 Hello and welcome to Pookey Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, to what extent could gaps in learning affect chances in later life? And I'm in conversation with Victoria Carr. Hi, so my name is Doctor Victoria Carr. I am currently a primary school headteacher in my second headship in the northwest of England in a little place called Ellesmere Port. I have been in education for about 25 years and I am a huge advocate for lifelong learning. And our question today is, to what extent could gaps in learning affect chances in later life? Now, you can jump off wherever you want with that. That feels like a massive, massive question. So where do we start? I think it is a huge question, isn't it? I think sometimes educators tend to be quite entrenched in their own education phase. So at primary level, I might be thinking about gaps in education there, or if I was in just a junior school or just an infant school, I might be thinking about gaps in education at that level. If I was secondary colleague, perhaps in that sense. And also, of course, special needs colleagues in special schools and so on. So I think in terms of the broader question, can gaps in learning affect people in later life? I guess it depends on which gaps and how they are evidenced. So particularly at the moment, if you are a parent of a teenage child, I'm a parent of two teenagers, one who should have done their GCSEs last year and one who should be doing them this year. For me, the huge debate at home has been around how that will look and how that will influence them as they move through into the next part of their lives and whether it will affect their career chances, the further education opportunities and so on. So we've done an awful lot of talking around this at two different levels because one of my children is completely anti-academia. And dyslexic and has hated school his whole life, which is so painful for me because of course I absolutely love anything academic, but he is the opposite. So for him, he has a different viewpoint for my daughter, who actually goes to the same selective school that I went to as a teenager. There's a completely different vibe, completely different pressures and different expectation on her, I think at school level, but also that's translated into upon her as an individual. I think it influences mental health, which I think can have long term impact, certainly on outcomes and life chances. And that all kind of depends on your support network at home, I think. And then if you track that down into those younger children. Yeah, I still also think it does have an impact on mental health. I mean, some children last year particularly worried that they didn't get to do their sats and what that might look like in secondary school. And that's what got me thinking about the whole topic, actually, because I thought, you know, no matter what level you are at in education, the narrative and the dialogue around that level and what you are not going to get seems to be overshadowing. You thinking about what you've achieved and what you can still yet to achieve given the support that that is actually out there. And I think a colleague of mine, her daughter was just completing her degree last year, and she was exactly the same. So I think it just reiterates the view that it can have an impact. But the extent to which it has that impact largely depends on your perspective, your sport network at home, and the ability of the people who receive you, if you like, whether that's the workplace. Or the secondary school or the day level college, or even the sort of university campus. Those are those people who receive you knowing that you've had two disrupted years in your education can be really beneficial to you in terms of that mitigation for it not having a two detrimental and impact. But I think as educators as well, it's made me more aware as a head teacher as an employer of people who are newly qualified teachers. Not only was their final year of their degree influenced by a pandemic but also their entire best graduates year as well when they've been studying the actual art of teaching. So for them they're going to come to me potentially as a newly qualified teacher having had two disrupted years and it's incumbent upon me to make sure that that kind of is sustainable for them that they don't feel overwhelmed doing the actual day job as well as filling those gaps that they may have had in terms of the experiences, or they're learning beforehand. So I think, yes, there will be small gaps but I don't think it has to have such a negative impact does perhaps has been portrayed in the press or bandied around really in popular dialogue. And I think it's it's important to note really isn't it quite how do mongering the kind of rhetoric has been around sort of children's life chances I'm the mum of two children in year six right now. And they go up to secondary school in September. And I guess that whichever age or stage your children are at you're very tuned into the you know what's being said about that age but you know if I believed everything I read and I tuned into all the negatives I mean I might as well just give up now and you know it feels like there's no no future for them. And actually of course we know that not to be true but what are the things that we can be doing as parents as educated as other supporting adults in the lives of children and young people right now what do you think we can be doing to, as you said mitigate the impact of these gaps that that some of our children might have experienced. Well I think first and foremost it's filtering the messages that they get to hear. I know it's hard as a parent, particularly as your children go older to kind of watch what they watch and watch the diet of what they see and what they take in outside of your home. I do understand it's hard, but I think, you know, if you have a choice of where to send your child is what it's well worth looking at the attitude in the ethos of the school that your child goes to. If your child attends a school where there is this kind of, it's kind of sticking to the doom mongering rhetoric, I think I'd be disinclined to be involving myself with that. I think it's a shame when that does happen because parents have a doubly hard job at home in order to manage the narrative around their children but I do think that language and that discussion with our children no matter their age is really important. And no matter that the pandemic I'm a huge advocate for language and it's influence on young minds, particularly, and how they view themselves because this whole a lost generation and so on. Imagine if that really got under the skin of the generation of children that we're talking about and they just decided that well I found things were lost we've been written off and what does that do to you as a small person does that's, you know stunt your ability to see yourself as as anything other than just someone who's been lost or robbed of or starved of education and I think it's really sad because we as parents, you know, our first and foremost responsibility needs to be around that mental health because without children feeling safe mentally safe emotionally safe and secure. It's very difficult for them to access any other kind of learning in their lives and you know 50% of that has to come from school obviously but 50% of that has to come from home as well. So I'm just explaining to children and having those open conversations about how you know people have survived. In many respects people have survived a lot worse than this. And done really well and I think particularly at the moment we can highlight the fact even small children that things like refugees traveling and making those awful journeys from war town countries to our country for safety and and safe are still able to access education and do very well at various kind of key points in their education life, whether that's a levels or degree level or further education. They're still able to access that and some of them arrive here with without English is the first language so not only do they have those awful early life experiences but they also have the English language barrier as well to overcome. And when I started to explain that to my daughter, she at the penny actually dropped that it wasn't terrible to miss a few weeks of school and actually in the grand scheme of things had she broken her leg playing rugby or, you know, done something that is quite kind of standard stuff like a broken bone or, you know, sadly a car accident could have, could have stopped her going to school for a number of weeks in the same way that a pandemic has actually it's not this last generation, it's a bit of loss learning that can be caught up on. If it's, you know, going to be tested or examined in some way, but it's largely not going to have this terrible terrible impact that people are perceiving that it might have so I think parents taking a pragmatic approach. And pointing out that the reality is rather than just letting their children have this diet from the press of how they're lost and how it's all terrible is the most beneficial thing that anyone can do at the moment and listening to their children talk listening to their worries and their fears and suggesting practical ways that those can be overcome. And I think that the power of adults to kind of change the course of children's lives and their sort of self belief is something you talk about really powerfully in your TEDx talk which I'll link to in the show notes and you talk about how you know somebody having some belief in you that you perhaps didn't have in yourself at a very young age, you talk about that being kind of life changing is that something you'd be happy to talk a little bit about I mean how what was said and how that changed things for you. Yeah, absolutely. I do think that it's, it's hugely important for grown-ups to be very careful and mindful of what they say to children. For me personally, I, you know, I didn't have the greatest start in life not because, you know, I wasn't loved or because, you know, we came from a water on country or anything like that but because my father had significant mental health issues which we now know and understand. But back then, you know, 40, 50 years ago, people didn't really understand mental health. There wasn't that kind of the body of knowledge that there is now around, you know, birth to five really when he was born he was born in the war. His father was away his mother was poverty stricken and needed to put him into a home and a children's home in those war torn years of the 1940s just wasn't a kind of loving home he wasn't you didn't get that key care giving that that we know that we need now. So he was unable to form healthy relationships with people. He had a very unhealthy relationship with my mother who was a lot younger than he was. And he was a violent schizophrenic so our lives as small children were terribly overshadowed by violence sexual violence as well as physical violence. It was a terrifying place to live. And it was school actually that was the answer to all of that was the antidote to it largely school and the fact that I had an extended family who took over when he killed himself and kind of supported my young mother through the aftermath of that trauma. And with four young children, all under eight, we, you know, we were held, we were held and contained really emotionally contained but by our extended family and a sort of teacher saying to my to my nan and my mom that I was university material. It was a throwaway comment perhaps from her. But what it meant was that suddenly there was this conversation around me and I said it in my TEDx talk where nobody'd ever been to university before my family ever ever ever before. And that's not to say they weren't, you know, intelligent articulate clever individuals both my grandparents had their own businesses in the sort of 60s and 70s they're very wealthy they are in their own home we come from the heart of Liverpool the place called toxic where there were riots at the end of my street when I was a small child and so on. So at a time when all that was happening and in an area where we were it wasn't very affluent my grandparents were very affluent so it wasn't to do with not being hardworking or not be which is often what what's the kind of criticism that's levied at working class families that they're not hardworking or they're lazy or what have you. That was never the case it was just that through circumstances the war stopped both of my grandparents attending secondary school. And they never had the backing of their own parents who were working class so they simply went on and worked hard and generated businesses and so on. But for me it was this conversation around your going to university and then that combined with the death of my father meant that we moved house and we moved into an area on the world. And because I used to hide in books and, you know, lost myself there to sort of hide away from the realities of my life I was I ended up that I was quite academic so it's just through three kind of things converging on one another really that meant I ended up at this grammar school and they just reiterated all of those messages I'd had for the previous three or four years of university university university. And that that's what happened. I went there and I went to university so I do think that that's early conversation that early message was so kind of vital to me and it was one throw away comments from a teacher. And so you might think that's a one off and then I think possibly you know it could have been classed as that, except many many years later. And I had, I had to take some time off work for the first time ever actually after having had a double mastectomy and lots of people reached out to come and see me and sort of cheer me up because they knew I was such an active person that to be at home and doing nothing for weeks would just be awful. And one of those people was a teaching assistant, who had worked with me in a previous job, and she'd completed her level one. And I hadn't met her before I was new to the school, and I was in the staff room making a property and she came in to tell someone else I've just I've just done my level one. And I just said a throwaway comment, oh you're not going to stop there are you she didn't know me from Adam, I didn't know her. And some months later she came for a job at school should she'd been doing a training that I hadn't been working and she came for a job and she got the job. And then I said, Oh, you know, are you going to do the level two and she said oh yeah I've already enrolled she didn't tell me why but she'd have already enrolled so she was doing the level two. And again some months later she completed that and I said what about doing HRTA. And again it was just over coffee. Nothing that I would class as a professional conversation as a coaching conversation just a coffee chat where you're making a cup of tea and off you go to your work. So when she came to see me if he is later and I'd had the surgery and I was quite quite down in the dumps. And she said you must know the influence that you have over people she said all you said to me that day was. I was going to stop there and she said it just lit a spark in my head and I thought, actually, that's right what why would I stop there and she said, and I haven't. And then each tiny bit of encouragement you gave me she said I hung off those words like they were gold dust and and here I am and I've, you know I've done this HRTA work now and now she's a really well respected specialist in dyslexia and you know doing a very specialized program. And I haven't worked with her now for two schools, sort of nine years but she came to find me after I'd had surgery to tell me that and I thought that was really profound in the same way that I was able to say to the teacher who said to my mom. I was a university material randomly I came across her in a synagogue in Liverpool, again, many years later. Her husband was doing a talk and she just retired and it blew my mind that I was able to sort of say, Oh my word. You know you said this to me and I was this huge person and she was still as did he is ever and and she couldn't believe it you know I think a lot of them thought that something terrible had happened to my family because we were gone overnight. You know, there was a lot of peace involvement towards the end and so on and I think nowadays I'd be classed as at least job protection, if not something a bit more. But, yeah, she was delighted to hear that, you know, our family had not just survived but thrived you know I've got some great couple of great sisters one got midwife of the year got a lovely sister who survived terrible cancer and is a teaching assistant at my school and RAF he's a really, really cool, cool guy. So I think the fact that she could hear from me that our family had not just survived but done well and was living, you know we're all living good lives, really matter to her. So, yeah, I think you could class those comments as throw away but I don't think they are, and I think they stick with people one word one sentence one conversation can have a huge impact on people that we just don't know sometimes. And I think that's always something that we have to remember and accept isn't it when we're working in education that we work hard every day to have those interactions sometimes without even knowing that the ripple that that will have and sometimes we never do know you might never come back across that teacher but yet she had made that tremendous difference to you. Shape how you lead your school, the fact that for you as a child and hearing you talk about it is exactly how I felt about school as well my home life was was not so radically different than than than yours. And school was that place that was safe it was full of these adults I could rely on and it was full of things I could do and get right and it was a really, really wonderful place for me and and I wonder how that affects you as a head do you try to create that for 100% 100% first and foremost, we create safety and we are advocates for children. And that involves some painful conversations with with parents with external agencies. Lots of headaches lots of sleepless nights but I know the difference that it makes. So it definitely drives me it doesn't even influence me it drives me to make sure that our school is that for every child that comes in. I feel like we might not be getting it wrong or days that it's so painful to me, you know, I uncover every stone that that we can find in order to make sure that it's it is right if we receive children who haven't yet had that support from a different school, then we are all out to make sure that they that they get it. It doesn't necessarily make us popular. But it, you know, I think everybody sees that we are 100% advocates for those children. Yeah, it does it really does influence the way that I lead and it influences how I am with my colleagues because I know that if I'm not creating an environment where each of my colleagues is the best that they can be the happiest the most content the most settled the most secure, then because I know that adults and children co regulate I know that they will not be able to provide that for the children that that we work with. And now that I'm no longer a teacher, I don't have that kind of access to children where I can be the person who they see every day smiling at them making their day wonderful. So I have to make sure I am that person for all of my staff over 90 of them at the moment to make sure that when they do come across children, then they are happy and you know that that the influence they have is what I would do myself so it's kind of a trickle a trickling effect I suppose. And you said that it doesn't always make you popular I'm interested to know a little bit more about that. Well, when you are kind of vying for limited resources at local authority level for individual children and to meet their needs or have to try to meet their needs in a mainstream setting. So I think it's going to get quite challenging. You know all of those agencies are under pressure. They're all being starved of money, and this isn't to do with the pandemic it's exacerbated by the pandemic, but this austerity has happened for a long, long time schools have been underfunded the social infrastructure of our country has been underfunded for a long time. And inevitably that has an impact on families and when things impact on families it impacts on children, which then has an impact on your school inextricable you can't separate out one aspect from another. So when you are fighting a school for resources for the children that you serve. You have to sometimes be quite vocal about that. And all I can imagine is at the other end and I do try and be kind and obviously. I'm not so magnanimous but I am nevertheless fighting for the children in my school so therefore I have to be the advocate and and not let go be tenacious and and my Senko is the same, you know I have people around me who are exactly like that we all of us are fighting all the time to try and get those limited resources for our children. And I can imagine that that would not make me very popular. But I guess if you're, yeah, you're on the side of the child every time and I suppose every time. And that's a moral imperative I think I really do so. Yeah, it's one of the things I often suggest that people come back to because we can end up in these kind of situations where at loggerheads can't we. And when we really keep our eye on the child and what's best for them sometimes I can help us to make better decisions and to find at least a little bit of cohesion. I wonder how it is for you in your role now and having achieved a lot in your life you know you've achieved your your PhD or a head teacher everything looks really wonderful and what would your childhood self think of this person and how can you inspire children like the child you once were to believe that it is possible to achieve these things because did it would that have felt possible to yourself as a child do you think. No, never. I didn't have that kind of role model I didn't have that kind of person to look to it. I don't recall ever thinking that I remember being a child of the 70s we got milk in school and cartons and on the side of the cartons were different kind of countries and the kind of stereotypical things that would signify the country and I always used to get the Kenya milk because it had animals on it and the books I used to read were about adventurers I read every single Enid Blighten book I read every single book written by a chat board will add price. So I used to dream daydream about going off on adventures and being strong and being in nature and I never would have dreamed that I could be somebody who does this job or. Who has influence over the lives of others I just I suppose I used to daydream about being strong and and being invincible and having these amazing adventures in in the environment so what I would say what I try to do now is to create curricula that is for children that there is life outside of the life that they might know or they may have come to know to that date. That is probably all I can do which is why I'm passionate about things like outdoor learning and those enhanced kind of learning experiences like residential and things that build character and resilience and understanding and just diversify your thinking really. So I would have had that as a whole staff thing had the pandemic not kind of stops that temporarily, but I think teaching children how to think teaching them how to question things and not just to accept whatever they're told, I think it's really important I think the more they do with that the more they can see that there are opportunities out there I mean there are jobs even now that my children talk about and I think I have no idea what that is. It would be the same anyway for the children of today that the jobs cropping up over time that that just evolve because the world is an ever evolving place, but I think it's having the skills to be able to say okay I could reach for that. I want the children and in fact the adults I come across I want them to think anything is possible I can reach, because it isn't just children that I think you influence as a leader. I think I'm often asked to talk to nearly qualified staff or you know people who are considering doing a PGCE or special needs stuff. And I think if I can say to them yeah look you know you look at me and you think oh you know she does this great job. She's really successful, but actually it hasn't always been like that and there are lots of times when I'll think, I don't know if I'm qualified I don't know if I'll be able to. And each time what I've done and my secret in life really I suppose is just to take a deep breath and take the step. And even if you're a first kind of reaching out into the dark. You know you will not fall because even if you're only 50% qualified and there's a statistic isn't there out there about how men will just apply for any old job but women will want to take every single box. And I think channel that in a man and just apply for the job because there are ways that you can train yourself there and that's the reason largely why I've gone ahead and done loads of study alongside my work is because I've always wanted to be informed by the most recent research the most up to date stuff so that I can do the best possible job I can do. I think that's the same on professional levels as well if you reach for the deputy headship if you reach for the head of year or whatever and you're not sure if you can do it, you will do it. The quality that you bring to that will depend largely on your experiences to date and also on your determination to be the best that you can be, and continue to supplement your day job with more academic research based information that you can then develop in your work. So that that's kind of if I could have articulated that in child speak, I would say to myself looking back. Keep going you know because you will survive your childhood and, in fact, I had a bit of counseling a few years ago now a long time ago to do with this whole thing. And the counselor said, I'm not going to talk to you the successful, vibrant, you know, lovely individual I'm going to talk to the child that should have this should have been said to you when you were five six seven. And in all the years that I've been kind of surviving my life and throwing in it really I'd never thought of it in that way and it was the first time that I'd actually cried about anything that happened to me as a child was when I actually was a child there, trying to survive and feeling like they were failing in terms of protecting themselves protecting their siblings protecting their parent whatever. But there was nothing that you could do other than survive it and those kind of conversations about some talking to your younger self. I think could benefit everyone. What would you say to yourself five years ago or before you did that how would you, you know, because that's what you're talking about not making those mistakes again in the future. You can hear a noise by the way it's a school dog. Tell us about the school dog. The school dog is just actually eating cucumber celery which appears to have given him a bit of energy and now he's emptied his toy box, and there are toys all over the floor so he's obviously like a school child or my own children in fact, where I'm distracted on the screen and he's like, I'm going to get her attention, but he's lovely he's a black lab he's called Gus. I've had him now three weeks, and I'm training him to come in and be a companion dog in school it's another layer to the sort of well being offer that I want for the children and the staff in school. But what it means is that my sleep that was not very much in the first place is not even less. My spare time now is spent training him, but he's adorable he is absolutely adorable. And what other measures do you have in place to support the children so school dog so that what are the other things that you have. Well I've trained a couple of the staff to become Elsa's I don't know if you've heard of this acronym before emotional literacy support assistant Elsa. Essentially they are trained by educational psychologists to support children with their emotional resilience development issues, etc. So I've got two of them at the moment currently trained and two more being trained. And that they are so good at it that actually they they go out and talk to people in our local authority about it. So really good. We've got some counselors. We've got a learning sport mental as well. Here he comes to sit on my feet. And we do a lot of talking therapies as well. And yeah so we have the kind of therapeutic side of things. And then the practical side of things so in terms of building some of those skills in order to be able to ask children to talk about what troubles them or what they're doing. There's a program called Commander Joe's, which is a character education program I don't know if you've heard of it it is countrywide. And it's really good holistic program that talks about all different aspects of character, so that children can begin to develop and articulate explicitly some of those elements of themselves that they want to. And then our children who've got special needs will be put into various different kinds of programs like that there are different talking therapy programs that we've got as well which I'm sure lots of schools have. And presumably when you're recruiting as well it sounds like you've got a bit of an idea about the sorts of people who fit within within your school. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anybody I always chat to people before you get to the formal interview stage is if you can it's always worth a chat the last jobs we advertise for this time last year we had over 400 applicants. And the office staff said you're banned you're actually banned from being on social media because you're telling everyone what a great school we are and the next minute or inundated, which was quite hilarious. But what I think is important and what I always say to any candidates who are shortlisted is, they're all equally qualified for the job there's no doubt about it but the point of an interview is for you to see whether you can work with me. And for me to see whether I can work with you because my team is so cohesive and so child centered and we just have the best fun. I don't particularly want to chance it with someone who isn't that way inclined, it has to be children first and it has to be people who are a bit different, who are going to bring some interesting things to the table. Someone who's going to come and talk to me about data and how great they are at data management stuff I think that can be taught to anyone I want someone who's going to come and say to me I want to make life better for children I want to think about innovative creative ways to do that and the rest I can teach them really. So yeah, it's the last year we did this interview thing. I said you can't come in because it's locked down, but you could we could do socially distance interviews where you teach us how to do something that you feel passionately about so we got to see how they would break something complex down into just like teaching children really. And a couple of the people who gave the job one person taught me how to ice and decorate a cake which I've never done in my life before and then we got to eat the cake that was nailed on she got the job. But also it was just how she was and how she talks about this passion of hers and I thought yeah she would be absolutely lovely and she has just been a brilliant addition. And someone else taught us how to do these really complicated kind of like brain puzzles that you can make out of card and string and it blew my mind I thought my goodness this girl needs to come and work for us and you know, keep my brain active. Yeah, she's wonderful as well and I think all that was a really quirky thing to do the third one who we appointed taught us how to tap dance was just hysterical. I've got three laughing nevermind too, and she had a tap dancing and all socially distance and taught us the different moves and so on. So I think they probably thought it was the most bizarre experience of their lives but the point is I wanted to know that they could have a laugh with us and you know I wanted to see them the human being that was going to come and work with me because you know what you're in your workplace, many, many, many hours of your life and as a teacher you give up your weekends your evenings and so on. And if you're not happy with your colleagues, it can be a very bleak miserable place to be. So the people that work with us now or equally crackers, but you know all child centered. Fantastic. And what plans have you got for the for the summer term so we're speaking at the end of the kind of Easter break. And obviously it's been a really disrupted year and a bit for everyone. And I know lots of schools have got various plans to try and build that sense of community again and help children to settle and get ready for next year what are your plans. Well we started just before the holiday with good old Gus, we, rather than children coming straight back into school and hitting the books we just I said we'll do a whole school project. I'd already sourced the breeder and kind of identified the dog that we're going to get so the community sense of community that came from getting a school dog I couldn't even have predicted it was just crazy. And so everyone wanted to come up with a name and then the all the staff is so amazing that they decided to do this kind of menu of projects that children could do both during the holidays and also as homework to build into the holidays and it was around everything so they designed harnesses of menus for food, dog agility things and all kinds of different skills that that you know obviously pass the national curriculum. So being a stressful event coming back to school they were just completely excited about planning for our school dog. So the summer term will be integrating him in by half term he will be in school, but obviously he's a puppy. As you can hear, and he will need a little bit more training before that happens and then it'll be slowly integrated and in fact I've just bought a trailer for my bike my push bike, and he's going to go in the trailer and be pushed by him to school. So he's going to have his own little trailer and so on. So getting him integrated into school I think will be massive, and then working with the PTA on some fun things as well can't really say anything too much about that because it all gives the game away. And also trying to think about something creative because poor old year six last year did not get the send off that I wish they'd had and we kind of half thought we'd do something when it will calm down not thinking for a minute it would then take another time. So I think for them that moment is lost but I'd like to certainly mark the events for the current year sixes with some interesting things and again part of that be with the PTA. But yeah just having as much fun as we can doing as much outdoor learning and practical learning as we can, trying to kind of bridge those gaps that children may or may not have we found largely that it's not, it's not drastic because most of them engage with that online learning, you know the start of the year, and it was, you know it was of such a good quality from the teachers even though we didn't do live lessons on purpose, so that parents could access them whenever they wanted. You know the quality was such that that all of the children did really well. And again we had offset inspection just before February half term, a monitoring visits because the school I took over of course was it was in a very tricky position. And we've made lots of improvements but sadly because the pandemic they couldn't come in and kind of rubber stamp those improvements. And they came in, they came anyway and did remote, a two day remote monitoring visit just before February half term. So with that all kind of being done it means that we can focus on on having as much as much productive fun as we possibly can. Absolutely. And you said in, in our kind of correspondence before we met today, and that you think we should all focus more on love and I just wanted to make sure I touched on that before we wrap things up really. What, tell me more about that why does that matter and what you mean. I think at a time in our generation where the whole world is hurting, what better time than to lead with love and to do all things with love I think if more people thought first about the kinds of things that they said publicly and if they tried to make a more pragmatic approach to things. I think there'd be less public spots in the press in social media. I think if more people took a deep breath before they said things to one another by email or, you know, at the school gate or whatever there'd be less heartache and stress. I think, if everybody just took a moment and thought everyone's dealing with things in their own lives that none of us know anything about and I mean it's very well publicized that that kind of thing happens where people are literally battling with demons that none of us know about and if more of us really took cognizance of that and thought twice before we said something unkind, I really do think that in our small way we could contribute to a much more productive much happier society. Sadly, I think there are a lot of people who are trying to, I don't know, I heard this expression again this year called clickbait I think where you just say something outrageous so that people will click on yours and I think why would anybody do that. But apparently it is a thing. And I think that that's, I don't know, a sad indictment of the way the world has gone, but I genuinely think that now is the time to lead with love and I know I do it and I know lots of people also do it so I think it's important.