đź“š ““I am not your leader” may sound noble in theory—but in the average classroom, it’s often an invitation to anarchy.
In a room full of teenagers—clever, restless, and wired to test boundaries—the absence of visible authority rarely produces freedom. More often, it produces noise. And not the productive kind. Chairs scrape, side conversations multiply, sarcasm spreads like wildfire. Lessons limp along, barely heard over the undercurrent of defiance. Somewhere between interruptions, a novel may be read, but real learning becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
The intention behind such an approach is often well-meaning: to respect autonomy, to avoid ruling by fear, to create a space that feels more cooperative than coercive. But there is a stark gap between intention and outcome—a gap many educators continue to fall into. Most don’t want to be tyrants. They want to foster independence, dialogue, critical thinking. They use language like “safe space,” “student voice,” and “inclusive environment.”
Yet behind the jargon lies a deeper and unresolved dilemma: Is it truly possible to teach without controlling? To guide without dominating?
🧠Education and the Paradox of Leadership
This dilemma isn’t unique to schools. It runs through families, workplaces, even spiritual communities. We humans crave guidance—and we resist it. We want safety, but not suffocation. We want freedom, but not chaos.
In schools, this tension is laid bare every day. A teacher who asserts too much control becomes a caricature of old-school discipline. A teacher who asserts too little becomes a babysitter to mayhem. In either case, the real work of education—nurturing thought, forming judgement, building character—gets lost.
This is why I find Michaela School and its head, Birbal Singh, such a compelling and controversial case. Here is a leader who doesn’t flinch from control. The school’s strict routines, public mantras, and unapologetic focus on discipline have drawn praise and criticism in equal measure. Some see it as the future of education. Others see it as a throwback to Victorian drill.
But maybe the real issue isn’t whether Michaela’s methods are right or wrong. It’s whether we still know how to live together without force.
đź‘Ą Montesquieu and the Forgotten Purpose of School
Montesquieu once said, “Les hommes, faits pour vivre ensemble, sont nĂ©s aussi pour se plaire.” “Men, made to live together, are also born to please each other.” It’s a gentle and humanising idea: we’re not just social beings—we’re beings who want to get along, to enjoy each other’s presence.
Education, at its best, should nurture this. Not just literacy and numeracy, but the capacity to live together, think together, disagree without hatred. Schools should be places where children learn how to be human among other humans.
And yet, that kind of formation now seems harder than ever. We speak of citizenship, values, emotional intelligence—but behind the words lies a creeping sense that harmony must be engineered, not grown. If we can’t trust children to choose the good, we make it mandatory. If we can’t inspire them, we manage them.
Is this because we’ve failed to build a culture worth joining—one that truly draws people in? Have we made education so hollow, so bureaucratic, that we now need strict control to hold the whole thing together?
🌀 The Classroom as a Mirror
My own classroom years left me with no easy answers. I wasn’t a leader in the traditional sense. I didn’t bark orders or set detentions like a metronome. But I also learned that without some structure—without a frame—the whole thing turned to noise.
The real art was in balance: structure without suffocation, freedom without disorder. It wasn’t about being liked or feared. It was about being real, consistent, and alive to the mood of the room.
In that sense, teaching wasn’t so different from therapy, or politics, or parenting. People want to be seen. They want to matter. And when they don’t feel that—when they sense the adult in front of them is faking, frightened, or unsure—they take over. Not always kindly.
If you’re a teacher, a parent, or simply someone who remembers the tension of those school years, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Authority is easy to criticise and hard to live without. But somewhere between the extremes of control and chaos, there may still be a space where real education can happen.
