So I read the Dulwich College post and now the allegations about Highgate School on Newsnight. There are fulsome letters to both schools governors published online. They make for heartbreaking and stomach churning reading. I am so angry. I've just read the 'Everyone's invited' website and I can see how entrenched misogyny, rape culture, slut shaming, homophobia and racism are in the named school. - mostly private but a few selective.
And underling them all is a powerful suggestion that school leadership is all about 'boys will be boys', reputation management and 'there's two sides to every story'. So traumatised female students are forced into silence and reduced to walking the corridors with their abusers with lots of mockery and slutt shaming accompanying them. Its so disgusting - it is beyond anything that can be excused. Who on earth wants our sons to be recruited into this misogynistic and coercive rape culture or our daughters abused and living in fear of it?
I've stated my views on other threads. My kids went to a not so perfect state school in London. The big difference to these accounts is that they experienced a very 'woke' and 'right on' school culture that demonstrated a zero tolerance culture and empowerment of the female students. They were so empowered they actively and powerfully called out sexist, racist and homophobic behaviours and the perpetrators - boys - were called to account formally and informally. It was not a perfect school at all - there was drugs, sexual behaviour and bullying but the culture of the school was so zero tolerance it went beyond a few PHSE chats it was inculcated in the ethos of the whole school. the predominant culture was mature female and diverse voices,, backed by teachers and the leadership of the school articulating a mature and equitable world. To be fair I think the boys followed behind.
But I'm not focused on my DC's experiences. I'm absolutely choked that the Harvey Weinstein, rape assertive power dynamic is prospering in school environments. Its disgusting. I hope there is a root and branch review and parents start asking about the character that private and selective schools engender |not just the results. There's an old adage that a[rents of boys would prefer them to be civilised by being schooled alongside their female contemporaries but that girls do better in all female environments.
It is such a joke when we talk about equality in work environments when so many women have been exposed to these brutish rapey school environments. We will never change society if we don't change education. And we have to more actively prepare our young men for decent and egalitarian behaviour to women and our young women to be empowered to be empowered and seek retribution. But in the end it will be leadership in schools that have a primarily male culture that makes the biggest difference investigating and punishing out sexist and abusive behaviour and treating perpetrators in the same way as students accused of drugs offences. And secondly, peer pressure amongst young men at parties, on school buses and in classes that really calls out bad behaviour.- this is not who we are as men. It really, really matters. And parents can't leave it to someone else. They need to actively avoid school environments with toxic cultures and probe how they exert a zero tolerance egalitarian culture. Take action, remove your money and change the economy of private schooling.