To think primary schools now days are more misogynistic amongst the boys, than in the past?

[Thatcastlethere]

I hate to be all 'back in the good old days' and tbh I don't even think it was that great in the past... I think I just expected it to be better now days.
But am I wrong for feeling like there's been a massive upsurge in misogynistic feeling amongst primary age boys?
My two eldest are at primary school. It's a state school but it's regarded as a good school in a very middle class area. It's also considered a faintly hippy/alternative place.
Yet some of the things I've seen and heard regarding my 9yo son and my 6yo daughters experiences at school have really shocked me.
My son for example uses all this language 'sigma' 'alpha' etc... well he did until I explained to him that it was harmful macho nonsense. He's also asked me about andrew tate and trump etc as these people seem to be hero's for some of his male friends. These boys are 9!!
My son doesn't have unsupervised access to the Internet. And the access he does have is limited to one hour on his tablet in the living room on weekend days. During which he just plays roblox and Minecraft. We have disabled YouTube from the TV and he is not allowed YouTube on his tablet.. yet he still seems to come across endless misogynistic content at school somehow.
My son is a sweet boy imo and he forms his own opinions.. he was telling me how he disliked andrew tate for example, without me even having said anything
So it's not that I'm worried about him absorbing these ideas.. it's just a bit concerning that it's so prevalent!
I've also overheard some of his friends in the park sating horrific things about girls and women. Once I even heard one of them threatening to punch a girl. I did step in at this and told him it was disgusting and the boy did look faintly ashamed at least.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Also my 6yo has been subject to comments on her appearance by boys! Already at 6!
I'm sure it wasn't quite this bad wen I was at school or perhaps I just didn't notice?
My husband is a fair bit older than me and was also remarking that he never knew anything like this at school..
Altho obviously misogyny was alive and well when we were kids.. you just never really heard this so directly

what I couldn’t understand was where it came from? Is it kids watching nasty Andrew Tate stuff and you tube even at that age?! Or violence in the home?

If a reception aged child is punching girls hard enough to leave bruises and forcing them to kiss him then it is much more likely he is seeing and experiencing that behaviour at home than that he has been listening to Andrew Tate or any other social media figure.

I completely agree with you. I think there are so many positive female role models for girls. My DD is big into Taylor Swift and can have a good talk with you about lgbtq rights or women's rights. My son is making "your mama's so fat jokes" Instantly corrected by me but I do worry that I'll loose influence eventually. The internet is awash with highly misogynistic young men spreading this stuff.

Can people think of some positive male role models for boys? I'm sure there must be some.

I used to worry/discuss the rap music of the 00s with my son in a similar way to how I discuss Tate with Grandsons. But the constant social media/YouTube into kids heads is a problem now which makes it easier for kids to ignore what the people who are bringing them up say.
My GS 6 started Reception last year and was battered every day. He's a gentle giant. He refused to go back after Xmas. School chose to victim blame and say boys will be boys etc. this was the son of a lady who had been at school with my DD. It was the same school. Times have changed a lot since the 00s to now. Some parents are too busy on the socials to parent properly. It's very sad.

I think there are multiple issues. Firstly I think the y1 curriculum seems to be too much for lots of boys. Reception seems to work well and then rigid learning seems to start quite early and you start to see more boys getting into trouble. It’s been so obvious at the class parties that the girls all listen to entertainers etc and the boys are running around.

That shouldn’t be happening really but something is coming out in the differences in how girls and boys are being raised and the type of play lots are engaging in. I also think our school enforce some of this by having much greater expectations of the girls re behaviours. Boys seem to get away with a lot more. My 8yo is really fed up with some of the aggressive and disruptive behaviour from the boys in her class.

So many of the boys seem to be on first person shooting computer games quite early for example. In some ways the differences between girls and boys in primary seem to be more pronounced than I was ever expecting.in upper primary the girls seem to be being influenced by things like skin care etc and making them grow up far too fast as well.

In upper primary the girls seem to be being influenced by things like skin care etc and making them grow up far too fast as well.

I agree with this as well but it's just not comparable to what's happening with "boy culture" there is a violent, angry man culture that will impact all of our boys. And it's difficult to know how to counteract it.

I see attitudes like this... on every single dating thread on MN. It's thoroughly depressing that so many women buy into it, and fail to see how insisting on traditional gender roles is the bedrock of our own oppression.

@30percent

Your child is 7. He doesn't know who Andrew Tate is yet but he most certainly will. You won't keep him from social media forever and from the moment he logs in the algorithm will start pushing the violent, harmful content that other teenage boys are watching. If you have a DD, she won't see any of that, she'll be pushed content about make up, dance and music.

None of us are in a bubble, eventually the outer culture will impact him.

Are you kidding me? Primary schools are the most namby pampby, kind hands, that's not ok, no bulldog at break times, gymnastics and dance for PE environment on earth. Totally unrewarding for most young boys in my opinion.

Maybe if you are seeing those things, they are a reaction to normal boyness being supressed like it is.

I wouldn't say this is the case, it is the Millennials that have many INCEL types, the most famous being mentioned. Gen X was very much where equality was strived for - loads of sexism but it was confronted more not celebrated. Gen X have mostly brought up Gen Z so I think those attitudes have filtered down. Millennials are more likely to have primary aged children and perhaps this is a reflection of their parents' attitudes.

Yeah I'm aware he's 7 I was responding to someone who also had a 7 year old boy.
There's people on here saying they work in schools and 5-8 year olds love Tate. I'm just saying that's the parents fault for letting them roam the internet unsupervised.

Teenagers are different, Tate will probably be irrelevant by the time mine is a teenager. Internet stars die out quicky. I was a teen in the 10s using the internet so I do know this.

Hmmmm....I'm not sure. I remember kiss chase, talk about "snogging" and being punched by the boys at junior school in the late 80s. Also lots of use of the word "gay" as a slur (as well as "fascist", although none of us knew what it meant. While I hear from DS1 that the biggest insult at his school nowadays is "Tory").

DS2 went through a phase of using inappropriate language at primary school (he's autistic) and it was very much picked up on 😳. I had to explain to the head that just because he kept on saying "Balls" he had very much not been exposed to porn, just a combination of his big brother and the constant innuendos on Bake Off, which we watch together 🤦‍♀️ Still, I'm glad they take inappropriate language so seriously.

This is exactly why these kids are going the other way imo they're at school being taught you can change gender and other bullshit so they rebel by going the complete opposite way. I'm 23 and I saw this starting to happen when I left school in 2017.

I have Gen Z teenagers and in their circles at least they don't post photos and obsess over social media, they laugh at influencers, it is a rejection of the Millennial's approach, who were/are prolific users of the digital landscape in this way. Access to the internet at primary age maybe less of a dilemma if you yourself have existed like that.

To be fair all fairy tales are pretty horrifying!! I do wonder about this; as a secondary English teacher a large part of my curriculum has some fairly awful stuff but we deal with it very differently. On other hand a good knowledge of fairytales really unlocks a lot of cultural background in literature. I don’t have primary kids so guess there’s not a lot of discussion about these tropes in R and what happens with books just sent home to be read?

*Are you kidding me? Primary schools are the most namby pampby, kind hands, that's not ok, no bulldog at break times, gymnastics and dance for PE environment on earth. Totally unrewarding for most young boys in my opinion.

Maybe if you are seeing those things, they are a reaction to normal boyness being supressed like it*

I partly agree with this. I would say that the primary school environment is now way too static and screen-based (it's death by PowerPoint in many lessons I see) and is squashing the natural urge of all children - not just boys - to move around and explore. This needs to change IMO - more things like Forest School and outdoor learning would be great for everyone, and reflects the kind of experiences I had as a kid.

Conversely, boys, in my experience, are still allowed to take up more space in playground than girls at break times, and are often pandered to in things like class reading choices - so much hand-wringing about how we can only choose books with a male protagonist, or with football/war themes because the boys will disengage from anything else. The girls are expected to suck this up.

And what is 'normal boyness'? As I can't see any way in which using 'kind hands' (which generally just means not manhandling, grabbing or assaulting your peers) or being told certain behaviours aren't OK would contravene 'boyhood'.

My DD's school has one PE lesson each week based around ball skills/team games and one based around dance, gym and movement - a fair balance I think.

This is exactly why these kids are going the other way imo they're at school being taught you can change gender and other bullshit so they rebel by going the complete opposite way. I'm 23 and I saw this starting to happen when I left school in 2017

I very much agree about the gender ideology, which I think damages both young boys' and girls' perceptions of themselves at a crucial stage of development.

I also think the rush to decolonise the curriculum at primary level needs to be looked at again as, rightly or wrongly, white working class boys in particular are interpreting this messaging as being told that they and their ilk are the 'baddies' in everything. I don't think DD's school has ever promoted a white male figure as a positive role model since she's been there (she's currently Year 2). All scientists and political and historical figures have been people of colour, often women and frequently activists. From what I'm seeing, I do think some of the boys are feeling disenfranchised from a very early age.

Definitely this.

My DS is 10. He and his peers really enjoy manhandling and grabbing each other. Also rugby tackling and rolling around on the floor 🤷🏻‍♂️ But they would settle for being allowed to decide for themselves if the risk of a graze or a bruise is worth it for a game of bulldog. Even tag and football seem to be heavily discouraged atm. Hugely risky on a wet playground apparently.

It's annoying for me because we have to actively seek this stuff out for him outside school.

But yes, I agree with you, maybe it's childless rather than boyness. They all need to be a bit more free to play as they see fit.

childness

Its the fact that it is in the Oxford Reading scheme which annoys me. I feel it quite unthinking.
My dd1 had a friend who went to Pakistan in the summer hols and never returned as did her sister the following year. I know laws have changed now. But this book and many others need binning.

@Ablondiebutagoody It's such a fine line to tread, but I agree with you that some (many?) schools are getting this wrong at the moment.

Yes playground games have become much tamer than when I was at school (I remember Bulldog well!). I think schools need to strike a balance between allowing the more physical kids to let off steam, and not intimidating the less boisterous ones. I made a point about girls' football upthread, and issues around this often arise because both boys and girls want to play, but the boys (to generalise) do so in a more physical way than the girls, and the girls end up being squeezed out (or the boys refuse point blank to play with them, which happens a lot IME). It's not that girls don't need to move too, but they tend to use the space differently from boys, and schools somehow need to accommodate both.

Unfortunately many schools have limited playground space and staffing resources, which means they generally err on the side of caution - I'm aware of several local schools, primary and secondary, where there's a 'no running' rule in the playground due to lack of space. And there are parents who will take legal action at the drop of a hat - there have been several recent injuries (breakages) resulting from use of the trim trail at our school, and guess what - it has now been closed off as one set of parents has threatened to sue over their child's broken wrist.

None of this would be so much of an issue, though, if the rest of the curriculum outside break times wasn't so dull and sedentary. There are so few opportunities to move around in lessons now that by play time the children are climbing the walls. We need to look at the primary curriculum again and design one that leaves room for kids to be kids.

Just to add that, yes, I think it's a 'child problem' rather than a 'boy problem'. We too are having to arrange a lot of active extra-curriculars for DD7 because there's so little physical activity happening at school. We also make sure we walk to school and back every day, partly because we're aware that once she's there she's basically sitting down all day. She's never remotely tired out after her school day because they just don't move around enough.

The upper KS2 class I volunteer in are essentially behaving like caged animals by the time they go home, largely because other than break and lunch times they've been staring at 40-odd slide PowerPoints all day.

100% this.

Whether people like to admit it or not most of the greatest inventions were invented by white men so to completely ignore this and only focus on inventors because they're not white or they're woman well the kids are going to see this as the steaming pile of shit it is as they get older. Don't get me wrong nothing wrong with teaching about non white and women inventors but no white male ones at all?
Plus most kids just instinctively know you can't change gender so if they have a teacher telling them they can the they will start wondering what else is bullshit.

This kind of stuff is why a lot of kids are going the complete opposite way which we really don't want because the opposite of this is racist and homophobic kids. Schools should go back to teaching a more balanced approach

Thatcastlethere

My son for example uses all this language 'sigma' 'alpha' etc... well he did until I explained to him that it was harmful macho nonsense.

I haven't come across that - can you explain? My 11 year old daughter says sigma constantly, as do her (female) friends - meaning cool. She knows who Andrew Tate is and despises him. She got in trouble for having a row with a boy who was praising him.

She got into trouble @SinnerBoy ? Wow just wow!