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From Therapy to Social Change
We believe that insights and practices from the realm of therapy can contribute to a better world for all. At least, that's our hope... In an era marked by climate crisis, conflicts, and escalating inequality, any positive contribution is surely welcome. But what, more specifically, can the fields of therapy, psychology, psychiatry, and mental health offer to create a more equitable, sustainable, and flourishing world? This is the question we aim to explore in this podcast series.
Hosted by Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology and author of 'Psychology at the Heart of Social Change' (Policy Press, 2023), as well as a father of four, and John Wilson, a Psychotherapist, Educator, and Co-Director of Onlinevents, we will engage in conversations with a diverse array of therapists, writers, and other perceptive and influential individuals.
We aim to delve into the depths of the human psyche while connecting it to current social and political issues—all with energy, enthusiasm, and a touch of humour, we hope!
Sponsored by Onlinevents: https://www.onlinevents.co.uk/
From Therapy to Social Change
Exploring boarding school trauma and its impact on leadership and society
CW: Suicide, trauma, abandonment, sexual abuse, alcoholism, rape, slavery, self-harm, homophobia.
What happens when privilege, trauma, and leadership intersect within the walls of a boarding school? We invite you to join our compelling conversation with Tom Greaves, Piers Cross, and Jonny Lovett, as they unravel their personal journeys through the labyrinthine world of boarding education. This episode challenges the notion of resilience, questioning whether the experiences of isolation, bullying, and the emotional voids left by early separation can be classified as trauma. We explore the ways these experiences shape leaders, with figures like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump as potential case studies shaped by their past.
The emotional landscape of boarding school life is vast and complex, leaving indelible marks on personal relationships and emotional development. Our guests recount stories of betrayal, isolation, and the struggle to express emotions while reconciling privilege with vulnerability. These narratives illuminate a cycle of trauma that transcends generations, with familial bonds often strained by the experiences of being sent away. As we discuss the broader societal implications, we examine how ingrained behaviors from such privileged backgrounds can hinder authenticity and connection in adulthood.
Throughout our discussion, we address the psychological impacts of boarding school, including the strategic survival personalities cultivated within these institutions. The conversation delves into class disdain and the societal disconnects perpetuated by such education systems. With anecdotes from public figures like Richard Branson and Bear Grylls, we shed light on the long-lasting effects of these formative years. As our guests share their paths to healing, we emphasize the importance of addressing these deeply rooted issues for both personal and societal transformation, highlighting ongoing projects aimed at fostering understanding and change.
One of our panelists touches on themes of homophobia. Whilst this was not explicitly explored or condemned, the TaSC network and all those involved in the podcast do not support homophobic views or beliefs of any kind.
You can find out more about our chair and panelists here:
Connect with Ester on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ester-wheeler-458a55167?originalSubdomain=uk
Jonny's private practice website: https://springtidescotland.com/
The trailer for Piers’ upcoming documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stMvUcsZzlM
Follow Tom to keep up to date with his upcoming show about male friendships: https://www.instagram.com/tdrgreaves/?hl=en
Resources mentioned in the episode (books unless otherwise stated):
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery
Nick Duffell, The Making of Them & Boarding School Survivor Workshops
Suzanne Zeedyk, The Connected Baby - 2011 Documentary
Richard beard, Sad Little Men
If… – 1968 Film
Jennifer Freyd, Betrayal Trauma: Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse
Joy Schaverien, Boarding school: the trauma of the ‘privileged’ child
Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity
Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat and Tears
John Peel, Margrave of the Marshes
David Niven, The Moon’s A Balloon
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
Ranulph Fiennes, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
Fight Club – 1999 Film
David Cameron, For the Record
This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents
So thank you all for joining us on this podcast. This is a podcast booked by TASC, that's, the Therapist and Social Change Network. We are a group of predominantly counsellors and psychotherapists exploring the intersections between therapy and social change, whether they can meet, whether they do meet and what that might look like. I'm joined today by three guests, so a bit of a kind of a in the round conversation which I'm really looking forward to being a part of and hearing the thoughts we have. I'll start with Tom Greaves. He's a comedian and actor who's had a play I believe twice now it's been on Tom at Edinburgh Fringe Festival called Goodbye, uncle Fudgie. I believe he's also been touring around the UK as well which explores Tom's experiences of boarding school. We also have Piers Cross here with us today, who's a transformative coach, a podcaster as well, probably more experienced than I am at this process. His podcast is called An Involving man. Also, piers, you are for one-to-one coaching and circles for men and for people with boarding school experiences and based on healing from trauma. I believe we also have Johnny, who is a fellow TASC member. Some of you may recognise him. You can listen to the podcast regularly and join our events. He is a counsellor and psychotherapist, himself person-centred, working with adults, teens and families within private practice and within secondary schools. So the thing you may have noticed they all have in common here is that they have all lived experience of boarding schools. So we're kind of opening the space there for today's discussion.
Speaker 1:I wanted to start by expressing that that's not my lived experience. I didn't board myself, went to my local comprehensive. So very different from my own perspective. But I'm really interested to hear from you guys. I suppose I'll start with a bit of my own process coming into this space. I was thinking about what it is we call this space ordinarily in when we're talking about people with similar lived experience, I keep using that word. We'd call it a lived experience panel. But I'm really aware that in the theory of kind of lived experience groups, we are talking about offering space and lifting voices from maybe marginalized and often unheard from groups.
Speaker 1:And as we sit here with three white men who have been kind of very well educated, coming from, one assumes a space of what we call privilege. Um, I suppose my curiosity has peaked of one. What do we call this space? But also, why is this conversation important? Okay, I suppose I'm interested to see how your privilege is also impacting you and holding that whilst also experiences what I suppose my perception and maybe you'll prove me wrong here would be potentially traumatic experiences or disconnection from attachment, all other areas that maybe my own ideas, I'm not sure, but I'm sure you'll prove me wrong. So if I could open that up to you guys, why do you think we need to have this conversation? I wonder if I could.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to speak, unless Tom or Johnny want to begin.
Speaker 3:You start Piers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for me, you know the privilege thing and why it's important, especially for social change. I feel that this is just an area that's been ignored. An area that's been ignored it's seen as these schools are privileged, and actually why this is an important question is so many of our leaders have been to these schools.
Speaker 2:I've been creating a database over the last couple of years and I'm up to about 230 names of some of the most powerful and influential figures in the world the editor and ceo of cnn, the um, you know heads of state, you know tony blair, boris johnson, uh, mark zuckerberg, donald trump. They've all been to boarding school and therefore this question is really important. One is is it trauma? If it's trauma, does that mean our leaders are traumatized? How is that going to impact the rest of us? So I think this conversation about boarding school is so important Personally, the more I unpick it, not only to hear our personal stories, but also to understand how that might impact.
Speaker 2:You know Peter Levine. In his work he says the man who was hit as a child will feel compelled to hit as an adult. Trauma is, you know, in an insidious way, trauma contributes the motives and drives of our behavior. If it's a trauma, I think we need to be talking about this. So that's why, for you, hearing Tom Johnny, myself and the thousands of others who are speaking up now is so important.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you. Thank you, pierce, for that, anything, johnny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I was listening this morning to um, uh, the podcast um, which is the rest is politics. You guys might be aware of that one and they were talking about boris's book, which is out um and um. They were saying that, you know, across the board, when they were talking to, one person was mentioned, which is the president and the prime minister in the Netherlands, you know, who said he couldn't understand how such a non and unserious person was in such a serious job, was in such a serious job and I think you know Boris is a great example of that is the fact that we've had someone who's, you know, had a, I think, really has had, did have a very difficult childhood and was in a position of power and really he couldn't take anything seriously and that's the privileged bit that is. That is really difficult. Now I get it, I get why he's like that, but what they were talking about on the rest is politics podcast was nobody can sort of understand us, especially in europe, the european leaders couldn't, can't understand why us as a nation allowed him to even be our prime minister, how that even happened.
Speaker 3:So, yes, there's something definitely very endemic about the boarding school culture and you just have to take a look at Westminster and the way the whole place is set up and laid out.
Speaker 3:I mean it is just a great big boarding school, really a great big boarding school, really, um. So I think, yeah, I think we have. We have a lot to uh answer for um, or the system. The system has a lot to answer for in terms of who gets power, who gets to take power, and those people have been through um, attachment breaking experiences as children and I think that's, for me, the bit about. That's why I work in attachment based family therapy, that's why I do what I do in terms of school based counselling, because when I was a teenager, I could have really done with the support. So you know, I'm doing the wounded heal a bit and I think it's important that we, that we certainly talk about a little bit more, if we can, if we can flesh that out a bit more today, the bit about who who's, who's got power and who takes power and who our leaders are thank you, johnny thank you, johnny that's a really interesting point you make there about specifically the UK.
Speaker 1:I'm really curious about this Is this a UK specific?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's generally considered that boarding school is a British invention and America, australia those countries do have boarding new zealand, um, and there's there's a bit of boarding across africa, but it's certainly um, if we, if we're talking about decolonization, which I think is a hot topic and and and something interesting I mean I was talking about that on the whatsapp group, trying to find out more about people's ideas about what it meant. I needed more about people's ideas about what it meant. I needed to know a little bit more about what it meant recently in the task group. You know it's. It's absolutely the history of boarding school is about generating people who are able to go out and build empire.
Speaker 1:Thank you, john. That's really rich answer. There's definitely more we could tap into. I'm just curious from where we don't come to you there, tom um your reflections on yeah, it was just for it.
Speaker 4:Well, as, as we were kind of think I was talking about empire and lead current leaders and current people in positions of power. Like this has been going on for a long, long time and you know cause and effect. We're now in this, the current state we're in, because of the actions and policies of previous governments and leaders. I mean, I don't know how far back boarding schools go in terms of those people, but it's been going on for a lot longer. So now that we have current examples, there's also past examples and I mean I see it very much.
Speaker 4:Well, my show was very much about my experience. Based on my experience, people I know, family, I mean just in my family. My grandmother went to boarding school. I'm pretty sure that her relationship with my dad, may you know there's an impact there. My auntie's ex-husband was a boarding school boy, traumatized, eight years old again, like, like me and probably all of us. Um, that relationship broke down, devastating for the children. Uh, I have a brother who's just got divorced four children. I would take a guess that he struggles with some of the same things I do in the area of relationship and love and there is these like, I see them as like vacuums of love. And if that's just my family tree with my close you know, think how many people and other you know, little pockets, little vacuums there are around the country in all families. I mean it's what amazing.
Speaker 4:I met a guy the other day, absent father he's making, he's writing a show about it. He went to boarding school not him, but his father did. Another woman I met, my father went to boarding school. I didn't have an emotional relationship with him. I mean, these things are the knock-on of the ripples are just, it just goes out and then you think of, yeah, the colonies, you think how long this is going on, where the ripples are. I mean these, yeah, hurt people, hurt people and, um, it doesn't have to be a crime. It can be breaking someone's heart. And the thing of sending children away is you're breaking a seven-year-old boy or girl's heart. They're being heartbroken for the sake of their toughness or resilience or to turn them into a great man or woman. And this is the political. There's the societal, the familial, the personal. It's on all levels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, tom. That's really touching. Yeah, I really felt that sense of that breaking heart. There's something in you explained so nicely. There was that kind of the macro and the micro which is really for me a lot. What task is about? It's about how the individual, what we do in our therapeutic work on an individual basis, and the impact of the kind of the micro, the wider society, that kind of larger scale. So I'm wondering if and you started to there, tom if we could maybe explore a little bit more there of your, your personal experiences and the impact you see that happening, if you, if that's all right to kind of share how that's maybe impacted your work today, um, and how you kind of hold that yeah, would you like me to go first?
Speaker 2:please yeah yeah, so I went age 11, so I went slightly older than tom and johnny. Um, I would have I think I would have gone earlier. My father was a military officer, an ex-boarder, but he was invalided out of the Navy. There was a deal that the military officers were able to send their children to boarding school and the military would pay for it. So he was no longer in the military by the time I was boarding school age. All of my friends were being sent off to these schools and I wasn't, and I went to the local grammar school.
Speaker 2:But I got to age 10 and my father being a recovering alcoholic and an ex-boarder, I didn't get on with him at all. He was a violent man and so I used to run away a lot and therefore, when the opportunity came to go to boarding school, it's like, yes, you know, I was fed this diet of edmund blighton and mallory towers and it was like, you know, the the boys own annuals. It was like this is going to be amazing, and for me the first three weeks were great. I really loved it. I was a confident boy, I was fit and strong, I was good at sports, but then after three weeks, my mother didn't come for our exeat day, our leave day, and suddenly I was alone in the school with probably a handful of other people, and it was a bit like Pinocchio going onto the Pleasure Island and him escaping the boys being turned into donkeys and realizing and seeing behind the scenes that, oh my God, this is a dark, dreary, depressing, horrible place. I do not want to be here anymore. And but I couldn't really speak to my mother because I didn't see her. We had telephones but you know it was an open telephone. Everybody could hear what you were saying, so there's no way of communicating that. So suddenly I went into myself and I spent, you know, the next few months just dissociating. I cried one day, everyone in the dormitory. It was an open dormitory, so 30 boys came into my cubicle and they were all laughing at me ah, cross is not so cool, you're a wimp, and it was. I made that decision then I will never show emotion again and I didn't, not to anybody.
Speaker 2:So I think I mean my story is a bit extreme, but I'll share it because I think it's useful is age 13, I hurt my back and I couldn't play sport, so I sat on my bed and I read horror novels. There was one boy who I used to speak to, who was three years older than me, called Rick, and he used to come and kind of counsel me, just take care. And then one day he committed suicide, jumped in front of the train and that was just shocking to me. I was already not in a good space and this guy committed suicide and the school decided that what we needed to do is we needed to be to talk to someone. So they sent us to the priest and the priest sexually abused me and so it was this build-up of trauma and it's like, oh my God, but I learned to dissociate.
Speaker 2:And people say about boarding school boarding school creates resilience and I say no, it doesn't, it creates dissociation. That's two very different things. That's why we're very successful in our twenties because we dissociate, we can just work hard and boom. But the splitting only works for so long. And Judith Herman in her book Trauma and Recovery she says that's why in the third and fourth decade that the trauma bubbles up. Because the splitting, it's like we can't dissociate anymore.
Speaker 2:So how that impacted me is in my 20s I went to to uh business school european business school was working in paris and I worked in london in the financial sector and I had a breakdown. And then suddenly it clicked. Oh my god, it was what happened to me at school. I read nick duffel's book, the making of them, and it was like, oh my god, it just suddenly made sense. This is the way I am, this is why I am, and that was, yeah, 2002. So I've been on that journey ever since and I'm just so passionate that more people know about this, that, um, you know, and yeah, the path of how we can heal, to turn it from post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth. So, um, yeah, that's, uh, that's some of my joint journey at school thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate your honesty there and openness to what what sounds like really difficult experiences. I'm really conscious and really um that idea of where you started with this almost romanticized ideal of of boarding school to something so different and yet almost not realizing how different that was, maybe because of the disassociation up until your 30s. Really hard to keep that, keep that going. How much hard work it is to keep that mask on. I wonder if we might come to you, johnny yeah, well, my um, I didn't.
Speaker 3:I didn't actually go. I noticed, pierce, you maybe thought I went a bit younger. I didn't. I went at 12, 13. I went after prep school because I was at a day school, um, so I was able to do you know what we, what we see in this as psychotherapists, in attachment theory, in terms of I was able to go home as a small child, sort of before my teens, uh, every night and sort of process my experience and then live to fight another day. And then I was was sent to boarding school at 12, 13 with the same message you know, you're going to get the best facilities. It's, it's great they've got the, they, they had the, the first sort of dry pitch. You know, in those days they were really novel, these dry pitches. You know my school's got the first dry pitch in the County. And, um, you're going to have art facilities, um, science labs. You're going to have the best education. Um, you're going to meet so many wonderful new friends. It's going to be fantastic. Your brother really loved it, that's. You know your brother loved it. That's what I got. Um, so I am within 24 hours.
Speaker 3:It was horrific. I mean, I had a. I had an absolute instant shock. I was put into a boarding house and all the other kids in the boarding house had been in the junior school, so they all knew each other in my, in my dormitory and my year, in that boarding house. So I was new. I was, I was just a new boy put in was new, I was, I was just a new boy put in um and within 20 well, I say within 24 hours that night, probably by the following morning of my first day, wait, I woke up to everybody, um turning their back on me and I wasn't. Nobody was speaking to me because somebody had decided that I was gay, um, and I think probably I didn't really know what. I didn't really know what any of that really meant. But what I did know was that I was utterly ostracized and that happened immediately, immediately on the first day, and it went on for the first half of the first term. So it spread to the entire school school because the boy who started the rumor, his brother, was an older boy in the school. So that sort of linked into the prefects who were very powerful in a boarding school.
Speaker 3:Um, boarding school system is they don't have enough staff really to manage the number of pupils they've got. So, historically and traditionally, discipline is is um sort of passed down through prefects, so you know they have a lot of power as well the senior boys. So yeah, the first half of the first term was brutal. I mean, people would jump out on me. I was beaten up. We used to have to line up in this quad Every morning. We'd have to line up in our houses to go into chapel and we'd have to go up this really narrow staircase up into the school, uh, and then go up into into the chapel and have the morning assembly. Um, and that was probably the worst time for me, because we'd be lining up as a whole school, um, and people would wolf whistle, the prefects would walk past and they had a nickname for me. So it became very, very brutal very, very quickly and I just I think I went, I just went into shock.
Speaker 3:I was for the first half of the first term, as Piers was saying, I became very dissociated. I was frightened all the time. I didn't know when the next person was going to jump out on me or group of people were going to corner me somewhere. Um, I it did end up in. It did end end violently. Um, one of the kids was teasing me in in. We had to sit in prep every night and do do our homework, with a prefect sitting in the table in front of us. Now we'd all have to do our homework with a prefect sitting in the table in front of us and then we'd all have to do our homework for a couple of hours every evening in this room. And one of the boys was teasing me and I lost my. I just completely lost it and I got up and pulled his chair up from underneath him and he fell to the floor and I kicked him in the head. So it got quite. It was really Lord of the Flies at some points, you know. So it got quite. It was really Lord of the Flies at some points, you know. But that my attachment with my mother was really damaged because as a punishment for that, my housemaster took me into his office and said he was going to have to give me six of the best, which was a bend over the desk, and you got six on the backside with a. In those days it was a Dunlop green flash. They didn't have canes anymore.
Speaker 3:In the 80s they started to phase out corporal punishment in boarding schools. Um, and the process of phasing it out in my school was that they changed their procedures, um, and they, um, they, they'd started this procedure where they had to phone home to get permission rather than just dishing it out, which historically they'd just done. They just dished it out. They, they had this, this procedure where they had to phone home to get permission rather than just dishing it out, which historically they'd just done. They just dished it out. They had this new procedure because they were trying to modernize, I suppose. So they phoned home.
Speaker 3:But I think that was probably even more damaging because I had to sit in my house master's office while he phoned my mother and asked for my mother for permission to give me six wallops with a Dunlop green flash as a punishment for um, for violent, for my, my violence, um, so that was. I think that was a real attachment damaging moment in terms of my relationship with my mum and my family. I mean, it was always, it was, or it was. It was I was phoning home a lot. Uh, my mum was, I know she. I've spoken to her recently. She was very concerned about me, but she didn't, you know, she didn't feel it was justified to come and get me. Um, we just have to walk down the road to a phone box because the phone in the boarding house wasn't safe, because it was just in an open area. Um, and so it became. It was very shocking. I think it was very shocking and I probably yes, looking back now I'll say it was very traumatizing, incredibly traumatizing. And it's that bit of you know, you're sold a story and for me it was a 12-hour turnaround and that suddenly realized that it wasn't real.
Speaker 3:You've got no escape. So all you've got is a bed and a bedside cabinet. Really that belongs to you, but even that can be vulnerable. Somebody turns that over and chucks your mattress out the window just for a laugh. Then you've got nothing. You end up with no, no safe base. If we, if we put it in, if we frame it in attachment theory, as us therapists like to, you know, there is no safe base. There's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to go and recover and process.
Speaker 1:So it's relentless, it's week in, week out, day in, day out. Yeah, thank you, tony. It sounds tough and I'm really hearing the similarities in both what you said there in terms of different but told something, told something, told something, something being kind of almost hyped up as being this is the thing that will make you happy. And what a different experience. You both. You both had that kind of need to be on guard. So so much of the time. And, johnny, really the bit is strictly there. What you just said about someone turning your this tiny little corner of the world that you had turning over for a laugh yeah, but I'm, I mean, I consider myself that that wasn't as.
Speaker 3:I mean, I have a friend who went to a very well-known boarding school where they had beds that folded out they had, they had everyone had a study and the beds folded out from the wall and then were folded back up and they used. He used to get pushed up and chained into the bed and he thought he was going to die one time because he was almost choking because he was trapped under this bed with this on his neck. So you know, I yes it. It is a brutal, it can be a brutal environment. I I would like to say that I went to school in the 80s and I think safeguarding and I'm not suggesting, I mean I'm very keen on the fact that we the campaign to to ban or end boarding at least before 16, I'm wholly in support of, but I think these days it is better. But it's still. It's still boarding. And I think one thing I want to add whilst whilst we're on that bit of of what is boarding and what is it I spent 20 odd years before I became a counsellor in health and social care, and a social worker does not take a child from their family, unless it's an absolute last resort.
Speaker 3:And that is because attachment theory underpins not only counselling, psychotherapy, but it underpins social work as well, and so a social worker will look to kinship care. Can we place a child that's not safe at home with an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent? They will do that absolutely and they will only take a child if it is totally necessary and it is a last last resort. And that is because putting a child in institutional care will break attachments and it is harmful. And yet we have this sector of our society that are quite happy to pay to put their children into institutional care, and those two things to me just don't marry up and don't make any sense yeah, thank you, donnie.
Speaker 1:It's really passionate about that.
Speaker 4:I really feel that and that, of course, is what is inside the child's mind. They're trying to work out why mummy and daddy sent me away, why I feel so bad, um, and uh, I mean the feet, I think what's something I struggle with still is it's like this shame. It's like this internalized shame. And someone explained that when a child, you know for mummy and daddy not to know what they're doing is the worst possible thing, like we've spoken about a safe space, they are like God and goddess, king and queen. They don't make mistakes. They better not make mistakes, otherwise our you know, we're in trouble, our lives are in danger. So when you're sent to boarding school, you think you're like, well, mommy and daddy know what they're doing, right, they know what they're doing, uh, but I feel like shit, this, this hurts, um, uh, and then this kind of internal, this computation of like, well, if they're, I feel bad, mommy and daddy aren't bad, then I must be bad, I must have done something wrong. That it it's. It stays in you almost as like a protective mechanism. I mean, I've got. I mean, if my brothers what read this? It doesn't listen to this.
Speaker 4:I don't know if they will, but two of my brothers out of the four of us don't agree that boarding school messed them up. One went same age as me, seven, the other one 11. He was actually hysterical when my parents were trying to get him. He was so hysterical. I mean, in a way I just go respect, because you, when I went, I just didn't say anything, I just went along with it. I didn't know what was going on. I was kind of tricked into it. But he knew what was going on and he just went berserk, so much so that they couldn't take him to boarding school. At the school they had to take him back home.
Speaker 4:Little bit, I think I was trying to say that maybe my brothers, they don't want mummy and daddy, still they. Surely they didn't do something bad to us. You know, surely you know? And still now I don't think, I think it's too much for them to have got something wrong. It would, I don't know, it would cause an identity shift or something. It's too falling out the matrix or something. So there's this kind of like.
Speaker 4:I think this is why a lot of people don't want to look at it. I know so many people who won't accept that this is a problem, because I think the stakes are so high because if mom and dad, you know if they were wrong. You know even people with parents who have deceased. You know you've got a friend whose dad has died and I don't think he ever he doesn't want to look at that. Maybe his dad got it wrong or his mum got it wrong. You know it's like we want to hold them up there.
Speaker 4:Um, I mean something in my, in my show, I really I really lay it, I, I go for it. You know, I go for my dad, I go for my mom, I do these kind of quite, uh, brutal parodies of them both and of the whole culture of boarding school. No reasons for sending me and I really go in, you know, and kind of make an example. Um, but yeah, I think the part of it is this, uh is obviously like the child's way of maintaining safety is internalizing it. And I'd also just like to say I mean for me, I didn't have, yeah, I got involved with, you know, horseplay and bullying and I was the bully.
Speaker 4:I was also bullied. I was head of school. I was good at sport, good with the girls, popular in, you know, smart. I got a scholarship. I was in the school plays. I ticked all the boxes of of, you know, boarding school was working for this guy. You know, maybe not, you know, we don't know, but this guy, yeah, yeah, um, but it that in a way that formed a very strong mask right, the, the, the mask was secure, it was successful. I mean, the wheel started coming off later in secondary school and rebelling and then later into, you know, becoming an actor almost the biggest failure of them all in terms of that kind of trajectory.
Speaker 4:But for me it's the abandonment trauma. The abandonment of losing home and parents is the thing that I go to, that I've done some healing work in this amazing workshops, group therapy workshops that I think all three of us have done, the boarding school survival workshops, where you really revisit that, that first moment of being sent away, that that first moment of being sent away and it's. I've been at two q a's recently, two survivors of sexual abuse and boarding school, uh, trauma, and both of them have said that the abandonment is far worse than sexual abuse. One guy I met was speaking to yesterday. He said it's like 10 to 1, that's. That's the level of it and if, if in society we consider sexual abuse to be the worst thing that could happen to a child and abandonment trauma into the abandonment is worse. I mean, what does that say about this kind of normalized practice, privileged opportunity of sending your children away?
Speaker 1:thank you, that's really interesting, um, and obviously, I'm sure you know, with one person perspective, we don't know um others may value that in a different way, but that's really interesting, isn't it that, that initial trauma often being the um, the most crucial, what it was. Um, yeah, and I'm really aware we've had kind of Johnny and Piers both talking about their experiences, and I'm conscious you touched on your third, but not only have you touched on it, you've made a whole show about that, very kind of the theme of your show. Could you tell us a little about how that came about, where the idea for that came from?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, it was kind of a mixture of crisis and training. I had trained at this recently, wasn't being an actor for years and then I went to this clown school in france, uh, called echo philippe golier, which was sasha baron cohen, trained and having kind of played a lot of ads and dads and ads and the career, that kind of bit of theater, a bit of other bits tv and film, but not the career, didn't? You know? I haven't had this some. I'm not tom hiddleston, unfortunately, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering with this shit um, he made it work for him, obviously. Um, so I, yeah, and then I sorry he was where sasha baron cohen traded this kind of clown, um, bouffon, like satire. It's a comedic acting school and a lot of people who come out of that start making their own work, go to the Edinburgh Festival is very. You can credit this school for a lot of these shows that have come out of that.
Speaker 4:And at the same time it was COVID and my life had kind of imploded and I was out of another relationship that had broken down and I just was like what another? You know, surely I thought this one was the, this one was the one that was good and everyone was like you know, and this is great what was going on? And it just was a realization that I didn't really know what love was. And I never really, even though I'd had loads of broken hearts and really, and even though it had loads of broken hearts and, um, you know, had it had been, I guess could say promiscuous I'm avoiding the word shagger because that's that was a shagger, that was a top shagger and that's fudgy.
Speaker 4:Fudgy was a shack, fudgy's a shagger. He's the character that that leads this show. Fudgy who, um, is a kind of public school problematic wealthy banker type um, anyway, this character came out of after I'd come back from france where I was training and I was starting to do some comedy bits. I also was starting to. I just went to the boarding school survivors group workshops and had this kind of had, started this. I mean, I was already kind of already on this kind of crisis healing path. But then I suddenly had this map that came from the workshop the, the, the understanding, the language, the psychology around what I suffered with. Even though I could feel it, I knew it was just giving me the, the, the understanding, and the, not the, the, yeah, the map, I think, is the best word to navigate all this. And I had an amazing healing moment in the workshop where the main therapist, you know, turned and apologized to me as, as my parents and I. It came out of a moment of like banter that I you were kind of like encouraged to. If something was cooking for you, they call it, you put your hand up and this therapist would kind of swoop in and start working, working with you. So it was out of a bit of work that this happened and I stood up and he stood up and he apologized and I, you know, firstly it was just rage and a real like fuck you, fuck you. And then just I just, you know, started crying and he held me and stroked the back of my head and, like this, it was this huge, very I don't know what it was. I mean it's healing, I guess, and for everyone in the group it was kind of like a group healing thing and you know, I was, I went through it and and but it helped, I don't know, bring this trauma up, reprocess something, give me an experience of real parenting and acknowledgement. You know the words, I'm sorry, can be if they're really meant, really felt, really received, can, can, really just. So it was a big experience and it just gave me this language and understanding and I was saying, at the end of the thing, I'm going to make a show about this and I put my comedy and this understanding of my trauma together into a show.
Speaker 4:It took, you know, we did. It was the second or third Edinburgh run in the summer and we just built it over the years and the it followed. Eventually, we structured it as a hero's journey, so using the psychology of the mask and the lost little boy who gets buried at seven or eight, um, and the emerging man that we're, you know, ideally we're coming to, coming into, having dropped the mask and contacted the little boy. So the journey was fudgy this guy hitting midlife crisis, going back in time, revisiting his early that moment of being abandoned, being sent away I mean, this is all in comedy as well, so it was on that line of pathos and humor.
Speaker 4:And then, yeah, the mask kind of coming away and this contacting, there was a metaphor of the little boy being inside the tuck box, which is was our like special box with all our, basically all our real well, apart from our uniform, our belongings, our chocolate and, and I don't know, you might have a teddy, someone might have snuck a teddy bear in there, but mainly it was.
Speaker 4:It was chalky and it was in the corridor and you had a padlock and you open it and this box I kind of it, became the metaphor for like the path of going into the past, going into childhood, revisiting these traumatic experiences, and this was where the boy, in this kind of ritualistic ceremony at boarding school was, was buried and fudgy in the, represented by a scrum hat was kind of put on and it was fudgy, fudgy. So this kind of represented the putting on the mask, burying the little boy, and then the journey was for fudgy to eventually get into that box and retrieve the boy and have that. In a way, exactly the healing moment that I had in the workshop was the moment with, uh, with myself, hugging myself and apologizing um, so that was. You know, that was the show, that, yeah, that was the journey of it thank you so much, tom.
Speaker 1:That's really powerful and, I'm sure, hilarious too, if we can yeah? Yeah, it's really powerful. It really kind of I hear that sense of, as both Piers and Johnny spoke about the disassociation that someone else that mask you've put on. That seems to be a very kind of common thread of survival for all of you through your experiences.
Speaker 4:But I think what is so common, I think across the board with men in general it's just boarding school is this real amped up need for it that you know talking about all these leaders, they really have it like you know it's like, it's like this mass, that is so, you know.
Speaker 1:God forbid that comes off because there's really nothing under it, you know, or there's a lot of very fragile, a fragile person underneath and I'm really I'm conscious in this space we have three men and obviously boarding is not an entirely male experience, but that that is the context of our conversation here today and that all of you kind of touched upon these very um, like you say, kind of ultra masculine traits in our society in your own experiences I feel it comes down from our leaders.
Speaker 2:You know nick says that he says wealth doesn't filter down from the leaders. What it does is behaviors and beliefs. And therefore, if most of our leaders have been to these institutions where you learn vulnerability is bad, you learn stiff upper lip, to wear a mask, to not be authentic, to not be vulnerable, then that filters down into society and that's why we have what we have at the moment. And if we put that into a greater context, if you learn to hate the vulnerable in yourself in these schools as all of us have explained, and you know this is the ethos of it how can you ever you know love and look after the vulnerable in society if you're a leader? You cannot. It's not possible.
Speaker 2:Those are the words of nick duffel in our documentary. We're making you know it's like you can't do that and that goes the same. You know there's there's so many aspects of it. It's like. Another aspect there is suzanne zdyke talks about that in the documentary is that we are taught to be independent. These schools tell us to be independent, but we are dependent on the earth. What is the impact and we're seeing the impact of that at the moment is we think we're independent from mother earth. We're not and therefore you know we've got to change the top and that will change society I think that's that's it.
Speaker 3:That's that bit of um individualization and collectivization, isn't it? Whereas, you know, the boarding school system is churning out individuals who are independently and individually resilient to, whilst they've got the mask up, to all intents and purposes, to the outside world. Um, and and yeah, and this is. I think this is the difference between the type and there's there's that bit of the types that boarding school creates um, you know, the sort of the complier and the rebel, for example. These are two um, two elements of boarding schools syndrome.
Speaker 3:Theory is, and I would say, my brother and I are absolutely in there. My brother is a complier, he's an individualist. He's a very successful, financially very successful, he ticks all the boxes of of, of a great complier, and I'm and I'm kind of on that rebel bit um. So we both had this experience. He had a great experience and he, and he is he, he lives being um, being the boarding school chap, and that's his life and and I had a really bad experience. So I've, then I've gone out and rebelled and become um and kicked against it my entire life, but he's definitely an individualist.
Speaker 4:I think to of hold up each other there but no, I just want to acknowledge that, that both those positions the rebel, the complier well then there's another type, which is the person who gets crushed, uh, by the system, but none of them, none of those three they comply. The rebel or the person crushed is, they're all kind of like unintegrated individuals who are masked up and not really in touch with their feelings and their true selves. So yeah, I was also a rebel, but that didn't mean I was any more authentic than a complier. It just meant I went a different way, I used a different, um kind of set of tactics to get through it really curious about this use of language.
Speaker 1:it's obviously a shared language here and I know you've all touched upon being in kind of groups, is that, I wonder? If you tell me a little bit more about that, that Well that's Nick's terminology of the strategic survival personality that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:So we've got the complier.
Speaker 1:I'm just wondering for the podcast, can we have a full name? That's all but.
Speaker 3:Nick, nick Duffel, nick Duffel. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Nick Duffel who does the boarding school. Survivors workshops you know in his book um, I think it's called abandonment and privilege. He talks about this strategic survival personality. So the complier in my work one-to-one I notice it's about 80 and certainly in my boarding school 80 are compl, are compliers about 15% are rebel in any year group and then about 5%, which is usually one person on the year, is the crushed.
Speaker 2:And Richard Beard in his book Sad Little Men he says that beef on a year group of 12 people on a year in a boarding house. If you can't see the the crushed, he calls it the custos.
Speaker 2:He says you know it's you yeah yeah, and what that means is that everyone turns against you and it might be for a couple of weeks, might be just for a day, or it might be for your whole time there, and basically what it's looking for. The boarding school system is looking for weaknesses. If you get emotional, if you can't stop crying, if you get angry, if you can't, you know Homesick. If you get homesick, basically can't you know Homesick. If you get homesick, basically, if you you know, and on an attachment level, it's almost like if you're not avoidant, then you will be bullied. If you're not, oh I'm fine, everything's good, if you've not dissociated, then you will be bullied and laughed at.
Speaker 2:If you can't learn to dissociate.
Speaker 1:you will continue bullied and laughed at. You can't learn to dissociate. You will continue to be yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, until they learn to shut off and to become and people say, oh, he's settled in. No, he hasn't. He's dissociated Two very different things. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not the survival. Sorry, tom, I just didn't. I just because I noticed Esther earlier you met you used the word survival earlier on esther and that's a really key thing is that this is this survival strategy that is learned and and at the time it's really helpful. And yet, when you're an adult and trying to engage in a romantic relationship and be there for your partner, um, you know, for example, um, it's not helpful.
Speaker 2:it's totally and completely and utterly unhelpful and if you're a leader, totally yeah, because you know, professor antonio damascus says you cannot make good decisions without emotional information. The one thing which is squashed, pushed down at these schools is emotional information. No, you can't have any.
Speaker 1:Therefore, we can't be in partnership or we can't be in leadership yeah, that relational element that that's missing, that's being kind of haunted out sorry, tom, I'm aware I jumped in on you there.
Speaker 4:I was just gonna make a more personal point on that that, like my brother one of my brothers who was, he was crushed eventually. The one who, hysterical when they my parents tried to, eventually went and he got bullied. And it's interesting, even even though he was crushed and bullied, he still can't uh, he still will say that it made me who I am and it was character building and he would have got bullied at a state school. So his daddy at least went to a boarding school. But that and he one of the reasons yeah, he won't.
Speaker 4:He can't accept what I'm saying with my show or what I'm saying, um, about boarding school, school being traumatizing for me because he sees me as someone who it was working for. You know, when he came that all those years later he got bullied. But I was head of school and I was good at sport and I had the things that he looked at and was like if I had that, I wouldn't have been bullied, which is kind of true, but he was crushed. So he was crushed and traumatized. So, yeah, it's just, it's funny, you'd think, anyone who's crushed, and it's true. I think maybe there are more people who were crushed who could turn around sooner and say this fucked me up because they knew they had a bad experience at boarding school but, as in my brother's case, still they.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's not why you know like you know something again mum and daddy can't be wrong yeah, there's that sense of, isn't it easier to I mean what we call kind of in trauma language, kind of fawning what used to be called mitchellelson, sorry, stockholm Syndrome?
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 1:So that is when you would seek to kind of befriend the oppressor.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Please appease. The terminology literally comes from an aeroplane was hijacked in Stockholm and the terrorists I believe they were terrorists, I don't know the story particularly well gave the passengers bottles of water and then, when the passengers were interviewed afterward, they all said how lovely they were, even though they'd threatened their lives. I believe that's where but I don't tend to use that term um anymore, and I don't know how true, how much truth there is in this story, but that's where the term kind of came from that is part of the problem with this is because a lot of humor at boarding school there's a lot of like, funny, dark humor.
Speaker 4:The teachers don't, you know, come on boy, and then you know, oh my god, mr, you know, mr spake, what a legend. You know, oh, mr scott, like crazy alcoholic, you know shouters, and there's this kind of pride with which you talk about it like you know, oh god, you know he was crazy, and it's full of this kind of like, you know, you just, you just accept the system and kind of love it in a way, because that's all you've got. So there is these kind of nostalgia, maybe, or, um, it's very rare I meet someone who went this and I love it when I do, when I hear like no, that guy was a fucking, that was, he was a bastard, that teacher was a bastard, um, opposed to, like, you know, that guy, he was crazy or he was evil, you know, with a funny kind of, you kind of accept the system, you accept these teachers are crazy, you accept the older boys are going to bully you because it's I don't know. And then that's that film If, even the film if, which was made in the sixties. Lindsay Anderson, even he.
Speaker 4:When he talks about the school, uh, that school environment, he says that there was he kind of there's a romantic kind of between the boys, that it's, it's um, there's something kind of like loving in the violence, like in exchange of no affection, that actually being punched and hit was kind of like the only way that was. It was something, it was close, not love, but like that's all we had and that's like as good, as good as love could get in those environments, because there was no love. But if you grow up for 11 years in that system, you're going to you. I mean, I don't know. You must think this is life, this is love. And that's why I think again, why it's very difficult to go. Oh my God, this is all wrong, this is all bad. You know when that's what you've had.
Speaker 2:Have you heard of betrayal trauma? Jennifer Frey's work I feel I've been kind of come across this about six months to a year ago and what she's saying and it's fascinating. I've got some quotes from her here from some of her papers. But I feel this explains why we as exporters, we do not, we go. Oh, it was amazing, I loved it. And she says betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person's trust or well-being. So that's betrayal trauma, she says.
Speaker 2:Betrayal trauma theory suggests that psychogenic amnesia dissociative is an adaptive response to childhood abuse. And for me in the research I've looked at, boarding school is abuse because of the neglect. When a parent or other powerful figure violates a fundamental ethic of human relationships. Victims made need to remain unaware of the trauma, not to reduce suffering but rather to promote survival. So we've attached to the school rather than to the parents and it's a bit like that double bind you spoke about Tom, we go. You know they must be right, they must be good.
Speaker 2:And the final bit of betrayal trauma she talks about betrayal blindness. She says betrayal blindness is the unawareness, not knowing and forgetting exhibited by people towards betrayal and forgetting exhibited by people towards betrayal victims. Perpetrators and witnesses may display betrayal blindness in order to preserve relationships, institutions and social systems upon which they depend. It's like I feel that's what's happened with boarding schools. Is there's this they're dependent on these systems and they still are. If you go into politics, or you go into the, the bar, the legal system, or you can't step out and say it was terrible, because all of the judges I mean 60, I think it's 70 to 75 percent of high court judges went to private school, many of them to boarding school. The head of mi6, the head of the church of england, many uh priests they went to boarding school. They're stuck in that system. They can't betray it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, that's, that's this definitely the story of sorry esther. My, that's my father, absolutely, because his father died when he was, uh, very young I think he was two or three and his mum, his mother, couldn't cope and he was sent to a boarding school from five and he, my father, was well, I, well, I, you know, I grew up with domestic violence. My father was, was fairly brutal. Um, my parents divorced in 81. As soon as the marriage act came in, my mother was able to divorce my father and get half the house. So he was a really difficult man when it came to women. I mean, he really, I think, did not like women on a very toxic level.
Speaker 3:But he loved that school and the school raised him and his diet. I mean, when he died at 95 and when we cleared out the wardrobe, his school uniform was still in it his blazer, his colors, the, you know, the tie, everything was still in it and it's. It was so important to him, that school, because the school raised him. His his mother didn't raise him, his father had died, he was at the school and that was his life, from the age of five and I went to the same school. My brother went to the same school. Um, I haven't had the same school number as my, my father and my brother. 97 qc was the school number and that was my dad's school number and he his, his inability to see anything wrong with any of it. I mean it. He, he thought that school was the most wonderful place on earth you know that touches on something, peers.
Speaker 1:I think you said very early on um when we were discussing earlier that, that psychological split and that idea, if we brought these two things together, these two knowing what we might crumble, so better better keep it separate almost, and I, you know that kind of brings me to.
Speaker 1:You know, we've made throughout this several points about our leaders today, those who maybe are successfully keeping it separated still, and the impact that that's having. Um, jo, has been sat with me, johnny, when you were explaining and I think Tommy explained those different characters or um characters of my word that's probably not what you used uh, these different um types you referred to and um, the person that really kind of um sat with me and I wondered about was um and came to mind was, uh, nigel Farage and I wondered where he sat on that. I know it's kind of a character.
Speaker 1:But is that an example of the rebel, or have I got that wrong?
Speaker 2:I'm just really curious so he was at boarding school but he didn't board. He was at dullwich college and there aren't that many boarders, um, I checked with someone who was at school with him and I said, did he bought it? And uh, so he's. My assumption was that was the experience, that. But but I think, you know, I think you're at these schools on saturdays as well. It's a 60, it's it's totally immersion. You're doing a 60 hour week.
Speaker 2:So although you're not boarding so it's not quite as intense you're still picking it all up the same entitlement. You know you've got to survive. You've got to create this personality. You can't be your authentic self. You've got to. You know you. And you know you can let it down when you get home because you're not boarding. But, you know, maybe you then start carrying this home. So, yeah, nigel farage, you know many of reform uk, uh, richard tice, he was boarding school, um, you know. So, yeah, many of the conservatives boarding school. You know, I think, the front bench of the labor government at the moment there's only one out of, say, 10 david lammy, foreign secretary. He was boarding school, um, but you know, what I have seen with the labor government is most of them are sending their children to boarding school.
Speaker 2:Diana abbott she sent her children to boarding school I didn't know that that's interesting yeah, yeah, because it's like it's this idea that it's a privilege, it's good for them and our work, my work, is going. It's not, it's breaking of attachment, it's trauma, it's. You know, the nspcc says neglect is the ongoing failure to meet a child's basic needs and the most common form of child abuse and I believe boarding school is neglect and therefore it is child abuse.
Speaker 1:There's no reason for it to happen before 16th I mean, I think for some people that'll be a really strong message there. I'm wondering um how? What has been your response to that? What is the kind of the, the consensus around that?
Speaker 2:about it being child abuse. Yeah, joy chavarin, in one of her papers 2004, she says that you know, I've got a file over there which I can find it, but it's essentially it says something along those lines, talking to one of her colleagues and saying that you know it's a very british form of child abuse, boarding schools, you know, I mean, if you come at it from the neglect standpoint, you know, and people might say, well, it's just johnny or it's just tom or it's just peers. I literally have 40 um biographies here of some of the most well-known people in the world who've been to boarding school and there are very few who've had good experience.
Speaker 2:Richard Branson was sexually abused within a couple of weeks of being at school. He was expelled, wrote a suicide note and tried to commit suicide and he was stopped from jumping off the cliff. He was beaten because he was dyslexic until he bled. Bear Grylls he was beaten until his shoulder nearly snapped. He said when I hit boarding school, suddenly all I felt was fear. Fear forces you to look tough on the outside but makes you weak on the inside. John peel was raped, you know. Um. David niven you know all of these people you know ran a fines. He contemplated suicide at eton. It's like these aren't just johnny's or Tom's or Piers's story. This is, you know, tony Blair. He ran away from school. He ran away. He got on a plane. He tried to leave the country. That's how much he did not want to be at boarding school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really hear that. Do you know what? I suppose I've come into this space maybe holding that belief myself and it's just really curious for me to hear those who've experienced it name it. In that sense, I suppose maybe I came here naively thinking it was a judgment I was holding from not my own experiences.
Speaker 3:It's a truth, Esther.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What was your judgment, Esther?
Speaker 1:it that it feels cruel, that it feels abusive yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:There's no theory of child development recommends taking children away from parents. It's like johnny says if you work in the care system, you only take them away when it's a last resort, for the shortest period of possible. And here we are taking them away, tom says for 10 years, and saying it's good for you, and you're like really, no, please carry on well, I just hear when I now, now I'm just thinking, why, why?
Speaker 4:why do they do it? Why do these parents send their children away? Why do they neglect them? Maybe that's a whole other discussion, but you know, when I say to my dad, you know when I bring up anything with either of my parents, we did what we thought was best. We did what we thought was best with either of my parents. We did what we thought was best. We did what we thought was best.
Speaker 4:Now, either just massively ignorant or that's not wholly true, you know, um, I don't. I. I do think that there's got to be, in the experience of sending your children away, some kind of like knowing that this is like gonna cause some damage, or this is hard, even really fucking hard. Now, either they dissociate or they're evil. I believe not quite evil, but it's like something else is more important in that moment. Something else is like we gotta do what we gotta do. They're gonna be successful if they're gonna have the right friends. We're going to be. Just make it easier for us as parents. We've got to do. You know it's.
Speaker 4:There is these, I think there are. There is a conversation in their heads. It has to be. They're human beings that I mean to just dissociate in that way. I believe there is dissociation, but but why? And I mean nick duffel explores in his book that there is this kind of hatred of children. Now, children in exchange for children put people who are vulnerable, like we've discussed, people who are vulnerable, people who are weak, people who don't know what they're doing. Yet you know, there is maybe a hatred of that in people and the children represents this. You know they're just like they need to be made. They need to be grown up quickly, get on with it. You know, I think there was even a was there is. I don't know if this is in nick duffel's book, but the, the psychology psychology book from the 20s that said that children, a victorian, victorian um psychology book that said that children are like the best thing you can do is not let a child emote like you. You cut off so they learn to deal with emotions on their own.
Speaker 1:So there's, there's maybe this kind of like quite warped understanding and attitude towards children that informs all this which is a really interesting point, and when we look at kind of, as you've all explored there, this is the people that are in leadership positions, even those who maybe have come from that, who didn't come from that world, sorry are buying into this system as well, kind of playing the game possibly, and then these are the people that are shaping our country and particularly our education system. Yeah, I wonder if anyone, I think it goes across the world as well.
Speaker 4:There's apparently something like 70,000 full borders in this country at the moment. 40% of them come from China and Russia, so it is now being exported, so this spreads.
Speaker 2:Many from Africa as well. Yeah, yeah, I think when you just look at the state system, they have all these rules. They have all of the curricula They've got to adhere to. You don't get that in the private or in certainly the boarding school system. They can teach whatever they like. Well, they don't get that in the private or in certainly the boarding school system.
Speaker 3:They can teach whatever they like. Well, they don't even have to. I'm certainly in my day. The teachers don't even have to have done teacher training. You just need a master's degree and you can teach in the private sector. You know that. So there's no teacher training required. I think nowadays it's slightly different, there's more of a requirement, but certainly when, I'm sure when we three were at school, our teachers didn't have any teacher training whatsoever. They'd just done their degrees or their master's degrees and they were just teaching. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wonder if it's I. I I think sometimes the elephant in the room, as well as class is is this is the bit of um.
Speaker 3:You know, there's something about the boarding school and the private school culture that teaches disdain for working class people and I don't think we talk about that enough and I think that is, and I think I see that in. I've seen that in this sort of last whatever 15, 14 years of conservative government we've had this sort of last whatever 15, 14 years of conservative government. We've had that there is a that there is such a disconnect, but that comes from a childhood conditioning of disdain. Um, and the language of yops, chavs, peasants, yeah, that's the language that's used in in these circles and in these schools, and I don't think we talk about that enough in in our boarding school work. Um, and I and I, you know, that's really I find that really difficult and I find that really difficult to consider that I, I, I came from that as well, I was, I was, at once, I was part of that little culture of othering, just othering, the people of different classes, and the class structure is so, and it's even within the boarding school world. We, you know, we almost.
Speaker 3:I think there's a thing in terms of the boarding school survivors and those of us that come together and talk about this. We don't generally ask each other what school we've been to, because that's really traditionally the first question people will say when they notice you've got the plummy voice, or you're wearing the uniform, you've got the Ralph Lawrence shirt or whatever it is that you've, you come across as your boarding school. The first thing people will often say is oh, what school did you go to? You know, and that's an opportunity for someone who went to Eaton to trump someone who went to Millfield, you know, and, and so we, we tend not to to talk about the school that we went to because it's all damaging. Doesn't matter where you went, it's all damaging.
Speaker 4:So the class system is, even within the boarding school system, there's, it's, there's just layers and layers and layers of it and and I think, just say think, that with that, that I remember as a young, when I got to prep school, over the wall, the state school, and that's where the yobbos, you know the kids who went back to their mom and daddies every night. You know the weaklings, the yobbos, you know the secondary school, the stigs, the townies, and that I remember I think I was saying I said to a girl I was a family friend from home. When I went back I called her second class. Uh, must have been 10, 11 at that point I think, when I said that, but it was in me and it wasn't, actually wasn't until I went traveling after boarding school that I started meeting, you know, other people from different classes around, english people as well, as you know, complete different levels of poverty and everything but impact, quite impactful just meeting middle class, normal middle class English people, working class English people, and you know, and again, and also when I went used to go raving in my teenage years, like meeting people from different backgrounds.
Speaker 4:Finally, like I, I was so hyper aware of of not being that and at one point looking down on it, and then I think, still now, I, I I feel in a way, in a weird way, there's this kind of loss of something, loss of togetherness with the rest of the nation, even though there are all these rewards money and privilege and education, of course that that is something to look at. But also there is a division and, uh, you know this, the it's horrible to think of that. You know that it's very, very brave new world, basically yeah, it just reminds me.
Speaker 2:It's like, say, for example, the sun newspaper. Whenever I used to read it as a child I always imagined it was working class people who are writing it. And as I moved into the into journalism and then kind of worked in that kind of field, I realized no, actually most of them have been to public school. And it's like this persona, this split and nick duffel talks about it in wounded leaders, is we disassociate from that vulnerable, that um, you know, authentic part of us? And he says if you look around europe, our working class are the most downtrodden, put upon, seen as stupid, compared to other countries around europe and the world. And I really see that disdain.
Speaker 2:I mean, in my boarding school I mean a lot of us were from working class because it was. It was a leading public school but it took in a lot of. There was a big charity side to it. So if you'd lost your parents or you, you couldn't afford. They would give a lot of scholarships. But the people who were working in the kitchens or who were working as cleaners, we called them bockers, which main basically meant slaves, and we would sometimes spit on them, we would kind of shout at them. They were less than. They were less than human. And we also did that on the year groups. If you were below, you know, we used to have belts, we used to have this really old archaic uniform and we had belts and, um, you would wear a belt in a different position as you got older and you could be fag. You know, be a fag for an older student, right, go and make me a cup of tea, go and make me some toast.
Speaker 1:So you was less than less than less than less than until you went up, and then you could bully the others I'm hearing there's a real that sowing the seeds for what is and correct me if I'm jumping here to making an assumption but sowing the seeds for an oppressive system, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you leave these schools. You go to Oxford and Cambridge. I mean, you look at the figures. This has changed now, but if you went to a state school, do you know the probability of going to Oxford or Cambridge from a state school?
Speaker 1:I'm not good with numbers, but please do. I'm assuming you can.
Speaker 2:So it's one in 2000. It was one in 2000, which is the same odds as Bono becoming pope, just to give you a context of that. And from a public school, it was one in 20. This was a couple of years ago. One in 20. So I had four or five people from my year went to oxford and cambridge. So you see that this is totally biased. It used to be 40 to 50% of people at Oxford and Cambridge went to public schools, you know. So you go from these, you know the Bullington Club and then you go into the bar. You never get a chance to meet the people you will eventually lead. So how are you going to be able to lead them One you can't empathize, you can't feel, but also if you've never actually met them or anyone like them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm aware we're kind of drawing towards the end-ish of our conversation here, but I suppose I'll start with. Maybe we won't be able to get to two of them. Both questions I'm kind of thinking with is one how? I suppose the obvious question is like how do we move forward from this? How do we? What is the the answer? Or is there one? And secondly, um, oh, I feel like it's falling out of my head, sorry.
Speaker 3:The first one, esther, I'm going to say it's a much. In my view it's a much harder line than simply VAT, although that's a good place to start. Charitable status needs to go totally yeah, and boarding before the age of 16 needs to be banned. There's just, it's just not an option to send your children to boarding school before the age of 60. My nephew went and he went because he chose to go at about 14, 15. He was in a day school and he wanted to board and he's, he's, he's great, he's so well balanced. But he had a choice and he made that choice for himself and he enjoyed his time and he had a good time and he was able to transition from being a day pupil to a boarder in his own time, at his own pace, but he was about 14, 15. He just really went into sixth form, did the final bit boarding and that seems like a very healthy way of approaching it thank you, johnny.
Speaker 1:Any would you say, tom pierce, do you agree with that, or any differences of opinions there? What would I?
Speaker 4:mean I take it in my show, I take it a bit further and, um, I blow all the boarding schools up.
Speaker 1:So a little bit more.
Speaker 4:No one gets hurt. No one gets hurt.
Speaker 1:It's just a you know harmless bit of cathartic in having that in the show for you.
Speaker 4:Yeah it's kind of that. It's like a heightened a bit, like I don't think a fight club, you know it kind of uh pixies my favorite band from that's yeah. That's the new ending of the show, the Pixies playing. I hold the little boy's hand as we watch the boarding school's fall.
Speaker 1:Distant collapse.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, in Fight Club they just kind of don't have the budget for a projector screen, so I just have sound effects this is the fringe Sound effects and lights kind of, as I kind of point oh, look at that one in there. But I, I think, I mean activism, I, I, I really, I think, talking like the, the more I'm, you know, I feel very privileged to be on this and actually talking about it and having worked through it and to be someone who you know is some kind of authority on the subject. But I, I went to a talk. People are inspiring each other to talk more about it and it seems like it just spreads, and I think, like talk about it spread, you know, just does this to be the language, the normal way of talking about it. It just needs to be more people talking about it in this way and that would be, I guess, a more realistic approach thank you.
Speaker 1:Is there anything to add to that?
Speaker 2:yeah. So for me, you know exactly what johnny tom was saying. For me, you know, below 16, I think we need to start transitioning boarding schools, the the younger ones, into sixth form colleges. The other things mandatory reporting still in this country, which is incredible. If a child is abused and an adult knows about it, it's still not mandatory for them to go and speak to the police and whereas in most other countries it is, it's still on the responsibility of the child and, as we know, only one in nine children speak up. And if you were to do that in the financial sector, if you know someone's been taking money and you don't talk about it, I think it's 10 years and an unlimited fine in prison. 10 years in prison, it's the difference between money and children. So that would be. Mandatory reporting would be another. And I think, just start to transition these schools into trauma informed. Bring in adult adverse childhood experiences. Bring in child development. You, you know, to start to transition and I think, as tom was saying, there's so many of us.
Speaker 2:I'm creating a documentary with a couple of filmmakers, hopefully in the next six months that will be, uh, you know, going live and just, there's so many people seen and heard, started up, you know, which is doing amazing work. It's like getting out there and working together. They say that our trauma at boarding school was caused in a group and therefore, if we connect through boarding school survivors, but also connecting and doing this work of let's change, we can do that. It's really inspiring. It becomes that post-traumatic growth. Something great comes out of my trauma and, you know, for me, boarding schools will close. No doubt about that, because we're a powerful group of people who've been through the experiences and there's so many, there's thousands of us now.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:I think that just Tom triggered something in me there. I think the ideal for me is that we don't have that. We have a single education system that everybody has access to, that is free and there is no private education. I think that for me that's a dream, but I am also aware that probably in my lifetime certainly in the UK it's unlikely that that change will happen. But Piers is talking about these steps towards something and I think for me there's that goal in the future. The Danish model, as far as I'm aware, there's that goal in the future. The Danish model. As far as I'm aware, there's no private education in Denmark and even the Danish royal family go to the state schools with all the other kids. That's my understanding of it. I may be wrong, but I you know so. So so, yeah, that would be, that would be pretty cool. Um, how we get there? That's another that's and that's what Piers is talking about. We just have to keep talking about it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I think I did remember what my second question was there. But I must say, if we have time, I'm wondering how do you balance that? Advocating for your experiences I think, tom, you talked about activism in that space whilst also holding an understanding of which I think you've all reflected on and shown in this space of your privilege? Where does that sit? How do you balance that in yourselves in the work?
Speaker 3:Where does that sit? How do you balance that in yourselves in the work? I think working as a schools counsellor is really quite a subversive activity, and that's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:I like that and I suppose I bring that in terms of where we started in. Is it challenging to take up space? Do people allow you to take up space?
Speaker 4:Well, I know my experience flyering for my show, approaching members of the public in Edinburgh, and I've had both you boardings ex-boarding school boys kind of just be like completely dismissed the show and the idea of it, thinking I, you know that may. I remember having an argument, not an argument, but it got very heated about mental health, saying how, how dare I question my, you know in parents have spent all this money on my education. I'm throwing it back in their face. Um, they also were like maybe it's better that poor people and rich people don't go to the same schools. You know, if you're poor, if you're rich in a poor school, like how are they going to treat you? You know, and that that was this one group of boarding school, scottish boarding school rugby playing guys. And then I've also fired people on the other side and uh, two women who were like you know, just I was flying and just gave me this, look like you know, a white, a white cis, straight male complaining about his privilege. Like, yeah, do one, you know I think there's bigger problems. And you know, uh, yeah, do one, you know I think there's bigger problems. And you know, so it's.
Speaker 4:It has been challenging, it's challenging. It is challenging because it's very hard, because you kind of have to hold two things you have to hold. There is this money and privilege, and then there's also these traumatized children. I get it's both and when we hold, like Boris Johnson, he's a man who is very problematic, who does damage, and yet he's also a broken little boy. There are these two things that can be tackled very differently um, and class and and privilege in in terms of money and access to jobs and all this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I, I, you know I went skiing at christmas and easter because my grandparents lived in the Alps. You know I had, you know I would get a laptop for my birthday or a car eventually, but I had all these things that any, you know, any child would want, but I didn't have what I needed, which was safety, a home, you know, which is. It's very difficult. I mean, I take, I take heart when people like I met a woman the other day, grew up in social care and it blew her mind the things that I struggled with with mental health and uh, and in life and trauma that she also struggled with and she, she was out, of course, and she worked in prison and she was from glasgow and she just like you know there was real, we could talk about it, you know, um, but it is hard, I I know I think it's healthy that we have.
Speaker 4:There's a guilt, there's a kind of like shaming in kind of having having access to all that stuff and it should kind of trigger a why, why have I had this and they don't have? I mean, obviously it makes sense through a lot of what we talked about the, the culture of this country and the trauma and the division, and you know how it's all been stratified. Of course there's an understanding, but it is difficult to talk about because of that and but I'm I think it's important we do, because the only way of changing it is to start talking about it and and to go in into all the, the muckiness of it and the mess and the complications and stand by our experience. I stand by my experience and I'm willing to talk about it. I'm also willing to accept that.
Speaker 1:You know, uh, it's difficult for people to like really to really take it in thank you, I like to think and johnny I don't know if he's grieving here a lot of the work we do at task is about the and this one versus and getting into that kind of messy, the messiness yes yeah yes, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 2:It's our stories. Uh, you know, I think that's the importance, like today we've shared our stories. It's like there's trauma, you know, in working class families. There's trauma in middle class families, there's trauma in upper class families, but before we've gone there is none in the upper class because they've got money, but actually it's a level playing field. We've all been traumatized and by hearing people's stories you're like it's like reading people's biographies, it's like there are very few. I'm not going.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, my God. I mean this one here David Cameron. He lost a stone in weight, but if you think as a child, he was only seven or eight. The average age is three and a half to four stone. So he lost a stone in weight. That's third to a quarter of his body weight. These are the stories we need to be hearing. That's neglect, that's abuse, and when we hear them we're like, okay, we need to change this. This is no, this is no good. Uh, rachel johnson went to the same school as boris johnson. She was the first girl. She was so hungry, she used to eat toothpaste. Just get our heads around these stories and they're everywhere.
Speaker 1:And do you know what's really sitting with me, as I hear all three of you talk? There is that we're talking about children, children.
Speaker 1:People who choose. You know, there's a frownness to our existence and where we are born and who we are born to. We were all children. I think that's a really powerful message there and that, com you know, the the fantastic links you've all made to those in society with power over us, um those we've influenced. Having that experience and that kind of yeah, I've been um really taken back by all your stories this evening. Thank you so much thank you, esther.
Speaker 2:Thank you, tommy johnny.
Speaker 1:Thank you before we end. I'm aware you know, pierce, you're speaking about your um upcoming documentary, tom. You have work on as well. Johnny, if there's anything you would like to plug, I know it's something we're really bad at in this country, so I want to give space to plug away no, I have.
Speaker 3:I have nothing to plug apart from attachment-based family therapy. We're piloting it here in Scotland. I'm piloting it here in Scotland. There aren't any other practitioners in Scotland. I'd love to meet any other ABFT practitioners in down in England. I know there's a few. We're piloting the first ABFT service in schools and what we're doing is bringing parents in when, when it's identified that family relationships are breaking down and that's the cause of the teenagers depression and other problems, suicidal ideation, self-harm, all the other things that we we may be dealing with as a school counselor. So I'll plug attachment-based family therapy all day long and hopefully we can see an ABft practitioner in every school. That would be great fantastic.
Speaker 1:Thank you for advocating as well as plugging there. Thank you so much, johnny. Is tom anything you'd like to?
Speaker 4:um, I'm well, I'm working on a new, I've just started working on a new show called big boy um, which is going to be about something I'm interested in and exploring for myself, which is male friendships, male-to-male intimacy, non-sexual or I don't know. I mean it's something I realize and it's definitely related to, you know, to the survival friendships we had at boarding school and not not quite meeting each other emotionally, and I find myself really curious about the potential of male friendship. And, uh, I think this is going to be a comedy about. You know, it's a clown bouffant show, so it's going to be a kind of a silly exploration, but also probably quite tender and challenging exploration, of male men making friends with other men and leaning into that. I don't know what, but I yeah, it will be a leicester comedy festival 13th and 14th of february, with the first work in progress and then taking it to enema fringeinge in the summer.
Speaker 1:That sounds really intriguing. I wonder if there's something a future podcast and male friendships there Potentially we'd love to have you back if that's something you'd be interested in or not, or if I don't make any friends, you know. Maybe not a podcast in itself, I don't know. Or if anything you'd like to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so making this documentary it's called boarding on insanity. You can watch the trailer on youtube. We've interviewed people like gabble mate, nick duffel, george chavarian, um alex renton, people like that. And then I've got my podcast. I've done 112 episodes so far. Amazing episode with tom greaves, uh, but just to hear people's experiences. Uh, charles spencer, we've spoken to many developmental psychologists, psychiatrists, you know, just to hear different people's perspectives.
Speaker 2:And then yeah I do one-to-one work as well, mainly with leaders, uh, who've been to boarding school. So that's my day-to-day work, thank you all.
Speaker 1:So thank you once again for your time this evening. Um you, uh, really really fascinating conversation there. I feel like I've learned so much from hearing all of your stories, your ideas around the boarding school experience. Thank you, amy.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Thank you Esther, Thank you Tom, Thank you John, Thanks Esther, Thanks guys, Lovely to see you again.
