A very good evening, good afternoon and good morning to all our guests and dignitaries. It's just so amazing that we have, you know, managed to find a common ground where thought leaders from across the world have joined us from different time zones. Also, a very warm welcome to all the audiences who are joining us live via Facebook from India, UK, Brazil and the Middle East. My name is Sugandha and I head the Communications and International Collaborations at El Pro International School and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be hosting this event. As today's show unfolds, we will all learn why this is so special and what we have set out to achieve. I would now like to introduce Skillsphere Education, the extended family of El Pro International School. Anand Prasad, the founder and MD, and I really graduate from Cornell who set out to pursue his passion in biving relatable skill sets in young individuals, thus coming up with Skillsphere Asia's largest skill-based organization. Joining him today is Ashi Chandalia, the manager of training and design and Ananshi's deputy. Ashi, without any further ado, I now request you to take over and continue with the proceedings. Most importantly, introduce our Chief Guest for today, who I am sure the audiences are waiting to listen to. Over to you, Ashi. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction, Sugandha Ma'am.  I'm extremely grateful for this opportunity to interact with someone who has had such a huge impact in making decisions that now transform the world. And not just that. The fact that I'm able to have this conversation in front of such an august gathering from around the world really makes me wonder if Pangea, the supercontinent that once existed, ever broke up as its initial theory suggests. Our guest today is someone very special to the Elpro International School. Apart from being an advisor to the school, he is also a British publisher, entrepreneur and philanthropist. As a member of the House of Lords in the UK, he sits as a labour peer and also holds a number of chairminships that span across printing, business consultancy, charity and healthcare. Following the sale of Centurion Press, he co-founded Senate Publishing Limited, which produces publishing and communication platforms for governments, major corporates and leading financial institutions. He currently serves as senior advisor to Ron Waheed, chairman of Arkinam Global, a global strategic intelligence company and a subsidiary of Menjagian Investment Holdings. The audience may not know this, but we owe him a special vote of thanks for being here because he's joining us from Barbalos where it's 7.30 a.m. in the morning. Lord Gavir, you have truly donned various hats, but in my opinion, it's your modesty, kindness and laughter that truly set you apart. So without further ado, please help me welcome our guest of honour, Barron Evans of What's Up. Welcome, sir. Thank you so much, I'm very flattered and very grateful and indeed very honoured to be here with all the educators, the parents and the students of so many schools that do such a good job. So I'm delighted to meet you all and I look forward to being asked difficult questions, which I hope I can answer. And I just thought I'd start with talking about our favourite subject, the C-word and lockdown. Like most of you in London, we've been in lockdown for a very long time on and off. Last year, I was in lockdown along with millions of others for around six months and I was surprised how much more I could do working from home. Maybe I've been lunching too much or whatever. But I was able to prepare a book on health care in London, which is my third edition, I beg your pardon, and also attend Parliament virtually, which is not so much fun because usually I meet with my colleagues for tea in the afternoon and we solve of course all the problems of the world every day if only people would listen to us, but never mind and I'm, of course, I enjoy Parliament and I call it now functional rather than as fulfilling as it was. But you're the educators here will know exactly what I mean by that. I've enhanced my cooking skills. You'd be surprised how I've expanded my gastronomic abilities. And I've also set up a new company, which is called Global Health Assured. And what is that? Well, it's an organisation that inspects, advises and certifies establishments, airlines, etc., as being healthy, clean, as practicable for people to visit. And of course, that's vitally important. If you take the terrible effect on the hospitality industry, we think it's absolutely vital to make sure that when the greater public go back to visiting other countries, as I'm sure we're all looking forward to, they can do that And we have a team of experts from the health and the health and safety industries to help us and I'm pleased to say that that's going well. It's really interesting and I've learned such a lot about COVID-19 and indeed health and safety. So we have an environmental health officer or two and we're starting to inspect establishments ready for the great day when we get back to the new normal, whatever that is. But so that's what I've been doing just recently. And I think I better stop talking and let hand over and let you ask me some questions. So we are so honored to hear you. So I think that's really not a problem. But you mentioned about the virtual shift already. You mentioned how you've really learned so many different things. And I think that's been all of us really, the fact that we transitioned online, I think that was the biggest learning, especially for us educators. So a lot has changed in the world, as you also rightly mentioned. But if you could highlight some changes that have happened in the world that aren't spoken enough about, we'd love to hear a lot more from you on that. OK, thank you very much. That's a good question. I mean, the most important thing, I guess, is that over two million people have died from COVID-19 and that's shocking, isn't it? So we have to bear that in mind. And just to be a little controversial, the governments and the police forces and intelligent offices of the world have more power now because by necessity, we've had to abide by changes in our way of living, our cultures, our constitution, which affects all of us. It's fine, you know, for those of us in a Western democracy, and indeed India, I'm sure that would change. But it does worry me. And I think it's something to think about. Are we going to get all of those freedoms we've enjoyed over many years? Are we going to get them all back? Or is the government going to take longer than usual? Because they may have enjoyed the status where we're having to do what we're told. So that's just something to think about. And it's a change that isn't talked about much, but I think is very important. So we ought to be aware of that. So let's talk about how we got here, what's happened. Over the last decade, the pace of innovation and productivity hasn't been that exciting. And one of the good points and silver lining, if you like, of this COVID pandemic is that we've had to react much more quickly to innovation. And of course, the obvious subject there is the speed of the innovation on producing vaccines, not just the Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine, which is a conventional vaccine, but the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, which of course are a totally new concept. And as you know, normally vaccines take 10 to 20 years. And this has been done in a year, albeit there was work on the concept before, so I think that's very exciting. It's necessity sometimes brings out the best results for all of us. And to see that progress in innovation, I think is very exciting for the future. And just to go back, let's just for a moment, consider all the things that you as educators and parents and students know quite well. In the 18th century, we had the Industrial Revolution, where we had mechanized factories. In the 19th century, railways, electricity, population moving to cities away from farming, etc. And in the 20th century, we've had cars, planes, modern medicines, and let's not forget washing machines, which have liberated so many people at home. Now, the reasons to think now that things are going to get better when it comes to investment and innovation. There's, as I said, the success of the messenger RNA vaccines. There's robotic surgery, which is really coming on nano drugs. Energy costs are coming down. Now, that's a surprise, isn't it? With wind power and solar energy. And there's a lot being done on climate control in the UK. I think we're doing well. We're putting a lot of money and effort into improving our climate with electric cars, etc. And I'm hopeful that the new technology that's coming through will make a big difference. Now, as those of us who lived in London will know, during the lockdown, the atmosphere in London was so much better. You could actually sit on the balcony and breathe pure air, which was so lovely and so enjoyable that I'm sure it really hit home to everyone how it very important climate control is. So I'm very excited about that. I mean, even China says they have promised to be carbon neutral by 2060, which is pretty amazing given that the world's largest polluter who said that. Now, there are, of course, other implications of what's happening. There's artificial intelligence, which is very exciting. Again, good news and bad news. The good news is that it's going to improve the quality of our lives. The bad news is there's large concerns, big concerns about mass unemployment. I remember writing a poem about this when I said, are the beaches big enough to take us all? Will robots pay us not to work at all? And I think that's an interesting concept. How are we going to adapt to the new world, which is not that far away when artificial intelligence has already produced driverless cars? So we have a huge change in our cultures, in our way of life. I mean, will we need to learn to drive a car? Probably in 20 years or so, the answer is no. That's a change. And like the other revolutions I talked about earlier, that is going to change the way we live, the way we work. And it's quite exciting, as you know, going back to the Luddites, etc. There always seems to be other work that comes into play when you look at Amazon and distribution of food and other so-called essentials. That's made a huge difference. Amazon and the likes are buying up warehouse space in the United Kingdom like there's no tomorrow. Now, who would have thought that? And they're employing a lot of people, whether they're paying them enough is another question that that is highly relevant. So when we look at what's happening in the world today, there are significant changes in our way of life. I've talked about personal liberties, freedoms. I've covered the effect of artificial intelligence so far, just medically alone.  OK, controlled by a highly skilled surgeon. And that's going to develop. Some of the diseases that we think are necessarily fatal today will become controllable, if not curable. So there are massive changes that are happening. So as I said earlier, adversity brings brings necessity for new inventions, and I'm very excited about that. There's some look at the changes to our way of life. Here we are at a video conference from a lot of different countries. And we're all used to it. We're all relaxed because we do it every day now, especially for the educators here, educating children, students at university, etc. It's not the same as it. It's not the same. But on the other hand, it is functional. I think students are missing the collegiate side of what they do. The social side, which is so important in making friends at university so that these become lifelong friends and contacts, let's face it, in life. So there have been terrific changes for you. And I know at the Elpro International School these have been incorporated and changed. But I do feel for both you and the children because in most kids, this is fine. But when it comes to children with learning difficulties, I think that has to be a problem because one to one teaching and coaching is so important to them and the progress that they make. So although, as I said, it's functional. I do look forward to a time when the children can be back at schools, when university students can be back. I have a son who's 21, as I said earlier. He's at Kings College studying international politics and it's working. He sat exams yesterday and I know that he misses seeing his friends at the college. So I'm going on too long. I'll stop for a while and let you ask another question. The outset of it, let me compliment you on your poem first because I think that's wonderful. You spoke about a range of things. You spoke about unemployment. You spoke about unemployment rather. You spoke about COVID, you spoke about vaccinations. Just the fact that we've all been sitting at home. You also spoke about how the UK has been talking about has been taking a lot of measures to combat climate change. And I think that's also wonderful. You know, but at this particular point, if you were to really look at the landmark moment that's really taken UK, it's Brexit. And a lot has been spoken about it. You know, there are a lot of views, but we would love to know a little more about it from you. Yeah, OK, well, I'm part of the 48 percent who voted for it to remain. So my my views are coloured. Of course, I'm delighted that the United Kingdom and the European Union were able to reach an agreement of sorts. I think it's quite a thin agreement, as my leader, Keir Starmer, has said. It obviously it's better than not having an agreement because zero tariffs, in most cases, are very beneficial. But it's going to slow us down. The forecast in the next 10 years of that is that our economy will shrink by 4 percent. Now, when you compound that over the time of when of how we were doing, I'm very disappointed that we're in that stage. Now, call me cynical. People, Brexiteers say this is a great opportunity for the United Kingdom, where we will be able to expand trade with the Commonwealth, for example, and that includes India, necessarily. But I'm worried about it. I think we've seen some teething problems. Let's call it that with distribution already where the confusion over products that have to be made in the United Kingdom, a percentage of them. And when we're all in a world where we have a global supply chain and that makes life very difficult and it's already causing problems, for example, Northern Ireland with the border situation there. So excuse me for being cynical, but I think it was a big mistake and I can see a time in the future when we go back in. But that's because I started a business that had branches in Amsterdam, in Düsseldorf, in Copenhagen. We did a lot of work exporting to Greece and the Middle East. And I remember how easy that was being as part of the European Union. That said, there are trade agreements now. We have a trade agreement with Japan, I'm sure you would have read about. So there are opportunities. The big question mark is the United States, where we obviously a new president is very pro Irish, which my grandmother was Irish, so I don't mind that. But nevertheless, we can't expect the same sort of treatment that we used to have with the United States. Our biggest trading partner, obviously, is the European Union. We're 49 percent of our trade going to the EU. So I think it's a backwards step. I think there will be challenges. I'd like to think the British people and entrepreneurs will react well to those challenges, where an inventive nation historically and we are leading the world in some aspects of AI, etc. So sorry, that's a complicated answer. But that's my view, a personal view on what's happening. Absolutely, I do second some part of it that in some ways, a decision that could have probably been made in a slightly different way, I think would have benefited both the parties in that sense. But I think at this point, having a deal was more important than just... Yes. But having said that, sorry, you were saying something. No, not at all. It was absolutely vitally important. And it was, as you know, agreed at the last moment on the 23rd of December. And I was very relieved that it was agreed. There are some aspects, for example, financial services that have not been covered as yet. And financial services, the City of London, is a very important part of our GDP and our trading and reputation, etc. And in the first week of January, something like 50% of euro shares were moved from the City of London to Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Understandably, if you were running the European Union, what would you want?  And they certainly don't want to encourage other countries in the European Union to leave. So they're not going to make it easy for us. It's not, as Brexit is predicted, going to be easy. Of course, it isn't. We're the ones that have left. On the other hand, we're a very interesting market for the European Union because we import much more from the EU than we export to. So by necessity, one, we're a neighbour. I think we're a good neighbour. People say the UK is always awkward. Well, we are a bit. We're an island nation. We're a bit independent. We're living in the past more than we should be, in my view. And yeah, we can be awkward. We can be stubborn. On the other hand, we do contribute very well on things like defence. We're up there with the top people on the percentage of our GDP that we allocate to defence, which I think is a really good thing. And as compared to other countries, we are very strong in NATO, for example, and other European institutions. I was sorry as part of the settlement that students coming to and from Europe into the United Kingdom for education, that's been scrapped. And our Prime Minister has said that he will make it much more international. Well, I hope he does. I hope he sticks by that because I think it would be very good for our children, our students, to have the experience of being educated and the experience of being in other countries as the same way it is for all of your children to come to the United Kingdom. We have some of the best universities in the world. I'm being patriotic now, but I think that's true. And we're in a global village, which is what this curtain race is all about. And part of that global village is that our children should have the opportunity of working in other parts of the global village. Again, sir, some very interesting points made by you. If I'm not wrong, I think 30% of, you mentioned about how UK is actually one of the biggest importers from EU. And I think 30% of food really is coming in from EU as well. So I think there's a big market there. And having said that, of course, a lot of things could have again been much different. But as you said, eventually that the PM Boris Johnson has also opened UK for a lot of international markets and students. I think that is in some way great because it opens its doors to a lot of other countries now. India also being one of them. And we hope to have better days in the future. And I'm sure we will with the way we are going ahead. So, sir, that brings me to the next question. What according to you is the post Brexit UK going to be like? What is it going to look like? That's a very interesting question. We are going to have to produce more of our own food. I think that's an important issue and a big opportunity where our small and large farmers need to change the way we produce. We won't have the European Union subsidies for, in some cases, not using the land for the purposes of agricultural, etc. So I think there's a big opportunity there for farming and food production in the United Kingdom. So that will change. Our emphasis, I hope, will be even more international when it comes to working with countries such as India and the other 54 Commonwealth countries. As you well know, it's a third of the world's population. It's 10% of all world trade. So there are a number of opportunities. I know that Baroness Patricia Scotland, who is Secretary General of the Commonwealth, is very keen. Patricia is going to be talking to us in the actual Pangea Conference and we'll ask her to talk about how she sees trade developing with other Commonwealth countries. I'm sure you know that if Commonwealth countries work together, they save money. They cut costs by doing so. So that's an area that is an opportunity. The big ones are on climate control, as I've discussed briefly. Artificial intelligence, where we are ahead of the game in R&D. So that will make a difference. I'm looking forward, as you said, for this international agreement on education and there will be opportunities for us to develop relations with countries that we traditionally dealt with but have because of the European Union restrictions and tariffs, we've not been able to do for some time. So I think there are a lot of opportunities that are really going to be coming in very soon and I think that's one positive way of looking at Brexit. So at this point, we're going to go on to a little different tangent and I'm going to talk about another recent development. A development that's taken place in the last one year, if I was to really say, and not very recent, but I think it is something that really affects us all and especially the ones present here today, and that is the rise of online education. So a lot has changed. Of course, the way we teach today can completely transform. So I would love to know a little more about it from you. You also mentioned that your son Ben is studying in King's College and I'm sure some most of his courses must be online at this point. So how has that transition been for you and him? Okay, well, let me talk about Ben first. He's studying at home. You have to be self-motivated, don't you, to do that when you don't have to go to listen to and learn the lectures. So that's working well. He's doing that studying for his exams, as I said, and writing lots of essays. So that's fine. As I covered briefly before, the thing that's missing is the collegiate side, the meeting fellow students discussing what's going on, what they think complaining about various aspects. That's all important to all of us, isn't it, when we're growing up, developing friendships that may last a lifetime, contacts that will be useful in all sorts of ways that when you're young, you don't realise may help you when you're older. So that's the downside. I've covered things like children at school with learning problems. I think that's a serious issue that I'd be interested in, the educators' view that are here today, what they think of that. I'm worried about it. However, we face adversity. We face a global pandemic. And we've had to change the way we work. And some of that is to the good. Illustrated by the fact that we're having a virtual conference today with so many scores from so many countries. So that's the good news. It has encouraged investment in communications technology. It's encouraged us all to almost a leap, if you like, into the future, where people my age, getting on, are able to work this amazing technology. I'm chairman of the Institute for Collaborative Working, where we work with a lot of large international companies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, etc., where we were used to having regular seminars and conferences. And like all of you, we've had to change that. And we're running online conferences. We have a leadership course, which we're struggling with, actually, to teach lecture online. We're struggling with that. But we have share and learn, where we have share and learn sessions with a leading company in a sector, for example, defense or security or whatever, the the railway industry, etc. They're working very well. And that saves a lot of time, saves a lot of money. We start early in the morning and we'll have a three hour session. So start at 8 over by 11. Doesn't interfere too much with the days working for business. And yet gets over the points and we enable questions from the team, the group that are, for example, in defense. We had a lecture on on the police procurement, where we have a lot of different police forces buying their own material.  Because if you put all that procurement together, you must be able to save a lot of money. So we do things like that. So functional, but we're missing something. We're missing the networking opportunities that you have when you have a lecture. And that's very important. Sorry, contacts within an industry, within a sector are very important for information and indeed for expanding one's business. So would that answer your question? Yes, absolutely. To some way. I totally agree that you mentioned some demerits and I train some amazing kids. And I must say that I would desperately, I would go, I would take any opportunity to just be in a classroom at this point, because I terribly miss them. But having said that, yes, there are a lot of demerits in that sense, the screen time that children are exposed to, I think that is one big problem. But I think having said that, the merits are also far too long. I mean, the fact that again, as you mentioned, we can sit here, talk to each other, you sitting in Barbados, me in India, and of course, a wonderful audience from around the world. I think that's a possibility and a result of COVID. So I think you have something, we have something to thank COVID for. So I think in that sense, yes, there are some things that have resulted out of it. Many positive things that I believe in my opinion, at least a lot of positive things that have resulted out of COVID. And, you know, as you mentioned, the adversity, we've been able to tackle and emerge stronger than ever before. I think that itself is a great thing. Now, having said that again, we are here for Panjia. Panjia was a super continent once upon a time. And then of course, came the continental drift theory. And that's why we're far today. But if Panjia, if you were to talk about Panjia, how do you believe that something like Panjia exists even today, figuratively?  And tell me, what do you personally think? Do you think it exists today, figuratively? Yes, I do. I think with the advantages of cheaper economic or international transport, with improved relations all around, that just because of the communications revolution, that's given us the opportunity to form friendships internationally much more than we did before. So I think Panjia, as you know, it was based on a super continent 335 million years ago, where most of the landmass of the earth was confined to one area around the equator. So I think it's an excellent name for a global village. And yes, I agree. I think there's a big opportunity to develop relations between different schools, different communities as we are today. And I'm very excited by it. So Panjia, I will be talking about the event very shortly, but you're a very well-travelled person. And I know this because I've interacted with you a few times and I also have heard a lot about you. So can you share any such instance where you experienced compassion, collaboration, just by traveling and just being able to talk to people from around the world? Yeah, when I was running my large company, I had offices in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf as I've covered. I found what really helped me was working in those environments. For example, I worked in Germany in Düsseldorf and I really learned a lot from the Germans. I love their work ethic and they were brilliant to work with. There was one occasion just to give you an idea. I was publishing magazines and our magazines hadn't been distributed. And I said, why? What's happening? And they said, it's in hand. And I said, no, what is happening? Tell me. And they said, well, we have a postal strike. I think they were so used to taking the Mickey out of the Brits with strikes at that time. They really didn't want to admit that they'd had a problem in posting out magazines. Which, of course, I laughed and I know I shouldn't have done because that's in their culture. They're great to work with. I work with a number of large German companies. So I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot. I learned the way they operate. And it led me to produce a manual on selling. It was based on a book called The Golden Rules of Customer Care, which I'd commend to everyone. It's a book about a car dealer in the United States. And at that time, garages used to close at five o'clock in the evening. And they'd leave your car with the key on a tire. So this dealer said, that's wrong. So he opened early in the morning. He always had loan cars available that people could use. He closed late in the evening. They would do things like repair a puncher for free. And that built customer loyalty. And that set me on thinking, what can I do to have points of difference in my service compared to what was going on at the time? So I produced a manual called The Golden Rules of Customer Care. The company was called Century Impress. And I've got to tell you that people I see now that used to work for me say, I'm still using your manual. And all I did was think about the market, how we could be different. How we could provide a service over a longer time. Over a longer time, we were always there. We had emergency numbers for very speedy response to printing. You remember printing inquiries? And that really helps us expand. And we became one of the largest print management companies in Europe, working for handling all of the printing for companies like Sainsbury's. In the United Kingdom. And in Holland, we work with a company called The Hamer, which is a value store. Producing four and a half million brochures every six weeks or so. So building up unique selling propositions. And how did I get to this? By developing relationships with people in other countries. Learning from them the points of difference in their service. Compared to what was happening at that time in the United Kingdom. So that's just an advantage. Just an example rather of how you can really improve your business. Your operating protocols. By having the help of people abroad. And I'm sure you'll find this in education. Where by the global village concept that you're implementing. That's going to help you all. Because we're all going to learn from it. Which is, I think, what this is all about. Does that answer your question? Absolutely sir. I mean, not David you mentioned about the book. I'm going to make sure I read that. And as far as your experiences are concerned. I think that makes you the perfect person to really launch Panjia. This is for our audience joining us today. Panjia is really a global conference. Where we've got kids from around the world. Participating in various competitions. In art competitions. In singing competitions. In case study competitions. But with the undertone of collaboration and compassion. And this is why it's a global village. And we're so honored to have all our dignitaries join us too. So at this point I'm going to quickly introduce our dignitaries to you. Lord David. But before I do that. Our lovely audience. If you have any question. Please you can populate them in our chat boxes. You can put it up on as comments as well. We'll be taking it up very soon. And I'm sure Lord David would love to answer them. So without further ado. I'm going to quickly introduce our wonderful dignitaries. Starting with our host school. Which is the Elpro International School. We have our lovely Dr. Anrita Gora. Who's the director principal. We have Ms. Shri Pari Tiwari. Who's the head of school of EIS Cambridge being. We have Ms. Parnavi Mukherjee. Who's the senior head mistress. So Dr. Anrita Gora why don't you share a few words with us. New normal obviously. For you guys. Educating our children is such an important and vital job. And I'm humbled by what you've had to do. During this lockdown. In the same way as I am. With our national health service. So I'm sure you'll agree. It's done an absolutely tremendous job. And you have as well. Because you've had to do this. Against all the odds. And particularly with children. From poor backgrounds. Or maybe single parents. Where it's been so really difficult. To for the parent. To get to work. When they can work. And what happens with their children. I mean key workers as you know. In the UK. We have a scheme. Where key workers children are taken care of. In the school process. But it's really difficult. So I think the priorities are. For the government to invest. In providing extra teachers extra help. For so that our children can catch up. Because one could argue. And I would go along with that. That you've done all you can. On online learning. But in my view. Our children are missing something. Apart from being with other children. They are missing something. When it comes to education. And we need to invest more into that. To help them catch up. For the challenges ahead. And the goodness when we went to school. And went to university. There were challenges coming up. Which we knew what happened. And we were able in most cases. To get through that. But today. When you look at the innovation. The quality of education. It's our duty to provide. To our children. To our students. We have they have a lot to do. And we need to do all we can to help them through that. So I think. In summary. More money. More training. More teachers. I think that's vital. I resent the fact. That we take. Some teachers. And nurses and doctors. From countries. Third world countries. Yes it's good. For training. But if they stay in the United Kingdom. All that money. That the third world country has spent. Educating them. Is has gone. So I don't think that's fair. I think there ought to be a quid pro quo. In the system. If we do that. Where money is provided to the government. That has trained. The doctor nurse teacher. Or whatever. So. Short answer. Is that enough. Thank you. That's a. You know. Excellent. And again inspiring. And I would like to formally invite you. To come along to Wapping High School. When we come out of this. If you wouldn't mind. I'd love to come and have a look. And. I hope you'll enjoy your day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure. And you're you're both very welcome. To come down to the House of Lords. For tea when we're able to. Some of you here have been. And I think you enjoyed it. So I look forward to that. I thought you were about to invite us over to Barbados. And I was about to say yes immediately. Yeah I was. I've chartered a plane. But unfortunately BA have cancelled them all. So never mind. Thank you sir. Mr. Nelson for that wonderful question. And thank you Lord David for such a wonderful answer. I'm just going to quickly introduce. From Abu Dhabi Indian school. We have Mr. Neeraj Bhargav. That's a wonderful school again. And we are very close to that school. So sir why don't you share a few words. We'd love to hear a little from you. Once again good evening everybody. Yeah we have a different kind of experience over here. We are privileged and fortunate to be in this country. Talking about compassion. Yes and now like in a school of my kind. We are more of a community school. Because it's a no profit school. There is no owner of the school as such. The school is the owner of the school itself. So the entire working is of the school is of the children's interest. Of course we have more of a we have parents who are not able to afford. You see if there are three children at home. They can't have three devices. That's a very very simple requirement you know for online teaching. So fortunately the government came in eight. And they provided devices for these children. The parents made a you know a request. We made the list and the parents were provided by the devices by the government. Some of the parents who have lost the job. Not able to travel back to country or country. And of course the other reasons. The fees was given by the government to the school. And very you know very important one. They are providing free testing of the COVID in the school every 14 days. I have been tested for 15 times already. And the latest one is and the latest one is from tomorrow. They are starting the vaccination in the school for the teachers. Again being provided by them. So it's a it's a it's actually a very different kind of experience working. To the other side what we are talking about the Panjia. I'm sure some of you must be knowing there's a big commercial thing happening. You know which is called as a global village in Dubai. There are there are there are around about 80 90 countries which come together. And they present their you know their culture also their art also their you know the commercial products also and we go there and learn from there. And of course learn from about each country about the products and all. So I'm sure somewhere here when you talk about what you are doing. Panjia we will be collaborating and learning the compassion of the different students. I mean the students will be learning from each other. I think that is what I feel now. And I so I was very happy with the concept to be very honest. And I could immediately correlate. And also very important thing is I'm sure you all know that there are nearly 220 nationalities in this country UAE and we are all living so peaceful. Together happy and working and abiding the law. Whatever reasons. But yes we are all living in a very harmonious way. So I'm sure when we interact the students will interact. They will have a better idea of how they can build up together. Something for as what you know Mr. Gary said. For a compassion for those who do not have. Can be built with this to the different countries where the students do not have. Can our student contribute whatever way for them. Online portal is there. I'm sure some of our seniors may would like to teach those students. If they are an access can be made to help them. You know so we need to build up that kind of a compassion through this platform. And I'm sure we will be able to do that. Thank you so much for including us into your campaign. Thank you. It was our honor to thank you so much for your kind words. Moving on I would also love to introduce Ms. Smriti Bharga. She's also joined us. Thank you so much ma'am for coming and joining us. Thank you so much for having us here. Thank you ma'am. Moving on to Gems Modern Academy Dubai. We have Ms. Kambata who's the principal of Gems Modern Academy. Then we have Mr. Sidney Atkins who's the vice principal. And Ms. Divya Rajgaria. Ms. Kambata would you please share a few words with us. Good afternoon here. So good afternoon everyone. It's such a pleasure to be a part of this program and listen to you young lady. We've been watching you closely and I thought you make an absolutely great and you're comparing and coordinating this so well. I'd like to hand over to Ms. Divya who's actually leading on this project and have her speak on it. So Ms. Divya. Hello everyone. Thank you ma'am. It has been a pleasure listening to all of you especially Sir David, Mr. Gary Nelson and Ms. Nicolette. And Ashi I really should reiterate what Ms. Kambata has just said. You've been coordinating it so well. Well I've posted a question here about how educators can help students cope with ramifications of artificial intelligence as pointed out by Sir David. Especially with skills like empathy and human connection. So this is a question to especially to Sir David and to all educators. I mean I would like to know how y'all are coping with this problem in your part of the world. Thank you. Lord David please do the honors. Okay. Thank you. Compassion. Compassion in a business is making sure that your staff, your employees are well looked after.  And you make sure that as near as best as practicable your staff are safe and looked after. And our government has a furlough scheme which I'm very proud to say pays 80% of earnings up to a limit but nevertheless. And obviously there's been a lot of support from the Chancellor of the Hsiehki here for the workforce of the United Kingdom. It doesn't cover all of it but it certainly makes a big contribution. So I think compassion as far as I'm concerned as an employer is making sure my staff are looked after that I can provide all the help I possibly can. And as far as the way of working my staff can work at home. They do that very successfully and we look after them the best we can. Now that's my personal experience. I'd be really pleased to hear from educators how you manage that. How you define compassion as an employer and dealing with the children in your country and other countries and other educators. I think that's very important. If I may comment with that. Thank you Lord David. I think sometimes in the simple things that you find profound answers. And I don't think our teachers who has overheard this but as the days got along I think it has been teachers, their resilience, their passion for their job. They have really put their minds to what they were doing and came out from. So as school leaders we thought what can we do to help the process. Because really we just need to get out of the way and let them get on with their work truly and that's where the magic happens. But I think simple things like we realized that at home they may not have the ergonometry design chairs for them to sit on. And so we asked who would like your chairs sent home. And for everybody who agreed we said fine and we had our managers school operations sent home their chairs. And that came as a pleasant surprise. But I think it reinforced a couple of things for the teachers that we really care. It's not lip service flipping, we really want them to be comfortable. And this was something really small that we did but the impact was huge. I think right through this entire pandemic our respect for our teachers has grown so much. The way they've nurtured the children. So at every opportunity and every plan we put in place we said what can we do for the well-being of our teachers. Even at our local advisory board meetings all of which went online. We said at every meeting and every initiative we said what can we do for our teachers. So with that mindfulness when we approached it our teachers really understood that we do care teachers, teaching assistants, support staff, senior leadership team because as often as possible we allow them to work from home. And of course now we're all back to school but there are days when we've got problems with children, we may have issues with the children in the school or we allow the children to come in because of the right precautions that we take. In fact Ms. Divya who's on this call she's only just arrived from India. She went to Kolkata with her family, got stuck there, her daughter tested positive, she couldn't make it back on time. But she worked from Kolkata and they had connectivity. So I think it's in the little things that we do that what they realize we will be doing. But thank you for asking that question. Thank you so much ma'am. That was a wonderful dialogue between Ms. Kamata, Divya, Ms. Divya and Lord David. Also thank you so much Ms. Kamata and Ms. Divya. I think I have one person to thank and he's sitting right here and that's Anansh. Thank you so much once again. I'm just going to quickly move on to the next school. I have your calling a little short on time as is the case with all good things. So we're going to quickly move on to the Indian school Wadi Al Kabir. We have Mr. Kailash Batro who's the activity coordinator. We have Asha Mohan who's also the activity coordinator. And finally we have Ms. Janisha Joseph who's a senior teacher. Kailash sir please say a few words. We'd love to hear from you. Hello, good evening everyone. I'm sure all are doing well. And sir David as he's mentioned it's good morning for him. Different timing zones and different timing wishes. It's a nice experience, a very first experience of mine and I'm feeling very overwhelmed and very thrilled to learn a lot. I think a long way to go to gain a lot of experience from the different spheres of lives from all of you. So I look forward to your responses, reactions and also I look forward to your guidance to how to go about these activities since it's the first experience of mine. So I'm looking forward to the further activities, how to go about it. And thank you so much for having accepted me in your group. I'm so happy and thank you so much very much from the bottom of my hat. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are very thrilled to have the Indian school Wadi Al Kabir too joining us. I'm sure we have learned so much from each other. And finally we have one last school and one institute that rather I'd like to introduce. We have from the Institute of Education, Diversity and Accomplishments in Brazil. We have Ms. Svetlana Nisuzahop and Mr. Marcelo Abdala. I'm sorry if I have mispronounced your names. Please correct me if I'm wrong and we'd love to hear from Ms. Svetlana. Hello. Hello and good morning to all and good evening to some as well as as Lord David. Nicely put, we are in different time zones. So it's quite early for us here as well. It's a pleasure to be here. We are very thankful to be invited to this wonderful project. We indeed believe in in the global education without borders and how this initiative really touches the lives of so many different children. Speaking especially from our side of the fence here. This initiative has really given children opportunities that they have never even dreamed of to be part of a global community with such wonderful and different kinds of cultures and of insights to give and all kinds of new opportunities that might rise from that. Our school here is primarily centered in the lower ends of social class. We do we do invest a lot in English language learning. Perhaps Lord David also knows a little bit about Dr. Anil Seal who is one of our biggest supporters here. Dr. Anil Seal, he's a fellow at Trinity College from Cambridge. And it was together with him under the supervision of Angela French who has done a wonderful job as well with El Pro in India that we came here with this project of initiating this school for children that would not have access to proper English language learning. Unless it was really at high prices. So we've been doing this work here and now with a year day school that we started this year. We have lots of hopes and we have lots of initiatives different initiatives. We are highly based on ed tech tools. I don't want to extend myself because we know that we have run out of time as well short of time. But I would like to reiterate that we would love to welcome all of you here. And especially of course, Lord David, if you ever come down this way to Brazil and if you would ever pay us the honor to pay us a visit, give us the honor of paying us a visit. And I would like to thank very much Gary for bringing us to this initiative. He was the one that brought us on board and say and Suganda as well for putting all of this together and all the team in India. And just a last few words regarding compassion. One of the most interesting aspects of this whole pandemic here that I've been able to observe was the fact that it was quite easy to actually activate this feeling in humans all over the world as soon as we saw that we really needed each other. This feeling was awakened and most humans I think around the planet were able to overlook all kinds of cultural and religious differences.  And we overlooked all these other aspects that sometimes blurred our vision in different ways. So this has really, let's say, reconquered my faith in humanity. And I still believe that we have wonderful things to do. And I still believe that the majority of humankind is very kind. So thank you very much. It's a pleasure. It's an honor, sir. It's an honor to be here. And hello to everyone around the world. Thank you so much, Suganda. I think your words were so kind. And I think the last line, there's so much kindness yet in us. I think we have to discover it. And I think this is a great platform for us to do that. With this, we have actually introduced all our wonderful dignitaries who joined us. So we have one question from the audience. I think we can entertain one question at this point. So the question is come right directly from Facebook. So the question is, how important would you say a global outlook is at a workplace? So this is again reinstating all your experiences. You spoke about many of them, many interesting ones. So how important would you say a global outlook is at a workplace? Do you mind if I come in and answer or give my perspective on that from Wapping High? Would you mind? Sure. Yeah, thank you. Just to say, we have kind of two straplines in terms of the big message, the mission at the school and as well as raising aspirations for young people. The second part of that is really important to us. It's about broadening horizons. And I really, you know, I enjoy listening to Svetlana talk. I know how passionate she is to achieve something really magical here. But that's really important to me, the fact that young people don't see learning in the classroom or in their street or in their village or their town or their city. And it goes way beyond that because that's where true inspirational learning really is. So very much so for my school concepts. Absolutely. Thank you so much for that. Not David, would you like to share a few words on that? Yes, I would. If I can just say, Svetlana, I visited Brazil and was absolutely fascinated by what's happening there. And it's a really stunning country with so much potential. But to answer the question directly, I think it's absolutely vital because just looking at our lifetimes and what's happened internationally with how we're able to communicate and have relations with so many people overseas. I think an international outlook is vital and it's our duty as educators to enable our children, our students to have a much broader view of the world and the opportunities therein. So I'm 100% behind the question in the way it was put. So thank you very much for a really constructive and positive question. Thank you so much, Sir, again for that insightful comment. And thank you so much, Mr. Gary. I think both your answers make a lot of sense. And especially very important at this point. And again, reinstating the fact that, you know, Panjia is going to be giving us that opportunity to really have a global outlook at many things as we collaborate through compassion, of course. So on this note, you know, I think we positively asked a lot of questions. We've got a range of answers, a range of perspectives really. And I think this was a melting pot of sorts. So on this note, Sir, can you please declare Panjia open? Thank you very much. I'm delighted to declare Panjia a global village open. And I'm sure we're all going to enjoy that. And thank you so much for the organization, Sugandha and Ashia. We really appreciate all you do. So thank you to the Elpro International School for leading this. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Sir. I'm just going to quickly wrap this up and of course give it back to Sugandha, ma'am. So through our curtain razor, we spoke to Lord David about a range of things. Right from COVID-19 to UK post COVID to Brexit to online education and finally about Panjia. One thing we've learned for certain is that we're all interconnected today. And the sooner we realize this, the faster we can collaborate together and act upon the various challenges that we as a world are facing today. I'm extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with you, Lord David. Your insightful inputs really have given us food for thought. It's truly an honor to have someone of your stature open our event and set the concept, set the correct precedent for conversations surrounding collaboration and compassion. Thank you so much once again for speaking with us and launching Panjia. It's my pleasure and it's good to be with you all. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Sugandha ma'am. Thank you so much, Ashi. And a huge thank you to Lord David Evans for joining us. And like Ashi said, declaring our event open, it is such an honor for all of us and I'm sure for all the participating schools as well. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all the participating schools, the leaders, for helping us turn our dream into a reality. Anant and I conceptualized this entire event. We worked on it and your support really made it a reality. And we are really looking forward to the 29th and 30th, where our students come together, collaborate in a very compassionate way, and do some really fun activities with each other. So it's not going to be teams, it's going to be the linked teams that are going to work with each other. So thank you, everybody. I will fail in my duty if I don't thank my director principal, Dr. Voda, who just entrusts me with so many, so such great activities and which I'm able to execute under her guidance. So thank you, ma'am, for believing in us and letting us do these amazing things. Teshir, Teshir, always. Thank you, Anant, Dhan, Ashi, and Abdullah, the team of Skillshare. You guys have been at the helm of ensuring that all these schools come together. So a huge round of applause for everybody. And with this, I think, you know, the audiences who have been watching us live, educate the students, parents, from all our different schools, you guys have gotten a lot of love, a lot of positive feedback on the Facebook live chat and we remain grateful for that. We will be shortly sharing the schedule of the two-day event of Pangea, which will also be aired live on our Facebook page. So please do join us for that and stay tuned onto our Facebook page for more updates. With this, I now end the live stream.


I'm a 13 fox and as a fox we cannot hear and observe all the fires. You may get lucky, get to go to more taps, play with some A10s, some Apaches, and Blackhawks. But mainly, your job is calling fire with artillery. We've been using LODR, bobinos, range finders. We have the hundred first guys out here with us that help us out a lot. We really couldn't do it without them right now. We're calling for fire with Charlie O'Bravo and Alpha Battery, the second one on the 38th, with their palliants. It's a really good time. It's time to get away from your family, but also come to your second family.


CHAPTER IX. We sat again in the great drawing-room at Fort Defiance. The military appearance of the apartment was unchanged. The portraits of the Confederate generals looked from wall to wall at each other. The bright sun, reflected from the snow outside, gleamed on the burnished arms. At the head of the table sat the colonel in his most brilliant uniform, stiff and precise as a judge should be. Dr. Ambrose, at the side of the table, took their statements in writing, and six men in Confederate gray, crothers at their head, listened attentively to the evidence. Thus my second trial on the charge of being a Yankee spy, appealed on a writ of error from the first, drew to its end. Miss Heatherle sat beside the window. Streaks of dim gold showed in her dark hair where the winter sunshine fell across it. When her eyes met mine, a bit of a smile appeared in them, and the delicate color in her cheeks deepened. The last evidence was given, and the colonel directed the military jury to retire to the next room and consider a verdict. When they had gone, we waited in silence. The snowbirds hopped about outside. One of them perched on the windowsill and stared at us through the glass for a moment. Then he flew away. The snow on the knife edge of the distant mountain ridges shone like gold under the sun. The jury returned, crothers at their head. What is your verdict, gentlemen? asked the colonel. Not guilty, replied crothers, it is our unanimous decision. I am glad of it, said the colonel. It is my opinion, too. After west my congratulations and sympathy as from one honest enemy to another. He reached over and gave my hand a strong and friendly grasp. Remember, he said, that until we return you to your own country, you are our guest in the fullest sense of the word. Dr. Ambrose and crothers also shook my hand, and everybody seemed to be glad that we had arrived at the truth at last. By and by only Grace and I were left in the room. We stood by the great window, the brilliant sunlight reflected from the snow through a broad band of gold across the floor. Her face, for the first time since I knew her, seemed peaceful and content. The snowbirds hopped from one little white mound to another, like their brethren of the summer passing from flower to flower. Three or four flew to the brave little brass cannon which menaced the passage of the drawbridge and perched upon its barrel. They don't seem to fear the dogs of war, I said. They need not, said Grace. Our cannon will never be used again. The last salute cracked the barrel all the way. Do you forgive me, I asked, asking the old question, for bringing so much trouble upon Fort Defiance? There is nothing to forgive, she said earnestly. It was no fault of yours. I became brave. Then you are not sorry I came? No. I took her hands in mine. You are sorry I am going? Yes. I kissed her for the second time in my life. The day had come for me to leave Fort Defiance. The great snow had gone. The whole Confederate army, its commander at its head, accompanied me as a guard of honour to the end of the valley. Crothers would guide me across the mountains. When the time came for the others to turn back, Colonel Heatherle shook my hand again.  Grace walked a little farther. Then I took both her hands in mine and kissed her for the third, but not the last time in my life. The trumpets sounded the recall from the walls of Fort Defiance. I will come again, I said, but not as an enemy. Never as an enemy. End of chapter 9, recording by David Gore. End of The Last Rebel by Joseph A. Altschiller.


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Jenkins and some surrounding areas continue to burn. Fires continue to crawl across the landscape over the weekend after fire crews managed to contain the blazes late last week. According to a statement from the U.S. Forestry Service, the fire on Pine Mountain above Jenkins had burned about 1,700 acres as of Sunday and was about 25% contained. Air drops of water continued over the weekend as fire crews from nine states, even as far away as California, continued to battle the fires. Continued dry and breezy conditions pushed the fire over the fire lines over the weekend and now local, state and federal crews are working to contain the fires again. We did one 30-hour stretch for people out for that long. We've had a couple breaks where they go home to eat, sleep a little while and we kept somebody out all night sort of patrolling to see if it's getting close to anything. But more or less day and night we've been out for a few days to try to keep up with it. Monday saw the first loss of a large structure as a result of the fires around Jenkins and abandoned house on Brickyard Hill in Jenkins caught fire after the woodland fire crawled to its doorstep. The Jenkins Volunteer Fire Department contained the blaze and kept it from spreading to neighboring structures. At the Little Shepherd Amphitheater, state forestry crews and volunteer firefighters from Menafee County, Ohio County and other areas created fire lines to keep the fire under control. The fire reached U.S. 23 on Pound Jenkins Mountain of Pine Mountain Sunday evening. Now everyone is simply hoping and praying for rain. You know, we want people just to bear with us. We're getting them put out. Hopefully a little rain may come tonight or tomorrow and help the situation. The rain last week slowed it down a little bit but it wasn't nowhere near enough to extinguish the flames. Jenkins Mayor Todd DePriest said the public has taken the situation in stride and he has asked for continued patience as crews battle the fires. We want everybody to bear with us. It should be over shortly and just they know if they need anything. They call 911 or City Hall or the fire station and we'll be out checking on it and taking care of it. Reporting in Jenkins for EKB News, I'm Chris Anderson.


Can I ask you to tell us your name? Yeah, absolutely. My name is Michael Horn. And can you share a little bit about you so we can get to know you a little bit better? Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working in the field of education for about 15 years now. I had a public policy background, went to business school to get away from it, failed in that endeavor, and ended up co-authoring a book with the man who became my mentor, Clay Christensen. I called disrupting class. We started the Clayton Christensen Institute for disruptive innovation together, non-profit think tank. I ran the education team there for just under a decade and then moved to a group called the entangled group in 2015, which just got acquired by a group called Guild Education. And now I'm a senior strategist there. And as you know, I still write a lot of books and articles about the future of education, really spanning the entire system from early learning, K-12, where my roots were, but the last really seven years or so has been much more focused on higher education and Guild's work is in helping employers spend dollars on helping working adults get education and upskill, which in this current pandemic, given all of the disruption, different sort of disruption in people's lives, has felt incredibly gratifying to be able to help a lot of folks right now. So I work across those ranges, as I mentioned, written a number of books on the topic. I have a couple of podcasts on the future of education and just try to help people chart a course to a better system that serves all individuals better. Well, I can say I've been a fan for a very long time, even when you were interning under Mr. Christensen. I read a lot of his work and I was really moved by his thoughts and he was very really clear and kind of really poignant to think about where he was, because a lot of people talk about education. Education is the black sheep of the family all the time is something wrong with it. There's all these things. I think some of his work was really clear and he articulated his vision very, very well. And then you came along behind him and just took it up and took the band and started running and he's done basically the same thing. And I try every time you send something, I try to post it, because I think people need to hear and read those things because I mean like we make assumptions about education that are not always correct. I don't know if you know this, my husband is a third grade teacher. He's been teaching for 28, 29 years. He's been teaching for a long time. And my view, my lens from education comes from his work and then where I am in my work. So I think it's really important and one of the reasons why I wanted to have this chat with you is because I think you can give us some insights that many of us may not have, specifically about education and race and wealth equity, if you will, how those go together. So if you could, can you just talk a little bit about the structure of education from elementary education on a way to post secondary education? Yeah, absolutely. So in our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools, they were literally designed after factories. Most people don't realize this that if you went before the 1850s really, everyone attended a one room school house. And by necessity, there were a lot of kids crammed into a classroom and the teacher was individualizing and personalizing for every single student there. The students were teaching each other. There was a lot of differentiation going on, acknowledging the reality that, you know, all students learn different ways, different needs at different times, different paces and so forth. And it was just laid bare by the fact that we had so many different ages. But what a lot of people don't realize is the vast majority of Americans didn't go to high school back then. Very few, like we're talking single digit percentages. And that all started to change really in the late 1800s and early 1900s when we moved to this factory model education system that we had imported in essence from Prussia and that system. And the theory basically said, okay, we're gonna batch students up by their date of manufacture, if you will, their birth year. And we will put them in classrooms where the teacher, in order to educate massive numbers of students, because remember, there wasn't compulsory education before in the United States. So to create a universal system, we're gonna deliver the same learning in the same way to them at the same pace on each day. And every couple of days, we'll switch to the next concept and some of them will get it and some of them won't. And that's okay because our system was essentially built to sort students, sort them out. So those students who, you know, didn't have high academic achievement, they'd move into career and technical education, which would mean that they were line workers in factories. Those who did pretty well, they would become managers. And the really creme de la creme, they would get to go to higher education to become sort of the leaders of the political class or corporations or et cetera and sort of run the country, if you will. And that's how our education system was built in the case of all the system. And I'll get to higher education in a moment, but you hear that it's a system built on sorting, not on learning and developing every single child's potential and passions and so forth. And so when we, as a society over the last 30 years, since a nation at risk in 1983 was published, pointed out all the students that weren't making the grade, weren't learning, were dropping out and so forth, what I think we've never connected as a country in a conversation is that was actually the design of the system. It was designed to produce the exact results that it does and it's a success by that standard. The problem is we now live in a knowledge economy where that doesn't actually get you a stable living wage and a stable job and so forth in today's day and age and we need a very different thing from the education system. In higher education, again, it was a system built to serve a minority of students. Because most people wouldn't be going there and when we started expanding dramatically, the access to higher education first in the 1860s, but then really with the GI Bill after World War II, you had a flood of students coming into colleges and universities, which did a lot of good in many ways, but the fact that we have the 55% graduation rate over six years in this country, that community colleges, it's something like in the 28% or something like that, graduation rate. I mean, appalling numbers, right? That was how the system was built and as you know from your part of Duke, like the sign of a good professor is not one who coaches and coaxes and really helps every single student succeed. It's the one that serves as a gating function to say, you're not physics material or you're not legal material or you're not this or you're not that and again, sorts them out and the higher education system was built on the primacy of research, not the primacy of teaching and learning and too often we've mistaken teaching for learning, right? Teaching is what I do when I convey information, but learning is what a student actually does or doesn't master and our whole higher ed system was not built upon doing that effectively. So again, we get the results that we designed for. And so, and also there's a component that education was based on farming, right? So we went to school when farming, we didn't go to school when crops are ripe and had to be picked and then we went to school when it was dormant time. Yes, it's actually even worse than that. I just, we just covered this in the upcoming episode of my class disrupted podcast that'll be going live on next Monday. But so that's been the conception and that was my conception. It's actually worse than that. Schooling actually used to be year round during the agrarian model of our economy. But what happened was that as we started to have a middle and upper class emerge in this country in the late, sorry, mid to late 1800s, the upper class in particular, but also middle class they would just pull their kids out of school for the summer months because it was hot. They wanted to be on the beaches where it was cool. They want to be in the mountains. And so there was just empty seats in schools. And so basically schools and then the administrators and teacher unions and legislatures solidified it and created what we now call the agrarian model calendar, but it actually wasn't built in the farming cycles. It's worse than that. It was built on inequality of those who had the means to escape it. And then we created a system around it. And now as we talk, we literally, this is the topic we talk about in this next episode, we have industries now built around that. We have summer camps, we have summer businesses, right? All these things built on maintaining this status quo that works for a very small subset of families in this country. And I would argue it doesn't even really work for those families either. Like, I mean, I consider myself one of the lucky ones before COVID hit. We had spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, trying to figure out what our kids would do over the summer and make it work for a two family working, family and it's tough. And to your point, so with COVID being progressing pretty quickly in certain areas, there's been a push to send kids back into the classroom. And more and more parents are finding themselves doing more teaching than the teachers are doing, because the way the system is built, I always say this between healthcare and education, every few years they throw out their philosophy and start with something new, right? So we have common core, workout left behind and all these things. So now we get to where we are right now. So I think that there is a very important point to that because early on and in the agrarian model, girls were home with mom cooking and learning how to do this. Sons were either out in the farm or either in class. So we had discrimination in education between girls and boys. And even the teaching force, right? Normal schools were developed for women to become the teachers because it was thought that they were good at child rearing and working with children and men became the administrators. So it's even in the labor force as well. Yeah, absolutely. So as we look at education today and one of the things that I write a lot about is the need to publish how schools do, right? So elementary school specifically, you get this from the Department of Educational Statistics, they put out a report, and then I don't know if all schools districts those but it happens here in North Carolina. So they'll tell you by gender, by race, how poorly the children have done. And so when there was all this pushback with Silicon Valley about why they weren't diverse, why they didn't have more blacks, more browns, more women in these roles, for historic times we've been told we had the bell curve, there was dad and all these other studies that said that black and brown people weren't that smart. So, not politically correct, but you could see why some of these companies went toward hiring Asians or white males because it had been perpetuated in the system forever never to these other people who were smart and not the black and brown people. And there's been no accounting for the fact that when the first slaves arrived in America and for some period almost to the point of emancipation proclamation, they were prevented from learning. So how long do you, does it take you to catch up? How long does it take for you to have however many years that is to brown versus board of education to where we are right now? How long does academically, does it take a black or brown or a girl for that matter to catch up in the education model that we have in America and probably all over the world? Yeah, no, it's significant. And what I think I would add is what you're pointing to which is essentially achievement historically correlates very strongly with class, right? And so those with means tend to do well not just on academic achievement but also in the IQ measures which are really academic achievement. And hence why you see I think some of those bell curve type statistical models out there is that they're reflections of something else that they're not, they're measuring something else, right? And what we also know is that reading after third grade, so your husband's right in the middle of this, after the third grade and below it's a skill like phonics, phonemic awareness, how to do it, right? And then once you get past that it becomes reading as a way to learn in everything else. And the reading tests in fourth grade, eighth grade, high school, et cetera. I would argue are less tests of reading skill than tests of background knowledge because there's this famous experiment that was done many, many years ago with so-called high achieving readers and so-called low achieving readers where they gave them a passage on baseball. And the high achieving readers they had selected for people that knew nothing about baseball and the low achieving readers they selected for people that knew a lot about baseball. And magically when you read a passage about baseball and you asked questions about the main idea what was, you know, things like that the low achieving readers all of a sudden tested high and the high ones who knew nothing about baseball tested low. Why is that?  That sounds like a terrible thing if you don't know anything about baseball. What they stole it, that's terrible. Well, that's actually a great play, right? And so we discount, that's obviously like a lighthearted example if you will but you think about your point all of that background knowledge that gets locked up and told in families over time as a key to economic success. And it actually is a reservoir of knowledge that doesn't just appear before kindergarten. It appears over and over at unpredictable times throughout a child's development that gives them a vastly superior advantage over time. And those schools that I think have done the best at closing that gap are those that have been very intentional about saying we're gonna build your background knowledge and all these things that, you know someone might say is not important or whatever else but it's an unwritten code of our society to get ahead. Right, absolutely. And so one of the things that, you know they say third, fifth and eighth grade are the determinant grades, right? Those are the two grades that will say whether you'll make it or not. And I don't know how long ago it's been a minute now but I used to teach adult literacy. And so one of my favorite things of all times is the Canterbury Tales. I love the Canterbury Tales, love everything.  So what's in this story that matters to me?  And what I did with the course was I did a back flip on it. So I, every student got to pick a character whatever the character was and the Wife of Bath is probably one that stands out most. I said, so now I want you to turn that person into a sports figure. So who was the most flamboyant sports figure at that time? And so Russell Westbrook became the Wife of Bath and when students got that they were just so intrigued by this pilgrimage because now you could identify with it, right? Because if I'm- It's a universal story but you just needed to make it identifiable, yeah. Right, and that's what I find in most times in our teaching adult literacy because they told me I couldn't teach it that way it was taught. But I will say that a lot of what expectations are for black and brown people is that we are supposed to be able to grasp these concepts that are foreign to us, right? So, you know, when I was younger another one of my favorites was Mbeth.  It had nothing to do with the rest of the stories. I don't know what happened in the rest of the story. I don't know what a character was but she could not get the blood off her hands. And so when you think about education from the perspective of me I graduated from high school in 1976. So I'll be 62 this year. My understanding of education was not necessarily to learn but to get out. So my mother said all the time, get out. You know, get a good education and get out. I wasn't interested in learning. So, you know, when he told me that Christopher Columbus discovered America I was like, okay, that makes sense to me. I'm getting out. That's all I know I'm getting out. And so now the system that we have in education for black and brown kids is to teach exactly the same one size fits all. And I don't think you can make education one size fits all because I can speak for my own experiences. So why is that such a common theme in education? Whether it's an elementary or high post-secondary education why is that such a common theme? Yeah, I mean, I think it's an outgrowth of the factory model on the one hand, right? Because the theory was we teach them all the same thing in the same way in the same day and sort them on to the next side. The second piece we haven't talked about is the other part of a factory model system which is that time is the constant and every child's learning is variable. And my big push would be that we need to flip that and say, learning is the constant and the time is variable. And so you're gonna learn. So here's where I get to confess I haven't read Canterbury Tales. My brother and my father have and they can still recite it however many years later. But maybe this is an objective, right? And we're gonna assume it takes people different pathways and different paces to do it. And that's not just okay, it's encouraged because it's actually more like equity is often mistaken as I'm gonna give you the exact same learning. That's a mistake. You actually need a different pathway to relate it to your experience to make it understandable to fill in gaps and background knowledge that maybe you have. I need clearly something very different because I'm starting from ground zero as we just discovered on this one. And so we need to acknowledge that because and then it continues to compound, right? Because you get an illusion in another professor's lecture on the Canterbury Tales, I don't. And in our current system, we treat that as a deficiency on my part. And to your point, not to make it about me as a white person, the point is black and brown students disproportionately because of the history that you have just cited, those gaps are bigger. And we need to be very intentional about it. I would also argue the second thing we need to be much more intentional about is what really are the core skills and knowledge that you need to be successful in today's day and age? Are they the same from community to community? Which ones are and which ones aren't? And can we have fewer of the requirements to give more breathing room to those in the communities to figure out the right path to chart? And I think the other addendum to that is and also to create a more coherent curriculum across the science and social studies in English and arguably the mathematics as well, although maybe that's a little bit more up and down, so that like what I'm doing in science relates to what I'm learning in social studies and that I can actually start to draw threads together and maybe I cover marginally less of a deep dive on the middle ages. Like I know it exists, right? But I go a little bit less deep on it as long as I get the currents of history and then I can go on deep in one particular piece and like do cause and effect and how does it relate to today's day and age and why is it important to understand this and yada yada, right? Like maybe that's what we really want to achieve. We don't have those conversations though as a society about what really is the core knowledge and skills you need to do to be a functionally literate and civically minded adult in today's country and what are the skills that we can allow communities to choose different knowledge pathways to demonstrate and achieve this? So I have two questions for that. The first one is this. So McKinsey has written several articles about the future of work and automation, right?  We're not gonna be able to do anything and robots will do everything. But in reality, I mean, I do see that. So where do you live? You live in Massachusetts, up north, yep. So like here in the South, we're not as progressive as some of these things out west of the Cone Valley, maybe even not up north, but we are pretty progressive. North Carolina is pretty good, yeah. Yeah, because we have a lot of colleges and institutions here, but Sam's Club. So we have a Sam's Club that's about two or three miles from our house. And when I renewed my membership a couple of years ago, it said download the Sam's Club app. So of course I downloaded on my phone and I've been in seven heavens ever since because I go to Sam's, I never see a person. So I'm not stuck in a line, I'm not waiting on whatever it is that they're doing. But what that immediately brought to mind was that person who was my checkout person when I was going through that line is gonna eventually be completely displaced because now they've got cameras watching me so they know I can't steal. They're gonna check my QR code before I leave so they know I bought what I said I bought. So now the store does not need as many people. And I'm doing a presentation later on this year, hopefully, you never know, but on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, most people say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I said there's one small piece in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that everybody should get. So when the father was let go by the factory because someone was stealing all the steels, the recipes for the chocolate and all the things that they did, he fired everybody and put machines in place. So the factory was run by machines. And the way the movie ends is the father comes back and has to fix the machine that replaced him. So this is to me how what Mackenzie wrote and what you are talking about kind of merge to each other, right? So there was no indication in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that the father had any kind of higher learning. He just knew how to do what it was he did, worked in a factory as you described earlier. But then when the machine would break, who's going to go fix it? So when we look at education and what they keep talking about the future of working, disrupting, disrupting automation, what does this mean in terms of what do we have to do to get all people, not just not white people, but black and brown and anybody else on the same level to participate fully in that change? Yeah, I think that's, I mean, that's literally the, however many trillion dollar question right now hanging over us, right? And I think what we need to do, I mean, this is what we're focused on in guild education now that I have that hat on as well, right? Is how to upskill people given the fact that jobs that can be automated are being automated. They're going, that's happening, right? And I would argue the pandemic is going to accelerate it because we had tons of layoffs and a lot of those jobs ain't coming back. Right. And a lot of economic loss. Huge economic loss. And I mean, you think about the black community in particular against that, right? Like, the black community was at its best unemployment and now I think it's worst in, what, two or three generations right now? And so, and a lot of those jobs, as we just said, the ones that got laid off, they're not coming back because they're going to be automated. And I think the real magic is, as you started to say, is in actually complementarity, right? So understanding the digital, understanding the machines and being able to apply the human next to it. So you build an artificial intelligence algorithm, having an ethicist alongside of it is actually incredibly important, right? Having a human being to check it as an audit, right? And then being able to communicate about what it has done and what it hasn't done, really important. And so I think what we'll see, a lot of people are arguing right now that the net sum of jobs is going to be negative. My own sense is it's going to look more like the industrial revolution, which is to say that there'll be a negative in the short run, but in the longer run we'll actually create more value added jobs that's more intrinsically rewarding work for individuals. The challenge right now is in this five to 20 year period. We don't know how long it'll last of transitioning people into that. And that's where the real pain. And I would argue a lot of the unrest right now over the last five to 10 years is like the seeds of that have been in that tension. And so from my perspective, this is where education is so important because we need to create a more flexible learning system that is more affordable and more accessible and is judged based on how you propel and grow individuals as opposed to labeling and sorting them. And if we can do that, then I think you create actually a lot of different rungs to opportunity for individuals, regardless of background. And that's like the really exciting part about it is if we can construct that. And I think entities like Guild that start to put employer dollars to work as one source of this. But I also think income share agreements and new innovation that says, hey, your education's free at this short-term program to get some coding skills, for example.  It's not like debt because if you don't make anything you don't know us anything, right? So really aligning the programs with the outcomes and putting some skin in the game, I think that could be tremendous and really rethinking our education system instead of a set of linear stages, really a set of multifaceted pathways that you move into and out of throughout your life and changing the social stigma and conversation around that and the culture around that it's gonna be the last piece.  Like what's wrong with you? Whereas it needs to be seen as, no, this is like what we all do. Cause like world's changing, how we interact with technology is changing. We always need to stay a step ahead of it. And that's actually, that's just part of your job as a human being now. I think that that was said beautifully. I think the interesting piece about that though is, so we're in unrest with this virus and also in unrest with what's happening with social justice and bringing the point that you made about COVID is I would add even further, most of these big Fortune 500 companies and really successful companies are really sitting here rethinking technology right now in their boardrooms. So how much money did they lose because their staff could not go in and support their business? If they would have had a robot, if they would have had some sort of automation, it wouldn't have mattered when this pandemic came and wiped out all these jobs and it took me away and caused the economic crash we were in right now. I think if they would have had, if they would have been really thinking about this, now we've been further ahead. And in a little bit of the same way and what you do, what I thought is is always diversifying IT. So Google's facial recognition software in 2015, disastrous, right? So, and I would bet every dime I own for the rest of my life, they didn't do that intentionally. That was not, I mean, no, no, no, I don't think people set out to do bad stuff. I mean, there are some bad apples, right? But they don't set out to do it. Right, but this is because it's the result of, right?  Right, so that's what Google's for par was, but in reality, we're going to have way more of these, right? So you have all these algorithms that says, if I live in zip code, one, two, three, four, five, six, my area is a high crime rate. We have a high level of poverty. Everything for me and that zip code is going hard.  If I'm gonna be able to move out, so where I think education really needs intersect is really what you said earlier. So we need to think about education, not just from the point of pouring information in. And I don't remember who said that, but somebody said that we're empty vessel and you spoke before. I don't think that's true. I think what we find the tools that the person has and we amplify those tools, right? So we give them skills that allow them to improve upon it. So if you are a great graphic artist, if you can draw anything, you should be able to get the same job as a guy or girl who got a four year degree in graphic artists if you have the skill. But if we don't consider that, then we are pretty much going to stay where we are for black and brown people, really. No, I think that's right. And I know I have to go in a minute and I apologize. It's a short conversation for us, but I wanna say, I think we need to move from seeing education as zero sum to a positive sum. And what you just said is exactly right, which is allowing it, instead of to be stage gates to sort people out, instead of shift it to helping identify and build passions and what your skills uniquely situate you for and then cultivating and developing that. Like that would be, and allowing individuals the choice then, right? Like I'm good at X and I'm good at Y, I get to choose. That's a great place to give people power. Right, absolutely. I'm so grateful you had time for me today and I hope we can do this again sometime later on, you know, when you get a little slow. I would love to. I would love to. It's always a happy day when I see your name in my inbox. So thank you. Absolutely so. But I think what you bring to the table, we really need to discuss it. And these chats are really meant for the everyday man. It's not meant for CNN or wherever. It's just for to kind of have talking points that they can start addressing issues in their home. And I think education is one of those places is absolutely crucial. And I think your work and your efforts in this place really needs to be heard and heard and heard and heard until there is change. So thank you so much. I'm very grateful. Thank you. And I appreciate it. Once this video converts, I'll send you a link and you can let me know if I can upload it. Awesome, thank you. You absolutely can. Thank you. Thank you so much. Be well. Bye.


Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. Yeah, we gonna You know, this text you sent the other time it it woke some people up, you know You know rain came on the show and when rain came on the show He told me something that that and this was right before the text and he was like I took Bobby to get his deal And when I took him to get his deal, he said now wait a minute. Let me finish I wanna say when I took when I took him to get his deal.  Yeah, and then it's like And then after that, we didn't do it right there But he went back and I'm like, oh you got an email. Oh, you know already, you know sign Oh, yeah, you would sign old Cliff Hardish. I know I'm gonna get signed You did? Yeah, I don't know any sign right now. I thought you said that you well Oh after he's you've had him after after mo 3 passed away. Yes after after he passed away I took a good sign then he ran back over there Really so so I didn't know you took him to get signed. Yeah, I got a miss deal right now You but you and when you got him to deal you did it not knowing that he was gonna go do a song with trial boy Fred I got miss deal. I got it. I got a miss deal that I looked us in there. You got something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, it's all clear beat Okay, I see the Lord is it? He he killed this whole career He killed his own career. Wow, I didn't know you went with him to get the deal man Yeah, I took him to get it. But if I introduced him to the people and I tell him I just want 5% of and then Something happened when I called the dude on through way. He said did you get the email Bobby?  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know then the week after that I say then you got a soul for it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah So after you get him signed, uh-huh he go and he switched sides on he switched it up on you Yeah, and he people in these people love mode three at this level Wow, did you get your 5%? That's kept. Okay. Okay.  So look, he's never took me to to them at all the way I the way I got the way I got in in cahoots with With empire was cuz that's who we doing a deal with for outside Okay, you know, they got it. They kind of that's kind of how we how we started again the conversation He didn't he didn't take you No, but but what I do what I will say is I would have I Do believe that uh that Ryan was talking to them maybe just you know talking to them about me like Did you give him this situation that I'm gonna I'm gonna let you manage me and I'm gonna You say you offered it. You were supposed to get him. I think he said 5% it kind of went like yeah He said it up. Yeah, he would give me 5% this dinner this cap. That's cap. Yeah, that's cap I was like man. So you telling me no, he was he would be like Ryan was begging me to get to Make that to make the presentable my manager is just not going for that So do you think that my manager will go for it? Huh? Do you think that's why he feel away about it? I think he felt he probably feel away because of that, but he wanted he wanted to be on board with us But you know Ryan got that stigma with his name. Yeah, yeah, and that's really that's that's that's really why My my my team wasn't gonna let that wasn't gonna rock out with it That's really what it was in our honesty. It and I heard you apologize for He was like say cheese on Sean Connelly you was like I apologize for what happened But it was like he was baited a little bit. I've seen it And you know, yeah for sure for sure. I for sure I Just don't I just don't need to say nothing to them because then you know, it's gonna start again Get a leg it could get a little heated Here we go