Review by Jules Daulby

8 Jan 2017, 5:00

Book

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way

Publisher

ISBN 10

This book is a pastiche of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It substitutes matriarchs attempting to create divine children with teachers (at Michaela free school in north London) trying to shape disciplined and erudite scholars.

Both rely on the same premise: a strict, no-nonsense and rigorous regime underpinned with fierce competition because the outside world is cold and unforgiving. These wards will serve you, thank you (even for a detention) while the Tiger looks on proudly. It is not so much a battle hymn the teachers are singing but a haka cry.

Joe Kirby writes an interesting chapter on curriculum design; mapping out and overlapping subjects chronologically. It makes perfect sense. However, the book goes downhill after this. A didactic, teaching-me-to-suck-eggs chapter was flick through-able which I did… quickly. Each subsequent chapter uses a similar format: criticise “most schools in England”, intersperse with “research says” then triumphantly announce “we did this and it works perfectly”. It became tiresome. Whatever magic the teachers believe they possess, it is overshadowed by criticising “most” schools.

It is not so much a battle hymn the teachers are singing but a haka cry

Their success is built on others’ failure, yet relies on the false impression that most schools are inadequate. In fact, more children are reaching expected key stage standards, more schools in England are now rated good and outstanding than ever before and the most successful region for school improvement is Michaela’s own. Other schools are not broken.

I also wonder how poor the students are (one, we are told, has a tutor that the parents pay for) and whether families mind being labelled as “disadvantaged” and stereotyped as feeding their children sugary cereals in a “language-deprived” environment. The feeder primaries may also feel aggrieved. Students that they have nurtured for the past seven years are labelled as being unable to hold eye contact or use cutlery, turning up cussing and making misogynistic insults, some defecating in the urinals. Within a week of boot camp, this changes.

At what cost is this transformation? Even lunchtime is controlled with themes given to students, “Here’s your vegetable pie and a Brexit discussion.

Under no circumstances must you talk about Honey G.” There are no displays, windows have blinds to keep the daylight out and the students’ minds in. Dreaming prohibited.

The sparrows in Game of Thrones remind me of the Tiger Teachers. It’s the virtuousness: nothing seems to go wrong. God knows I have days where I question whether I know anything at all. In Battle Hymn, however, teachers ooze with self-assurance, chapters drip with certainty and the book punches you in the face.

It reminds me of extreme ironing: impressive, but completely unnecessary

Staff at Michaela play misunderstood heroes, ahead of their time and persecuted for their beliefs. Cynics might argue that they revel in the attention but this is denied. Why, I then wonder, put a false claim on the front of the book? “THIS BOOK SHOULD BE BANNED” it screams like controversial tomes before it. The quote, however, is not from “the blob”, outraged by Michaela’s traditional methods, but BFF and fellow provocateur, Toby Young.

The other half of the quotation “because parents will want the same for their children” hides inside. A devious publisher’s device to court controversy, which perfectly highlights the marketing strategy. In short, it offers a veneer of effortless perfection driven by a hidden system of suffocating micro-management.

The Tigers question everyone other than themselves. They won’t adjust for SEND; nevertheless, clients must obey unquestioningly. No parent partnership. No excuses. Love is conditional.

It reminds me of extreme ironing: impressive, but completely unnecessary. A school is a school is a school. With strong leadership, committed teachers, consistency and a clear identity, all schools do well. Michaela has the correct ingredients to be successful but it’s not the faddy ideas in this book that make it so.

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4 Comments

  1. Cary Cotterman

    The rant of a typical leftist teacher’s union shill, defending miserably failing schools while smugly criticizing one that works by reverting to traditional methods.

  2. Obviously this reviewer sounds like one of those entitled parents who has a ready excuse for her child’s misdemeanours, disrespect, surly attitude and lack of motivation and then defends the bad behaviour by bad mouthing and blaming the teacher while her own parenting skills are at fault. Schools ARE failing and the reason in part is people like this reviewer. The permissive parenting today has lead to schools being places where society deems that students are not held back from the next grade for failing a subject, where students think they can be late for class and disrupt other students and not be accountable, where they don’t believe they have to complete all their assignments because they are not called out for it at home. Where they think they can resort to name calling and put downs because they witness it from their own parents. What parent /teacher relationship?!? Looks like the parent has all the power, but none of the effort to teach her child respect for others. As a teacher myself, I think Katherine B. and her staff care deeply about the well-being of the students at Michaela, or otherwise why all the work to ensure discipline and mete out consequences for misbehaviour? Because it is hard work to manage a class effectively and no learning can occur for any student without class management. I wish all schools would adopt this method and the world would be a better place. The reviewer should look inward to discover why she is so negative about a method of learning that is so successful. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

  3. “Their success is built on others’ failure, yet relies on the false impression that most schools are inadequate. In fact, more children are reaching expected key stage standards, more schools in England are now rated good and outstanding than ever before and the most successful region for school improvement is Michaela’s own. Other schools are not broken.”

    I think this is really the key point. The things which Michaela does to ensure their kids good grades, are the same things that all good schools to ensure their kids get good grades. The headmistress pompously sneers at how other schools are supposedly failing (they are not) and this unfortunately sets back discussion about how schools that are not doing so well can learn from the example of those which are.