The Fifty-fourth Republic - Easter holidays anyone?

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

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Sadly I have been the victim of a sexual incident at work that wasn't 'just' verbal. Can't say much but the child wasn't dealt with at the time by the police because what he did was legal (it isn't anymore). He was removed from my classroom but no one (to my knowledge) ever really challenged his thoughts about his actions. I feel so strongly about misogyny that I find it hard to discuss in a measured way in a classroom.

Sorry to hear this Herc :(

I hope you felt supported by your school?

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation 😢 I hope you’ve found ways to cope with that.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-56409764

This story filled me with joy!

Oh Herc I can guess what you're talking about and that's horrible.

After Sarah Everard's death we had, as a school, a tutor time discussion of the issues (really not enough time to go into it and I'm sure it's now considered that we have 'done' sexual harassment), and there were some boys coming out with awful 'asking for it' type opinions. I think they got spoken to in a 'don't make those comments' sort of way, but it needs so much more work than that.

Aww motherrunner that's a lovely story!

That's awful, Herc, especially the lack of sanction.

SLT at my place is 50:50 male:female and the male representatives are not alpha types at all (one is more banterous/matey than the rest and, you've guessed it, in charge of behaviour) so I don't think sexual aggressiveness or alpha male behaviour is top down at all. In fact, thinking about it, neither the male heads of year nor PE staff are very alpha male at all. I blame general society and parents for the poor attitude towards female peers and female staff that some boys have.

Re the teenage girls flirting with young male staff thing, that happened at lot at my old place where some of the pastoral team/AHOYs were attractive, younger men. It was really inappropriate the things some girls would do to get to go see these staff members. Really hard to tackle and accuse them of, though.

I think part of he flirty girls is them mirroring how they think society expects them to behave. And I guess the boys too.

I can only speak from my own experience though that toxic masculinity has been a noticeable issue at my school since I arrived in 1942. Noticeably different from my other (much rougher) school. But the deterioration in girls' behaviour seems to cause SLT more botheration and troubles them more.

since I arrived in 1942

Well I've just had to mentally update my image of piggy

I've noticed lots of issues with boys that stem from reading shitty websites like Reddit or worse. Arguing the toss about feminism and how men have it much worse etc etc.

Ah yes, the incel brigade...

That man at Eton was an example : 'it's juts debate, innit'.

Agree that it's definitely a bleed through from popular and online culture.

I have a female head and only one male SLT, who is very much not an alpha male type. Rural school, from the outside looks v middle class and 'nice'.

There's a lot of rural poverty, and county lines issues. Boys with very regressive attitudes and seemingly aspirations to be a bit "gangsta". Very little support services available from LA or anywhere else.

Lots of discussion about issues but there's a hardcore of kids who just sneer and laugh at it and nothing is done. I'm not convinced anything can be solved just by school but maybe sanctions and meetings with parents of children who display such awful attitudes and behaviours need to happen more frequently.

Yeah, online sites are proving a big problem in leading otherwise lovely kids down the "all lives matter" route last summer and "men have it worse" this time.

I do think my school is different as I believe a lot of the laddishness is actually school bred. We do have boorish parents but also perfectly nice parents with really obnoxious sons. There was a top set entirely comprised of boys a few years back ,many of whom behaved like they were on a permanent lads' holiday (if lads' holidays can also do sneering pseudo intellectualism) and did all the incel crap. It wasn't until I waded in to them with a good old fashioned bollocking that they changed their manner (a bit). No one else was going to do anything, other than suggest a man should teach them (they weren't my class btw).

Piggy
The response there is interesting. In a previous school there was one particular boy who, due to family background, had very poor attitudes to women and an overly sexualised manner with them. The proposed solution from SLT was that he should always have a male teacher: I had to push for him to have a female so that he could experience a strong woman in authority.

@SquashedFlyBiscuits

'Where are the specialist services?'

Indeed.

The idea that schools should deal with all society's problems (along with a subliminal message that it is schools'/teachers' failure to deal with these issues that is a/the 'cause' of any given problem) is really ramping up a pace.

Meanwhile, every other service, or network of services outside schools is cut and cut and cut, let alone new services being created.

And there are no specialist services in schools.

It's a crazy situation.

@SmileEachDay

A behaviour hub which manages pupil behaviour through escalating sanctions isn't going to fix misogyny is it? That needs a different approach

We’ve got a big drive at our school to tackle this.

It’s very interesting talking about literally anything to do with the way boys and girls are treated. I have a group of about 6 boys in my tutor group who are so genuinely convinced that they are hard done by - any suggestion that males (as a class) have work to do is met by immediate and overwhelming defensiveness. They become completely impossible to work with.

I’m convinced that this is where the work needs doing. Space for them to lose their sense of victimhood and then build something new - away from the girls and the more switched on boys, who shouldn’t have to deal with them acting out their feelings when they’re feeling challenged.

I’ve got these kind of boys in my year 9 class.

I would never for a second say life is easy for white working class boys from deprived neighbourhoods. Thing is these boys aren’t working class or from deprived backgrounds.

The second you have a conversation about mistreatment of girls and women, they start whining about how unfair life is for them.

Well maybe it is unfair, but that’s not what we are talking about right now.

The second you have a conversation about mistreatment of girls and women, they start whining about how unfair life is for them

Well maybe it is unfair, but that’s not what we are talking about right now

The immediate barrier that is thrown up makes moving forward difficult for sure. I think it shows a lack of empathy and deeply entrenched values and beliefs - I know that every single one of these lads would flatten anyone who treated their sisters or mothers badly. They treat me with a reasonable amount of respect because I count as being in their “circle” (plus they know I’m not a teacher they can mess with, but that’s separate).

The way they treat women and girls they don’t know on the other have...

It reminds me of a parent I worked with ages ago who was a proper far right jackboot BNP member. His son was autistic and also totally indoctrinated :( . The dad was always super nice and respect towards me because I helped get his son an EHCP and I had a really good relationship with the boy. Dad would apologise is he accidentally swore in meetings and he bought me chocolates when I left. Outside of that, he regularly used to get arrested for violent crime and he was a horrible misogynistic racist.

It feels like boys are similarly radicalised. They need a demisigynisticsation program.

There is an element of a herd mentality at play too. When boys start to stray outside of that way of acting, they are labelled negatively and 'othered' unless there are enough similar boys to them. Even then, I've seen boys lose long-held friendships because they didn't get involved in the "banter".

Porn is also a major issue. In the larger percentage of straight porn, the women was treated as objects to be used by the men. There are whole genres focused on causing pain to the woman or 'using' her and making it look that way. These are regularly accessed by teenage (and sometimes younger) boys through social media sites. Twitter is rife with porn.

Complete agree Iam

I wasn't really supported by school (no longer there) but the community police officer did what she could. I did report it to the police and there is a record even though they couldn't do anything. If it happened now I'd go all the way with it and try for a prosecution. In my eyes there are no excuses about being too young to understand that it's wrong.

I agree with all your points. This isn't an issue for schools alone to solve. I was in a rural poor area and agree with the faux gangster mentality colliding with old school farmer attitudes towards women. Now I'm in a suburban mixed catchment and the attitudes are similar but for different reasons. I have a top set majority of boys and strive to be a role model to the girls that I will not accept their shite attitudes.

Yes, Iam.

Given that wider society is completely unable/unwilling to deal with this - in fact, wider society is actually supporting and enabling this - I find it risible that teachers are supposedly tasked with sorting it all out.

I mean, just start with the issue of porn.

Feminists, the left and the right, progressives, non-progressives: all are absolutely divided.

Some see porn as a freedom of expression issue, some see limitations as anti-sexuality/paternalistic, some see it as anti-capitalist protectionism ...

Yet teachers are supposed to Wade in and somehow, magically, act as though wider society doesn't exist and - magically again - produce utopia, where all people can have all they want, with no conflicts or opposed interests or negative effects.

Sadly, a misrule on behaviour management on a PGCE is not going to gift us with magic powers.

We live in a society that runs on sexual inequality (look at pay rates in female-dominated teaching, FGS) and uses sexual violence/aggression to reinforce that (as well as being a necessary symptom).

It's all bizarre.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

💐

I'm sorry that happened to you.

Module - not misrule.

(Like we don't all end up discussing behaviour management on PGCE courses anyway ... 🤷‍♀️)

There was an interesting show a few years back where a woman came over from one of the countries of Northern Europe (I can't remember which one) in order to run a more developed sex education programme for older teenagers in a secondary school. There was a lot covered that wouldn't normally be but one of the main aspects was sexual pleasure and fantasy.

She had the boys and girls write down what they thought a positive and enjoyable sexual encounter would be like (with an imaginary person not each other). Some of the boys wrote about things like spitting in the girl's mouth etc. and when they read it out in the session, the teacher was shocked that the girls had no reaction to it at all - just a passive acceptance. The girls couldn't even articulate what they would want a positive encounter to be like.

To me, that highlights how ingrained and insidious these attitudes are and how far we still need to go as a society.

@Iamnotthe1

There was an interesting show a few years back where a woman came over from one of the countries of Northern Europe (I can't remember which one) in order to run a more developed sex education programme for older teenagers in a secondary school. There was a lot covered that wouldn't normally be but one of the main aspects was sexual pleasure and fantasy.

She had the boys and girls write down what they thought a positive and enjoyable sexual encounter would be like (with an imaginary person not each other). Some of the boys wrote about things like spitting in the girl's mouth etc. and when they read it out in the session, the teacher was shocked that the girls had no reaction to it at all - just a passive acceptance. The girls couldn't even articulate what they would want a positive encounter to be like.

To me, that highlights how ingrained and insidious these attitudes are and how far we still need to go as a society.

I thought about this programme too when all the discussions about sexual harassment etc started a few weeks ago. I remember she showed the boys pictures of vaginas and got them to rate them - most of them chose the bare ones as the most attractive. She then gave each boy a razor and some shaving cream and persuaded them to shave themselves. They did not enjoy the re-growth! It was called 'Sex in Class'.