dr. sutton also has written a book on the civil war

dr. sutton also has written a book on the civil war era in kansas published by sky horse publishing in august 2017, and he and his son lee are editing an autobiography written by his father and lee's grandfather. with that i would like to introduce mr. robert k. sutton. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> i can't tell you how excited i am to be here. this is -- i mean i'm sitting here with goosebumps while i'm hearing the names of the victims of quantrel's raid and you actually hear their names in this setting and it's really quite moving. i have, before i get going here, my wife and my son came with me, they're in the back row, and two of my oldest, oldest friends from california, and i'm going to tell you, we were all like 5 years old when we got acquainted, sitting here on the second row, gary colter and rick anderson. so this is a very special day for me. one of the things that interested me in this topic, was that my great, i got to say -- sometimes you have trouble keeping track of the great, great, greats, but my great, great, great grandmother, my great, gr

dr. sutton, i'm particularly interested in your history with regard to the confederate monuments. >> i'm sorry, to laugh but we were just talking before. i said i bet the fist question i get -- yes, it took three. >> so particularly is it your viewpoint that we should leave those up as a reminder of our past, or should they be removed? and if they should be removed, what is the criteria for deciding which of our monuments and statues should be removed? >> that's a good question, but it's supposed to be yes or no, though. no, i have a -- to me it's a complicated issue. and i've been thinking about it actually for quite a while. and i have been thinking of it in the context of the confederate flag. so the confederate battle flag, you know the st. andrews cross, the battle flag, to me it has no place at all in our country. i don't care what anyone says, and the reason is it essentially disappeared from the public entirely until a civil rights movement. and the confederate battle flag became the symbol of the anti-civil rights movement. and so it should be done away with, and that's my view

earlier i spoke to dr lee elliot major, the ceo of the sutton trust about the what he made of the resignationsthis issue of social mobility is such a big challenge. alan milburn has done a greatjob in challenging the government, and i think it isjust challenging the government, and i think it is just because brexit is dominating so much of what government does, it is hard. this is a generational challenge. literally, we are a country stuck in many ways, including journalism. the proportion of people at the very top have been at 15%. we are producing many children who don't have basic numeracy and literacy. these are profound problems so i think the government is doing good things but it could do more. justine greening said there are a transformation or series of policies across government departments on social mobility. do you accept that or is that an exaggeration? i think there are good things. we have something called the pupil premium funding. we're a country which designates funding for disadvantaged students in particular. that is a good thing but you can always do more. we need to look