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The Confidence Trick

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Laura Barton explores the place of confidence in modern life.

The Confidence Trick: Series 1

The Confidence Trick: Series 1: Episode 2

Episode 2

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - The Confidence Trick, Series 1, Episode 2

Laura Barton examines the place of school and background in determining confidence.

In the second part of her series examining the place of confidence in modern life, Laura Barton considers how far our schooling and social background influence our confidence.

In the second part of her three part series, Laura Barton explores the extent to which the schools we attend and our social backgrounds more generally play a part in determining our levels of confidence. 
She visits a state comprehensive school and an independent fee-paying school, both in the North West of England, to discover how much effort is made to ensure the confidence of pupils is actively developed, and the means by which that development might take place. She questions how far the network of influential contacts more readily made at private schools can help generate confidence in pupils as they set out into the world, but hears too how for many youngsters today a mask of confidence can often cover a sense of insecurity. 
Laura speaks to figures such as Joe Queenan, Dreda Say Mitchell and Stuart Maconie about the ways the place you come from can influence confidence, whether that's the vast expanses of America, the East End of London or the industrial north of England. For Queenan, his own self-confidence comes from a combination of indifference to others' attitude towards him, and a childhood in relative poverty. Once you know you can deal with that, he says, such things as public speaking that terrify so many carry little fear. 
Laura follows up her notion that an unexpected factor in determining is architecture and the built environment in which we're raised, asking expert John Grindrod how correct Winston Churchill was when he said that, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."
Presenter: Laura Barton
Producer: Geoff Bird.

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