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

I'm GenX with teens (wish I'd had them earlier so they didn't have to deal with all this tech crap). I raise my daughters to be independent, competent, not just academically but in practical things, not to take shit from boys or girls, have an excellent work ethic and strive towards being able to work and maintain their own independent lifestyles. I also teach them not to act superior but nonetheless confident in themselves and their abilities. One of them got a bit into social media, we have allowed some of it but discuss privacy, not sharing identifying or personal images at all. We talk about feminism, self worth and the value of work and money earned in a manner that is sustainable and promotes self respect. We were appalled to see that Youtube has a donate / pay function where viewers can transfer monetary gifts to a popular YT channel. Slippery slope and fast track to only fans. They know about this and how people can come to rely on likes = money = having to come up with more and more daring content.

In terms of role models, their dad and granddad are amazing cooks, they iron their own clothes and do household chores with pride. Family finances are shared fairly. It's about mutual respect and self respect.

They'll have to look very, very carefully to find likeminded friends and partners in the future. The climate out there is rough and selfish, and it's a lot due to brain rotting social media. It brings out the very worst in people.

Luddite26 · Today 11:11

She got into trouble ? Wow just wow!

There was a lot of shouting and bad language!

I don't have children at school so I can't comment on any rise in misogyny. What I have noticed through youth work is a rise in girls who want to be models/influencers and such like. We had a recent session where we were discussing role models and people we admire, they were told about this before hand so they had time to think about it and the following week we were discussing what makes a good role model and the girls could tell us who theirs was. We had made sure to say a role model doesn't have to be someone famous it could be a relative a teacher a friend even a fictional character. It was really disappointing how many girls came back with male role models or female influencers. This is girls age 7 -10.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14055317/bizarre-things-Russell-Brand-dated-huge-red-flags-BRYONY-GORDON.html

This seems to fit right in with the theme of this thread.

Apologies for the horrendous image of RB featured with the link. Should come with a warning. 😳

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?

I have to check myself constantly on this, as a white middle-class woman, especially as our Head is a woman of colour. But I'm very familiar with DD's school, as a parent, governor and volunteer, and I can confidently say that under its newly decolonised curriculum it would be entirely possible to reach the end of Year 6 never having heard of Shakespeare, Newton, Mozart, Neil Armstrong or Stephen Hawking. Pretty much every white male role model has been stripped out of the curriculum and replaced with a woman and/or POC. David Attenborough seems to be the only one who gets a pass, due to his environmental campaigning. Most of the role models are also African American rather than Black British - I'm assuming because our decolonised curriculum has been lifted directly from the American model - there's lots of content about segregation, Jim Crow Laws etc.

Not sure how typical this is, though, or whether our school is an outlier. I'm in a demographically very mixed but majority white school in a London suburb.

I have noticed this in my daughter's primary school. She is in Y5. She does not watch Youtube or go on social media, but has come home with phrases copied from other children that have clearly come from there eg talking about sigmas, roasts, cut-g etc etc. I don't think the children using it actually know what these things mean as they are said completely in the wrong context. But it does show the misogyny filtering down via osmosis. It is not just that, there is SO much more 'these are boy things, these are girl things' than there was when I was at primary. I noticed it in toy shops and clothes when she was a baby/ toddler also. I am Gen X, and as discussed above, things were very different back then. Loads of girls at primary with short hair, lego was just lego, none of this ninjago for boys, lego friends for girls stuff etc. Every single girl at my daughter's school has long hair. Lots of posing like influencers. But there is a girls football team. So a lot of backwards movement in what is considered 'feminine', but some progress in other ways. The boys take up SO much more space in the playground - she is always complaining of being crashed into by boys playing football. That I have noticed everywhere we go though, not just at school. Boys take up/ are given so much space eg in swimming pools, on campsites, playgrounds. The entitlement starts so young. Girls need space too but they are squeezed out. On PE, they have it twice a week. It is currently hockey and football. Last half term was gymnastics and tag rugby. They occasionally do dance (one half term a year).
Curriculum does not seem to have been decolonised but has been diversified (village in the home counties) eg they studied both Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole when they did nurses. Books do tend to be more 'boy-friendly' as they have moved up the years. Key texts always have male main characters.

Our grandson is 4 and has started this year. His best friend there is a girl in his class and his two best friends outside of school are both girls, one a year older and they were the only children the other saw during Covid, and another little girl 18 months younger.

He obviously holds no negative feelings towards girls.

If a 6 year old is saying things like that, it’s coming from home/family. Our family doesn’t hold such views.

I’m a secondary school teacher and on a previous thread I mentioned the issue of space. Boys taking up more desk room, spreading their legs out so girls sitting next to them had hardly any room, boys standing too close to female staff as they’re taller and often use this to try intimidate. I was routinely shot down by posters calling me ridiculous and “boy bashing”. It becomes more and more of an issue as they get older, the idea that it’s a male world and the space belongs to them primarily.

Curriculum does not seem to have been decolonised but has been diversified (village in the home counties) eg they studied both Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole when they did nurses. Books do tend to be more 'boy-friendly' as they have moved up the years. Key texts always have male main characters

Just to add that I think diversifying the curriculum is a very good thing - offering up different significant figures and role models alongside each other, taking a more internationalist approach to History etc. That's what was going on in most schools I taught in until about five years ago. But what DD's school has done is not this - they have literally stripped white men out of the curriculum.

It's not all boys, I suspect it is the same ones who are coming out with the misogynistic phrases - it is all coming from the parents - so it is the ones whose parents have taught them entitlement and superiority. My daughter has 2 close friends from nursery who are boys and they are lovely and not at all like that. Their parents would not let them be. But there are a loud dominating set of them who are. I suspect the boys who are not like that are also being pushed out of spaces. I feel for the ones in my daughter's class who are not into football as the ones who are are very dominant and their culture presides over the playground. For some reason her class has a lot of these type of boys, only a couple of the more what I might call geeky ones, for want of a better description. Her class is also boy-heavy so it may also be more noticeable.

Every single white man? Kings? Scientists? Authors? Painters?

It does sound a bit like boy bashing when you are criticising them for how they sit and stand. How's their moving around? OK for you or a bit too boyish?

With teachers opinions like that, I'm not surprised that teenagers are lapping up the likes of Tate.

Primary school kids especially do parrot what they see and hear politicians saying - I remember kids talking about "an oven ready" brexit a few years back.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. It isn’t how they sit or move around. It’s the deliberate taking up of space, in an unnecessary way. It’s the use of their 6ft+ frame to try and intimidate females. You can think what you like but I see it day-in-day-out. I’m not the reason for a rise in misogyny, I’m merely observing it.

I am a child of the 70’s where the “new” ideas on child raising were all based around equality- letting boys play with dolls etc.

i find the whole blue brain/pink brain thing contributes. People are convinced boys and girls socialised behaviours are due to biology, which is leading us back down the path that girls should be soft and gentle, look after kids etc while boys do the big alpha macho thing.

saw it last week on a fb post- someone actually witnessed a kid being beaten up. Then prefaced their post with “it might have just boys being boys”. Nope. If a kid is on the floor being kicked it is not normal male behaviour.

Dunno. It mainly sounds like you don't like boys. Presumably those that you teach pick up on that, have to look elsewhere for validation that being male is OK, and into the arms of Tate et al.

I think that you might well be part of the problem.

My sister & I are amazed at some of the things our brother gets up to at school. We had to frequently take him aside and make him realise that girls were PEOPLE with as much right to exist as he had, and that the girls changing rooms were not places for him and his mates to hang around! This was when he was 7 or 8. He's now 11 and my sister (who's 16) and one of her friends keep a firm eye on what he and his mates get up to!

@Combattingthemoaners Yes, pretty much every single one, unless it's an aspect of the curriculum where choices over role models are nigh on impossible, for example the Anglo-Saxons. Anything non-statutory will be a woman or person of colour.

For example, in a recent Space topic, Neil Armstrong was replaced with Frederick D. Gregory. In 'Aviators', Amelia Earhart has been replaced with Bessie Coleman. All three of the picture books that DD covered in her Yr2 class last term had female POC protagonists. Remembrance Day assembly focused on the perspective of Black British soldiers fighting in the Normandy landings. Last year we were asked to research a science role model for a science topic, but they had to be Black (each class was allocated a different scientist).

As I said, I have zero issue with diversity and cultural representation, but I strongly believe that this full-on expunging of white men from the curriculum is going to backfire massively in the long-term. I am totally on board with the adage: 'You can't be it if you can't see it' - and certainly in DD's school at present the white working class boys aren't 'seeing it'.

As I said, you can think what you like. You can also choose to ignore a professional opinion and observation and instead choose to think I merely hate boys.

Another example of darvo 😴

No, just disappointed that my DS is likely to be taught by people with so little respect for him.

This is part of the problem.

If we’re not allowed to comment on boys taking up all the room so that nobody else has any, standing too close to others on purpose in order to intimidate them, using all of the space on the playground nobody else can, without “shaming” boys for “being male”, then were never going to improve anything.

These behaviours aren’t “being male” - they’re behaviours which we tolerate in the male sex because we live in a patriarchal society, but they’re not inherent in the male sex. Patriarchy hurts boys who don’t conform to the behaviour you describe as “being male” - they’re seen as sissies or betas or accused of being gay.

It limits young boys so much to essentially say that they’re boys so can’t have consideration for others and must intimidate them, because they’re male and that’s just what they do. A person challenging that is doing way more to help boys grow and learn than someone who stands there and cheers them on as they take over everything and prevent others having it, because “being male” is apparently something teachers need to actively celebrate or they’re contributing to the problem.

You have decided I have no respect for 50% of my students. Not me.

You wrote it, not me. The way they sit is a problem, the way they stand is a problem, their voices are probably too loud and deep as well, right? In fact, the World would be a much better place without their lot. For an individual boy, that's a horrible thing for them to pick up on. On a societal level, there seems to be pushback. Misguided and a massive overcorrection maybe (not that I listen to much Andrew Tate tbf) but understandable I think. In a funny way I'm a little bit proud of them ✊