Teachers who have watched 'Adolescence'- what are your thoughts?

[Fstt1978]

Had an interesting experience this week after watching this at the weekend

sanctioned 4 boys this week with a demerit each - for pushing and shoving in the corridor- swearing loudly and generally being gobby to me.
All 4 boys parents have written emails to say it's unfair/ I'm picking on them etc etc. As it was 4 of them- none of them can be singled out.
We also have a boy caught on CCTV physically assaulting a much younger student unprovoked - it is categorically an assault- with the victims parents pressing charges. He has been permanently excluded and his parents have instructed a solicitor to contest this.

What is going on with parenting boys? Girls sanctioned rarely have parents like this - this is NOT a goady thread- I am genuinely really interested , and open to discussion about it

I am so frustrated reading some of these comments.

Some of them sneering at the OP just for daring to be a teacher with an opinion.

Others pointlessly bringing up private schools, which might as well be another world.

Look this is simple enough for me.

As a non-teacher but a parent of two DCs at school age, I see parents who are embarrassing with how confrontational they are with the school who is trying to tell them something.

Maybe they think their kids should just cross the line every day and melt into some sort of teenage childcare arena where nothing is ever anyone's fault and 'everyone is learning'.

However when that doesn't happen, and their dear child does something wrong, they need to listen to the school. Seriously - they need to actually listen, turn off their mouths and all the high-pitched anger, and start to work with the school to find out where they can build a shared solution, together.

I am sick and fucking tired of parents who can't recognise this, and think "sticking up for my child" is parenting.

Not the point of the thread, but the teen actor who played Jamie did a fantastic job.

I worked in a state secondary where they trialled this approach and so many parents complained. Their children's "human rights" were being violated apparently. Some parents said they wouldn't send their kids into school if they weren't allowed their phone. Some said they needed their phones on them at all times "for their Mental Health". One parent said he was going to call the Police as it was "theft", another accused us of initiating the policy "so teachers can snoop through childrens phones". It was beyond ridiculous.

In my experience, a lot of those going to private schools have their fees paid by grandparents or wealthy extended family members.

There is family money underpinning it all.

Where I am, that seems to predominantly be from rental properties. The mums tend not to work and the dads do anything from plumbing to banking. But the fees are almost always paid by rental income from multiple properties owned by grandparents.

That's the point though, in the context of the manosphere ideology, private schools are not another world, in fact back in 21 with the #Me Too movement the private school reports of sexual harassment and assault were more reported on than state schools. All the things you list are not acting in a vaccum, it's a wider societal context that has promoted extreme and confrontational behaviour in every walk of life.

Look at politics and the examples they have set. Society is going through a psychotic episode where many people are angry but they don't know what they are angry about, the manosphere it completely a manifestation of this as people don't know or care about substantial issues like they used to- things like equality, fairness that anger seen over the manosphere issues used to be channeled into challenging perceived injustices like the Miner's strikes, the poll tax riots, the state of the Health care but people are not interested in those things now as the proximity to understanding politics and its impact on every day life is huge compared to in the past. Neither is there a understanding of civic duty, it is self interest and cynicism that rules the day and the parents that you say don't listen are a manifestation of that.

Which highlights another massive problem in society the huge gap between the asset rich and the asset poor, the balance is so off and needs to be addressed as it just makes more people angry and depressed and they seek out solace on the internet.

Agreed @Goldenbear but that gap is about to get chasm-like in the next ten years as the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth ever will appear.

There will literally be a society of haves and have nots. If your parents bought property in the 70s-90s, you will prosper. If they didn't or never got on the ladder, you will be outside looking in like the proverbial little match girl of the fairytales. * *

Misogyny started in Year 1 at my daughters’ school. Boys trying to ban girls from playing on the sports field at lunch, or saying they were only allowed in if the girls stood still and had the boys line up to fire footballs at their faces. My daughter was afraid of being picked on by boys and so started saying she wanted only to have and wear “boys” things as otherwise they would mock her for being “girly”. It was hard for her as she wanted to play active games - the boys would tolerate the girls if they only played fairy tea party with each other but didn’t like any girls encroaching into their spaces and preferred activities.

The head teacher had to have a year group assembly and speak to them all about gender equality and respect for others. It seemed to settle down after that for a bit, but my younger child is now in Year 1 and experiencing similar things. At a recent Year 1 parents’ assembly I went to, children were asked to stand up and share their “hopes and dreams for the world” - a little girl stood up and said “I dream of the boys letting the girls play equally in the MUGA”.

Misogyny starts very young and is pervasive and many people don’t really care. Loads of parents thought it was hilarious when that little girl said that. There was a roar of laughter - she must have thought that it was laughable for her to expect equality.

This is probably not going to be a popular opinion but I think the influence of Tate and the “Manosphere” is vastly overstated.

The sort of behaviour seen in schools now is not hugely different to that seen 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Of course social media has had an impact but I reckon the things you’d hear in the corridors today are very similar to what would have been heard in 1989.

The thing with today is we have to diagnose everything.

The shy, awkward introverts of yesterday now have (undiagnosed) ASD. The boisterous, terribly behaved boy now has (undiagnosed) ADHD. Your kid doesn’t want to get up and go to school? Perfectly normal behaviour - only now it’s seen as indicative of “anxiety”.

And now we have unpleasant, disengaged, arrogant, “typical” teenage boys who are full of hubris and who pick on the boys and girls they see as beneath them. They’ve always existed. Only now we need to explain this behaviour and so we look to blame Tate and liken these kids to a man who’s accused of being a mass-raping human trafficker. And some may argue that this demonisation of these boys in this way isn’t helping matters.

There has always been problems with the behaviour of some boys and some girls in schools. Being a teenager is a horrible experience - but we all muddle through somehow. Some of the horrible kids grow up and some don’t. I think the expectation that kids should be happy and content and comfortable all the time - particularly during these teenage years - is misguided.

Of course I’m talking about everyday behaviour here - the knife and drug culture is totally different and needs to be dealt with, along with the ridiculous “roadman” shite that’s everywhere.

I will say that I think a lot of people have been taken in by the tracking shots and have forgotten that this drama is a work of fiction and not a documentary.

I’d also add that my experience of private schools - though relatively limited - has taught me that you’ll find far more drugs, drug dealing and weapons in those schools than you will in your standard (out of city) state school. But then you’ll always find more drugs in areas where there’s more money.

Agree. I think there is a big difference between parents of today and just 40 or so years ago. Some of those differences are detrimental to the kids whilst parents defy teachers and school rules and policies because they as parents think they know better. I’m minded of a recent news piece of which there are many where a parent took their kid out of school to go on holiday. They were fined and took the matter to court…. Disgraceful waste of taxpayers money and now that kid and others will think they are above the system. They aren’t. They are equal.

Most of our parents just worked or were in the armed forces so partly funded by the Home Office. I’ve had three at private school and know of two kids funded by grandparents and one who rented a place in France. In there senior school most kids came from abroad ie Russia China Kazakhstan etc so irrelevant to our economy. Most prep schools however hav working parents and with lots of interschool events you get to meet a lot of them along the way.

This is so good

Misogyny at mu school is insidious. If a girl does a presentation, boys talk the whole time. Boys presenting have silent audience. Boys clap for each other in a yobbish way, if a girl wins, silence and they clap the boy who came next in order as the real winner

My neighbours are house sharing tenants and we know the Landlord as he is a very entitled man that requires access to the back of his house via our house, he has many properties around the City and is paying for all of his grandchildren's private school fees via the rental income. I think this is quite common place now as brought up by a different poster and regardless of your experience it is silly to deny that the gap between the richest and poorest is vast and as another poster pointed out getting bigger! IMO it is a fundamental issue that is detrimental to the relative harmony of society.

Where hav I said the gap between the richest and poorest isn’t vast. I haven’t mentioned anything of the kind. Your neighbour rents and pays school fees. Good for him at least they aren’t costing £8000 each to the taxpayers. Glad you know you hav at least one to quote tho. However when you are actually in the system you see many more.

But 40 years ago the school wouldn’t have thought it could say anything about a student having a family holiday. There has been an encroachment by schools into family life and parents have had no say in it.

I agree with a previous poster that the plethora of ridiculous rules and regulations that schools impose has had a detrimental impact on the level of respect shown to teachers by both students and parents - and it’s had time to bed in because today’s parents were among the first cohorts who experienced this level of nit-picking when they were at school.

Kids are now reprimanded for having their hair too short, or too long, or too curly. They get a detention for wearing socks that are dark grey instead of black. Or the soles of their shoes are too thick. All this does is foster an antagonistic environment.

The standards and professionalism of a lot of teachers has also plummeted. I left school 15 years ago but I remember teachers like the newly qualified male teacher in that school who seemed terrible. I remember the soft teachers who had no gravitas and who didn’t really do anything at all. I remember teachers who were just not very bright. English teachers getting confused between “their” and “there”. Teachers who would spend 40 minutes out of a 60 minute lesson niggling the class - top set or non-disruptive kids - about ties and top buttons and untucked shirts. Because then they could say they’d “done something” and the end of the hour, and it was a hell of a lot easier to do that than teach. Frankly I think a lot of parents work in the private sector and see schools in a way that teachers who have only ever worked in schools and who only ever socialise with other teachers can’t appreciate.

Rules should largely be followed but kids need to be brought up to realise they have agency and they need to develop analytical skills. The lockdowns taught us that many will blindly do anything because “the rules said I could” and couldn’t understand that the point of the rules was to limit the spread of a virus and not make your life more difficult for the sake of it.

Interesting viewpoint.i agree with a lot of this. A lot of this is down to parenting. End of. There is so little ownership of the parents of their child's behaviour. Where did this misogyny develop from ? We blame phones and social media but where is the parental supervision.

To be honest it's the ongoing theme of teenagers having an insular world, and parents are fools if they think they know what is going on. The innocent looking pill emoji is a great example of that.

Its a tale as old as time. My mum would tell you I was a nerdy child that needed to get a life and she would have like me to be a bit "bolder'. But 14 I had taken a range of drugs, chatting to men online, shared nudes and got drunk in fields. I grew up in an age of unrestricted Internet use.

Now days because parents feel aufait with the Internet they feel like they know what kids are exposed to but in reality most people are completely ineffective at Internet monitoring. Most people aren't able to recognise suspicious apps, other ways kids can navigate the Internet, recognise slang, abbreviations etc. Most 12 year olds would know how to download things to hide their tracks, fake message apps etc. Even if you are shit hot, you can't monitor friends conversations and what they see on a friends phone

People confidently say their kids would have no idea what 80/20 means despite it being clear via research that a massive majority of fairly young kids do.

Realistically did anyone feel their parents had an accurate grasp on what they were exposed to as kid or what they were talking about with friends?

My goodness, have you been on Mumsnet for a very long time as I don't recognise your name. It is almost like a sensationalist news reporter is responding to me- extracting my points with no reference to the original context so I'll start again- I responded in support of another poster detailing the family wealth paying private school fees. This is therefore a manifestation of the asset wealth inequality that sadly exists in British society and it's getting worse. There is definitely a link between isolated young men seeking validation from the manosphere ideology and people having less civic duty than they used to have, including, even as a fairly wealthy person not wanting this asset and wealth disparity. It needs to be addressed, owning endless properties whilst some families have a room to share and actively profiteering off that inequality is distasteful IMO. It is the same with Air BNBs ruining the City that I live in, sitting empty. I have family in Denmark and you have to have year around residency and lived in the country for five years before you could buy the property. Where I am these properties are foreign investment portfolios and it has changed the character of the city. It exacerbates the housing problems and is immoral considering they are empty 60% of the time!

So are you saying you know the wealth inequality is vast but never mind as it doesn't impact you? I don't get how you don't see how this attitude is part of the problem!

@GoneOffTheRails another ASD/ADHD bashing post. I think the lack of empathy, understanding and recognition of ASD and ADHD is a problem. They are the most stigmatised these days, with seemingly alot of mumsnetters being so dismissive. I wish my son didn't have ASD, but he does. It's not caused by my parenting, it's something he was born with. It's likely that his dad and/or myself are also on the spectrum but we've got this far in life without taking a test for a diagnosis.
That said I don't think any teenager should just suck it up and expect to have a "horrible time and muddle through". I was incredibly introverted in school, a straight A student who suffered terribly in social situations, crippling anxiety over getting things wrong or speaking in public, not being perfect, had an eating disorder, depression and attempted suicide at 19. I wish someone had realised I was likely ND and struggling to cope instead of expecting me to "muddle through". I am thankful there is alot more awareness these days and more children are being diagnosed with ASD and ADHD younger and therefore able to be supported better in their formative years. As a parent it's your job to advocate what's best for your child and some schools fail to provide the right environment for kids to thrive.
I went to a secondary state school and it was rough. We had a few disruptive kids in our class. You could tell they were from poorer backgrounds. Some were very bright but troubled. Now 20 years later after leaving school, I've discovered that 2 of those "disruptive" kids are dead - from suicide. Another one is a heroine addict. So maybe you ought to think compassionately about some of these kids you are expecting to "muddle through" because some just don't make it. Whether it's the school failing them or their parents or both, I think kids should be supported as much as possible from all sides.

I wasn’t “bashing” anyone. I was talking about the need today to find a reason for everything which is why so many have settled on blaming Andrew Tate and treat this as a new phenomenon when a lot of it is the same behaviour we had to deal with at school.

I was also bullied badly at school and I believe I would be diagnosed with ASD if I were at school today. Today I’m an adult and I’m happy with who I am, and many of my peers who were in similar situations are thriving. My point is we need to endure hardships in order to be able to deal with life.

This thread was created with the intent to discuss the realities of life in schools today but we can’t do that when people kick off when they see something they don’t like.

OP I have a Y11 boy (at an independent school if it makes any difference). In Y8 he very stupidly, agreed to take part in an organised boxing match in the boys changing rooms one lunchtime. There were flyers, boys placing bets, a video circulating on Snapchat. All the sorts of things schools/teachers really shouldn’t be having to deal with.

Obviously they were caught, I had a phone call from his head of house, I was absolutely furious with him. The head of house explained to me that they had some concerns he’d been cajoled into it - he was very small for his age and it turned out he was part of the ‘warm up’ joke act before the ‘headline event’. All dealt with brilliantly by school, he got a detention which I felt was quite lenient, he obviously complained about it, came up with all sorts of excuses why it wasn’t his fault etc etc. I backed the school completely, he sat the detention, lost his phone for a month. We’ve not had a single behaviour point/detention since.

Both my DC see a completely united front when it comes to school discipline. I know full well kids lie to try and get themselves out of trouble. If I ever did feel school were being ‘unfair’ I’d take it up privately with the teacher without DC knowing I was asking. As far as they know, I will always back school up.

The uniform rules aren’t new. They are simple to follow, and those not following mostly are pushing the limits. Can recall being baffled at students getting detentions etc for uniform violations - pure stupidity, having detention for very wrong socks.
There were hair rules, jewelry rules. It probably become more relaxed.

Uniform compliance is bare minimum standard of behavior.

IMO, many issues, certainly at secondary, is that there is a cohort that doesn’t know why they are there. Do not understand value or purpose of education. School is social - all ur friends are there. Like a play group w lunch. Having fun there priority

We have been teaching boys with pen in hand from the days of Shakespeare, why is that not working now? Genuine question

Thank you for being supportive and a parent who understands that teenagers ALWAYS feel hard done by and struggle to accept blame