time of year like the weather was
• 1:15:41
  great today at least where I was you know I think it's a really nice you know
• 1:15:45
  I think society's become a lot more individualistic and quite isolating and
• 1:15:50
  I think that'd be really nice for a lot of people.
• 1:15:53
  Comedy I agree comedy what a nice way to end thinking about a street party in
• 1:15:57
  the sunshine yeah sorry about that I said that's enough up in there English
• 1:16:02
  comedy from Del Boy to Monty Python,
• 1:16:06
  English English people have got some of the best sense of humour some of the
• 1:16:09
  best comedians and comedy sense of humor great i think that that sense of humor
• 1:16:15
  that not many people in the rest of the world get but english sense of humor that the
• 1:16:19
  stiff upper lip and the kind of the tally ho and yes you know monkey python
• 1:16:23
  when my one leg's hanging off ah it's merely a scratch oh come on always looking
• 1:16:28
  the bright side of life seriously that is something to celebrate that lasts
• 1:16:32
  the time john clee's doing the funny walk Come on.
• 1:16:36
  You see, that's patriotism. You can love that.
• 1:16:40
  Why can't people just celebrate that? Rather than some Nigerian crusader dressed
• 1:16:44
  up in Richard the Lionheart in the 13th century running off.
• 1:16:48
  What? What? What is that all about? I don't get it.
• 1:16:54
  How can you boil it down to a French guy going off in the crusade?
• 1:16:59
  He wasn't even in England.
• 1:17:00
  He was King Richard. He was Aquitaine. He's not even buried in England. Come on!
• 1:17:07
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• 1:17:13
  ttradio.org we look forward to hearing from you next time.