Podcast
Culture
Education
Original sin
S&U interviews
5 min read

My conversation with... Katharine Birbalsingh

A stubborn hopefulness drives Katharine Birbalsingh. Belle Tindall reflects on her conversation with the controversial headteacher for the Re-Enchanting podcast.
A head teacher sits at her desk, holding her hands in a gesture in front of her.

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I’m finding it very hard to sum up my conversation with Katharine Birbalsingh, to place it neatly in a mental box. But I’m wondering if that’s the value of it.  

Katharine has infamously been dubbed ‘Britain’s Strictest Headteacher’, and after spending an hour in her company, I can understand why – it’s as if an air of authority was baked into her DNA. She is the founder and headteacher of Michaela Community School in Wembley, a school which has garnered a huge amount of attention not only because of their outstanding success, but also because of the ‘clear ethos’ that Katherine accredits the success to.  

Michaela School has silent and single-file corridors, meaning that transitions between classes tend to take ninety seconds. Turning around to talk to another child in class is immediately punishable by detention, children are taught to stand for Katherine when she enters assembly, and lunch times have set conversation starters. When Katharine says, ‘I believe in strictness’, she really means it.  

It’s safe to say that Katherine has both avid admirers and passionate critics, and perhaps many people who can’t quite decide which camp to pitch their tent in.  

What struck me the most about Katharine’s approach to education during our conversation was the why behand the what. It seems to me that these behavioural expectations are not for their own sake. She defined her approach this way, 

‘It’s holding them (the pupils) to high standards, and loving them enough to do so… People don’t like strictness, but it’s a way in which you can support the most disadvantaged children’.  

Katharine’s educational philosophy is driven by a stubborn compassion, a stubborn hope, a stubborn confidence. Michaela school, a school with no kind of selection process, refuses to underestimate a single child that flows through it. Katharine has made the decision to give her life to helping children, particularly those who are so often overlooked, reach their full potential, and therefore, happiness. And who can fault that? Her school may be extreme in its methods (although I’m sure she would refute that), but I find the reasons that undergird its culture hard to find any kind of fault with.  

Another thing that I can fully agree with is Katharine’s palpable admiration for teachers, something which she believes to be lacking in common consciousness,  

‘People who aren’t teachers don’t realise just how much teachers have to give; how exhausting it is, how much energy it requires, and how intellectually demanding it is. I think that being a teacher is the biggest privilege and the hardest job. And people who haven’t done it, they just don’t realise… they don’t realise how clever you have to be, how skilled you have to be.’ 

I, like you, know and love enough people who are/have been teachers to be able to wholly agree with these words. We are not nearly thankful enough, and we need more teachers to tell us so.  

So, this was the arc of the first half of our conversation with Katharine, we were able to soak up her obvious passion for her job and the children that she spends her days with. I found myself thankful that Michaela School exists, but equally thankful that my parents did not send me there.  

Katharine is a campaigner by nature, and so the second half of our conversation with Katharine seemed to focus on some of her more controversial views on wider culture. It is at this point in the episode that you will undoubtedly be reminded that she has become quite the polarizing figure. There is plenty to admire about Katharine, there is also, as you can imagine, plenty to disagree with. I’m willing to place my own cards on the table and admit that there was much that Katharine said that I do not agree with. While there is no need to go into the specifics (what you think about her views because of this conversation is of far more importance), on reflection I have noticed that there is a theme that ties together the places where we differ in opinion and conviction: the theme is binary characterisation.  

When surveying the cultural landscape, there is a tendency (amongst us all) to place people into binary categories in a way that I’m not convinced is actually happening within the cultural landscape itself (at least, not to the extent we are assuming). There is nuance to us all, I’m afraid it is an inescapable by-product of humanity, we are not 2D creatures. And so, there is nuance to our political and cultural ideas, our convictions, perceptions, hopes and fears. Any characterisation of us that strips away such nuance is doomed to be a caricature, a mischaracterisation.  

I found her reference to ‘original sin,’ and the way she uses it as a means by which to regard children as inherently ‘naughty’ particularly interesting, not least because she does not believe in God. The whole theological concept of ‘original sin’/’the fall’ (as Marilynne Robinson refers to it on a previous episode of Re-Enchanting), isn’t binary. The Genesis literature, from which Katherine is drawing her thesis, is intent on answering the question of why good and bad seem to co-exist, why we aren’t all one-dimensionally-good, why goodness prevails in some cases, and evil is triumphant in others. Why, to borrow a phrase, what we want to do we do not do, but what we hate we do.  

Beauty and brokenness are neighbours within us, living in astonishingly close proximity – and that, as I understand it, is the reality of ‘original sin.’  

Perhaps this is where our tendencies to place people into rigid cultural categories, to treat each other as if we come with some kind of moral package-deal, comes from: what we believe about human nature becomes what we perceive when interacting with it.  

Nevertheless, interviewing Katharine from her desk in her school, with the ‘pips’ that signify the end of class as our backing track, I was reminded that Katharine is a person who lives out her convictions, and I am sure her pupils are profoundly thankful for that. Sure, she seems to make herself many an enemy whenever she stands on a national platform, but far more of her life is spent behind the doors of Michaela School, serving her community with her disposition of stubborn hopefulness.  

And so, there they are – my anything but neat reflections on my conversation with Katharine Birbalsingh, you can listen to her episode of Re-Enchanting now.  

Article
Belief
Culture
Music
5 min read

How Mumford and friends explore life's instability

Communing on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A bassist hauls a double bass of its base as he plays it.
Daniel Boud/x.com/mumfordandsons.

“Serve God, love me, and mend” must rank as one of the more unexpected openings to a hugely popular album in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. A quote from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, it introduces us to the potent mix of Shakespearean and Biblical allusion and imagery to be found on Mumford and Sons debut album Sign No More.  

Sigh No More, both as song and album, begins with confident assertions of faith then moves into acknowledgement of human fallibility and prevarication summed up in the Shakespearean phrase that “Man is a giddy thing” before asserting that love does not enslave but is freeing, enabling those who know it to become the people they were meant to be. The song ends with a prayer to see the beauty which will come when the protagonist’s heart is truly aligned with love. Throughout the album, the overriding concern is that personal fallibilities and fears – the darkness within – will prevent grace from having its full effect and the beauty of alignment with love from being fully realised. 

In many Mumford and Sons songs such personal instability is the problem to be resolved; “Man is a giddy thing”, “Why do I keep falling?”. Their search is often for the relationship or place that will provide stability:  

I can't say, "I'm sorry," if I'm always on the run 

From the anchor (‘Anchor’) 

‘Roll Away Your Stone’ describes the darkness within as a God-shaped hole filled with false gods: 

See you told me that I would find a hole 

Within the fragile substance of my soul 

And I have filled this void with things unreal 

And all the while my character it steals 

but this is not how life has to be: 

It seems that all my bridges have been burned 

But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works 

It's not the long walk home 

That will change this heart 

But the welcome I receive with the restart 

Lead singer and songwriter Marcus Mumford knows how this grace thing works because, on the one hand, his parents founded the Vineyard Church UK and Ireland meaning he grew up in the context of grace and, on the other, he seems to have experienced grace personally in relation to the sexual abuse he suffered as a child (which was not experienced in his family or his church). In ‘Grace’ from his self-titled solo album he contrasts grace, flowing like a river, with the experience of acknowledging the abuse he endured and the healing for which he prays. 

Such biblical allusions and references abound in the songs of Mumford and Sons, as is also the case with some of those with whom they performed, supported or inspired. The Nu-folk movement of which the Mumford’s were part, began at a club called Bosun’s Locker in Fulham. There, with the likes of Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, and others, their musical journey commenced. Noah and the Whale’s first album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down featured philosophical rumination on a par with that of Sigh No More including lines such as: 

Oh, there is no endless devotion 

That is free from the force of erosion 

Oh, if you don't believe in God 

How can you believe in love?          

Following the closure of Bosun’s Locker, Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons, with others, set up Communion Records, a network of musicians, songwriters, industry and music fans who all share a common philosophy and set of ideals. Among the artists supported by Communion have been Bear’s Den and Michael Kiwanuka. 

Bear’s Den is one of several bands, which also included Dry the River, that have used religious and spiritual symbols in their songs. Andrew Davie from Bear’s Den has said: “I wouldn't say I'm particularly religious, but I was brought up going to church every Sunday, I studied a bit of religion in school and just from going to Sunday school, it's almost that I know the stories so well, that I find it a cool way of telling more modern and more nuanced stories about my own life. As a backdrop to that I find it just constantly helpful and it's quite a powerful way to talk about things. It adds weight to me.” Similarly, Matthew Taylor of Dry the River said of the theological imagery in lead singer Peter Liddle’s songs: “It’s always been a tool for Peter I think, to use the imagery you’re talking about, to add weight to what he’s writing about. It’s rich imagery, and the ideas are ones that people can relate to easily, if there’s that familiarity there.” Both recognise, as do Mumford and Sons, the continuing power of Christian ideas and imagery and their resonance for young people. 

Michael Kiwanuka was surprised that his early song about faith ‘I’m Getting Ready’ was enthusiastically released first as the title song of an EP from Communion Records and then by Polydor as a single from his debut album Home Again. Kiwanuka, who is married to Christian singer Charlotte, has consistently expressed aspects of his faith through songs like ‘Love and Hate’, ‘One More Night’, ‘Solid Ground’, and ‘Floating Parade’. Alexis Petridis has noted that Kiwanuka sees more people searching for a belief system: “Having a faith in things now is, I think, a lot more acceptable, whatever faith it is. There’s no dogma, necessarily. We’re connected by the struggles we have and I think that’s what I’m singing about – being a human being and trying to overcome, which is what we’re all doing in a way.” 

Whether opening up space for bands to utilise the power of Christian imagery in their songs or enabling singers with a Christian faith to be heard on mainstream labels, Mumford and Sons, by example and support, have created opportunities for faith to be explored and appreciated. The response to their music, its themes, and those of artists with whom they connect, seems to reflect a growing openness to spirituality and faith. As they sang, together with Pharrell Williams, on ‘Good People’, “Welcome to the revelation”. 

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