Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
First of all, there is no girls-only school in this town. The only private school is a Catholic school. My daughter is an atheist with Jewish heritage.
Secondly, my daughter was so severely bullied that she actually had developed anxiety to the point that she had trouble going to a lunch party at the house of an old high school friend of mine with about 20 people in it. She was starting to get suicidal. She broke down one day and told us she literally could not go to school one more day because she was so bullied that even the bullied kids bullied her.
Thirdly, you have no fucking idea what we have gone through to try to help our daughter make it through school and not end up severely scarred without the school doing a thing.
Fourthly, I sincerely hope you never are in the position we’ve been in with a suicidal 13-year-old.
But sure, judge me for doing what’s best for my daughter, especially since she’s so mentally healthy now that she was able to tell some girls from her old school that were harassing her at the roller skating rink to fuck off. She has never had that much self-esteem. She’s also never had as many friends as she has now.
She’s in a state-funded program with really good teachers and she’s getting a great education. I must be the most abusive parent ever.
Had a friend with a kid getting bullied badly before the start of covid. They said going online was the best thing for him, emotionally and grade-wise. Gave him a chance to break the anxiety cycle and room to breathe. I hope yours has found their way to thrive!
Hey downvoters, the world doesn’t always allow for convient or conventional solutions. Anything is better than a kid that calls it a day. Anything. Anything. Say it with me. Anything. I know of families that tried to pretend their kid’s mental health was a phase to buckle down and push through. Want to guess the end to that story?
Thank you, she is definitely thriving now.
I think part of the issue here is something I just clarified to someone else- homeschooling and online schooling are not the same. Homeschooling is where the parent acts as teacher. Online schooling is where the child works with real licensed teachers and has real graded assignments by those teachers using the same textbooks public schools use and live videoconference lessons every day.
I’m glad your friend got their kid out too. I just wish more parents could, but it usually requires some parental supervision to keep the kid on track (unless you want your kid to fail), which means one parent has to stay home and that’s not realistic for probably the vast majority of people in the U.S. My wife has a pretty good job and the cost of living here is low, so we’re able to manage it as long as we generally do without luxuries.
Oh with added context your decisions make sense. I feel like you shouldn’t be angry that some online stranger has no idea.
I didn’t consider that your situation involved dealing with someone suicidal. I hope it’s not hyperbole on your part.
My own position was the kid would lose out on valuable years of social development and engaging with other kids of her own age. I thought it was bullying but something that the kid was kind of dealing with in their own way but able to manage.
Since you have said that your kid has got back her courage to flip the bird on her bullies and also gotten a lot of friend, Congratulations on the win! Don’t let me or anybody tell you otherwise.
Forgive me for saying “you jumped the gun” as it was judgemental. I only said it because i did not have the info you just posted.
“homeschooling” triggered concern from my end because of some horror stories i hear about kids who are at college graduation age but stunted because of a common denominator that they were homeschooled.
I appreciate it and I apologize for snapping at you. Like two days ago someone called me abusive for the “crime” of letting my daughter be a girl scout and I’m still a little touchy.
Also, to clarify, homeschooling and online schooling are very different. Homeschooling is where the parent is the teacher. I help her learn, mostly by keeping her focused and explaining things to her when she has trouble understanding, but I am not her teacher. She has live video classes with licensed teachers every day and her assignments are graded by those same teachers who also make themselves available to kids when class is not in session. And because it’s a state school (although contracted out to a private company), it has to adhere to state education standards and there is no religious bullshit.
She does have friends who are homeschooled because she is part of a social group for kids who are not being traditionally schooled, but I think that’s usually a terrible idea. Unless you have a teaching degree, you really don’t know anything about pedagogy. It’s too early to tell how those children will do once they’re adults, but considering I have heard the same stories, I have the same concerns.
What’s really bad here in Indiana is that you don’t have to tell the state you’re taking your kid out of school or prove that your kid is getting legitimately schooled. My daughter had a friend (he recently moved away) whose parents just left him at the library all day to fend for himself and had him use Khan Academy and called it his school. I felt so sorry for that kid. At least everyone who worked at the library knew him and looked out for him.