1,500 Teachers and Parents Sign Letter Opposing Starmer’s Plan to Show Adolescence in Schools
Backlash against Keir Starmer’s plan to show the Netflix drama Adolescence in schools has grown after more than 1,500 teachers and parents signed a letter saying the series is not suitable as an educational resource. The Telegraph has more.
When Antoinette Keane – a teacher and the mother of two teenage boys – overheard her colleagues talking excitedly about playing the smash-hit Netflix drama Adolescence to pupils, she was alarmed.
Keane teaches English and has spent her career showing children how to sort fact from fiction and understand the concepts of bias and perspective. And yet, amid the breathless reactions to the show from the Prime Minister down, she believes a dangerous narrative is being spun that Adolescence has uncovered some sort of truth about boys.
The four-part drama follows Jamie Miller, a 13 year-old who is arrested for murdering a schoolmate, Katie, after he has been radicalised online. Over the course of the undeniably compelling series, we watch as police visit the local comprehensive, a psychologist evaluates Jamie in prison, and his parents cope with the devastating aftermath of his actions. Tens of millions of people have watched it worldwide – including Sir Keir Starmer, who has now decreed that it should be shown in schools around the country.
“As a piece of fiction it is very good,” says Keane, “but as the mother of white British teenage boys, I am very against the idea that it taps into some sort of universal experience of white British teenage boys – I live and work with them and can tell you that is simply not the case. If we show it in schools, we are saying we believe that this is who they are.”
For Keane, there are a number of further problems. Firstly, we are exclusively engaged in Jamie’s world, rather than Katie’s. “It is his story, his challenges, his family, his voice,” she says. “Her voice is erased – that was a creative choice they made, and in terms of art, it works very well, but it is a disaster as an educational resource.”
She also believes that a drama with a damning view of education probably shouldn’t be shown in schools. “In the second episode, there is only one competent teacher,” she says. “The others are putting on videos instead of teaching, while the well-meaning but ineffective head teacher doesn’t instil any confidence. Nobody stops or changes or guides pupil behaviour. Not only is this not fair – there are good, nurturing teachers everywhere – but if you show this in a school, you are undermining yourself as you do so. You are saying, ‘We are powerless’.”
Keane is far from alone. More than 1,500 teachers and parents have now signed a letter opposing Government plans to show Adolescence to children. It was written by doctoral researcher Jaimi Shrive and psychologist Jessica Taylor, who has worked in prisons and schools to teach people about consent through her initiative VictimFocus.
“As a drama, it is excellent,” says Taylor, who has two teenage children of her own. “I have spent such a long time working with police and prisons and the way they captured both the speed and chaos is really very skilled. But I absolutely do not think it should be used as an educational resource.”
For one, she believes that a school setting is not conducive to showing very young people a complex drama. “For the last 15 years I have delivered workshops on porn, violence and peer on peer abuse, from Year 7 to the end of sixth form college, and I have learnt that there will be children who are triggered, children who have switched off, or who are mocking it, and children who are invested in it. There might be a kid in that room or who laughs at another boy and calls him an incel. These are teenagers – and while this is often a defensive response, it has the potential to deeply harm anyone with some personal experience of these issues.”
Similarly, she believes that teachers are simply not equipped to deal with some of the questions that might be raised. “Teachers are not trained in this: they aren’t specialists in male violence or abuse and yet they would be expected to have very difficult reactions or discussions – it’s not fair on them or the children.”
Taylor argues that any books or films shown in schools usually go through a rigorous vetting process – hence her surprise at Starmer green-lighting Adolescence with no research at all. “I worked on cases when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS], and he was very evidence-based – but this response is not in any way evidence-based. He doesn’t strike me as the type of person to have jumped on a random bandwagon, and yet he has.”
Worth reading in full.
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Fear not Mums and Dads, with lawyer and self-appointed child-psychologist Sir Two-Tier calling the shots, and Education Minister Phillistine as impressario, the nation’s teenagers are no doubt in suitably incapable hands.
Showing PMQs in schools would be more informative about adolescence wouldn’t it?
Heeeear, heeeear, heeeeaaar.
👍👍👍
” ….undeniably compelling series ….”
It’s looks about as compelling as flushing the toilet.
No, it is compelling if you like like that kind of thing. Binge watched it weeks ago and I have the attention span of a gnat. But it’s rated 15 for a reason and it’s not a documentary. I enjoyed it but alarm bells started ringing when Starmer jumped on the bandwagon. We discussed it last week on another post. Whilst the subject is worth some debate, it’s not suitable for 13 year boys to watch.
I really fear another unintended consequences situation. Why the rush? Mull on it for six months. Maybe do a few test screenings if one is so keen.
NO! School children are already being subjected to a vicious onslaught of Communist Propaganda Against White People, especially White Males, and they don’t need any more.
Instead, they should add a vitally important book to their curriculum:
“NOT GUILTY: IN DEFENCE OF THE MODERN MAN”
by Oxford journalist David Thomas
I watched it partly, I admit, because of the hype. It’s the kind of stereo-typical propaganda about white working class Brits which the Establishment buys into and the likes of the BBC promote at every opportunity.
I’m surprised its a Netflix series, not a BBC one, and if you view it in that context the “messaging” is rather more subtle than the sledgehammer you’d get from “Auntie” these days.
They messed up by using a clearly middle class, very good looking young lad as the murderer and have him say at one point “because I’m ugly” when they couldn’t have found a sweeter, more attractive 13 yr old if they’d tried. In my experience (I had two sons and therefore experience of many other boys who were their friends and schoolmates) and by the time they were 13 they ALL knew exactly how attractive (or not) they were to girls.
Well done to those 1500 parents and teachers for openly protesting against this Marxist Propaganda!
But all of them seem to be studiously avoiding The Elephant in the Room:
that the story is based on the criminal acts of a 17-year-old Ethnic African Muslim male who murdered a 16-year-old Ethnic African female OVER A TEDDY BEAR.
“Adolescence” is Blatant Globalist Propaganda Falsely Accusing White Boys of Crimes Committed by Ethnic Africans, and must be called out as such.
Yes more anti-white racism.
More misandry.
All part of the plan.
Since when are ‘movies’ or propaganda ‘education’?.
I guess they will show a ‘movie’ extolling the benefits of 1 million white girls being raped by Mahometans: ‘Enrichment: Muslim Rape Gangs in England’
I’m old enough to remember Teddy Boys and flick-knives, and most kids – teens and younger – carried sheath knives, scouts’ knives, penknives but we didn’t have murder and mayhem on the streets.
I also remember Mods & Rockers and their ritual fights usually in seaside towns, then we had the “football hooligans” phase.
Now we have wilting weeds and delicate flowers who don’t expect to have to work, or don’t know what sex they are.
Somebody caused this.
The last time I recall a movie being shown in schools was An Inconvenient Truth, the one that started the population wide panic about climate change and cleared the way for a re-engineering of society.
I really hope they don’t have something of that scale in mind again, but when they go through the trouble to stuff something into the minds of children, it’s usually for a reason.
Yes, this is exactly the point I made above. Kier even gave it his imprimatur and mis-referenced it as a “documentary” in a Commons debate. Because their just isn’t enough real-world evidence for introducing the very dangerous “Online Safety Bill”, someone has taken this piece of fiction and run with it, presenting it as evidence because of some vague argument that it is “exemplary”. It’s the proverbial “solution looking for a problem”. If you can’t find evidence, just make something up!
The term male violence was specifically created to imply that violent actions towards woman are something specifically male, ie, a property of all man. This flies into the fact of the two facts that the overwhelming majority of men never commit violent acts targetted at woman and that the overwhelming majority of victims of violence are men. Violence against men is – by-and-large considered to be culturally acceptable while violence against women decidedly isn’t, all lying of the man-hating woman faction notwithstanding.
Spot on. I wish more people had read the book by Oxford journalist David Thomas called “NOT GUILTY: IN DEFENCE OF THE MODERN MAN”, which affirms exactly what you just said, and shows statistically that HALF of all domestic violence against men and children is committed by WOMEN.
Might it not inspire some copycat stabbings?
“Might it not inspire some copycat stabbings?”
Have a read of Miri’s very enlightening article.
Excellent point! That’s a real danger.
No doubt that is exactly what the establishment would like to happen. It would help prove their self fulfilling prophesy.
https://miriaf.co.uk/the-andrew-tate-inspired-school-stabbing-is-fake/ Miri AF has a very interesting take on this ‘Adolescence’ propaganda. “So, if Contagion was shown in schools prior to 2020 to predictively programme children to anticipate a fake plague, then what is Adolescence – the story of a white boy who fatally stabs a female classmate, after being radicalised by online “incel” content – priming them, and the rest of us, for? We’ve already had it woven into the public consciousness that we should anticipate a school stabbing soon (apparently Axel R-thingummy was planning one, but got diverted) – but all you evil racists thought it was going to be a black kid carrying it out, when actually, it’ll be a white one, so ha! That will essentially be the line from the media and government and their various leftist lackeys amongst the population. The race-swap in Adolescence was, of course, very deliberate, and it is, equally deliberately, being made into a very high-profile talking point (even Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has commented on it) – i.e., the fact that the story is based on a real-life event involving a black assailant, but in the dramatisation, the actor is white.” No wonder Kneel is lying deliberately by… Read more »
I haven’t seen it and I’ve no intention to but I think probably loads of kids have already watched it at home. Hopefully their parents are reinforcing the fact it is actually a fictional drama. The boy cast to play the main character is so far removed from the reality it’s insulting, really. Plus, how can he be an “incel”? He should be chuffing celibate, he’s 13yrs!🤦♀️ If they want to be showing anything in schools that ‘Three Girls’, based on the Rochdale Pakistani rapist gang’s victims would be more appropriate. Watched it many years ago but as I recall they at least didn’t race-swap the actors cast to play the perpetrators.
I haven’t watched it either Mogs and have no intention of doing so. Miri makes the point in the above article that no white boy of thirteen from a stable family background has ever been convicted of a racist murder.
It is propaganda plain and simple.
The biggest problem is that our PM thinks it is a documentary.
Since I don’t plan to watch it can anyone tell me what the take home message is for white boys. Are they simply dismissed as no hopers or is there some form of uplifting revelation at the end that might inspire miscreants to change their ways.
Quite the opposite: The final scene features the parents of the accused despairing over their child’s freedom to surf the net unsupervised in his room during the small hours of the night, and the blame still rests squarely on small white lads and their unscrupulous, very very stupid parents. Obviously the onus is upon the overbearing state to control the content of the Internet so the parents can be absolved of all their responsibility. So damn obvious what’s happening here!
This is a win-win for Lord Alli and his puppet. It shifts the focus of attention from murders and thousands of rapes of white girls by Pakistani men to a mythical murder by a 13y white boy. It also adds to the millions of followers of that devout Muslim Andrew Tate.
i’ll be astonished if those hapless parents/teachers win.
Four hours of completely wasted learning time watching distorted fiction with references to sexual matters illegal for minors. Oh Brave New World!
These are all very good reasons for refraining from displaying this in front of youths and passing it off as some kind of bizarre “educational material”. But it’s all really missing the elephant in the room. It’s clear to me the deeper motivation for screening this bunkum in front of malleable young minds: To shoehorn in some justification for introducing the proposed Online Safety Bill, controlling the flow of information and ultimately ensuring the Internet is nothing but an echo-chamber of on-narrative content.
Oh yes, and another reason it should not be allowed anywhere near a school curriculum, is that the screenwriter, in all his/her creative licence has created lines for a 13-year-old in which every 5th word is “F”. I would be happy to write a review for this series using similar language!
It is a foul-scripted piece of souped-up propaganda bearing not much resemblance to lived experience and should not be allowed within a mile of any school. Any institution that takes education seriously should know this.
I haven’t seen it or heard of it but it sounds like superficial pablum to me. Any decent writer would not approach this subject unless they had complete understanding of this situation and such an understanding would be present in every frame of a film or every line of a book. If you want a good example of this then look at Andrei Tarkovsky’s early film The Steamroller and the Violin. That it how you turn pictures into poetry it is a sense of the lucidity of understanding the human condition, that you are never a voyeur.
Does this imply that Starmer thinks there are no competent teachers since he wants them all to put on a video?
The letter, and the article indicates that these teachers are quite lefty in their thinking. They still push the line that girls are constantly under attack from boys. What about girls being horrible to boys and other girls. Female bullying is subtle but quite nasty (reputation destruction and name calling, ghosting – caused by their biological predilection to compete with other females for the best males).
Shame they’re actually still left wing, anti male females.
“.. hence her surprise at Starmer green-lighting Adolescence with no research at all.”
But this is the bunch that did it with Windmills, EVs, Solar, Mega-batteries, the Jabs, uncontrolled whatever, picking winners.
It’s just their typical behaviour, and she has met it for the first time because they have entered her world, and are threatening to cause chaos and meyhem.
Adolescence is symptomatic of the life which elite politicians have fostered on the country. Shame on them.
Isn’t there an education dept in the gov’t. Why on earth would mr. Starmer get involved in school curriculum? Very weird, but looks like what we have all come to expect.
They should show Three Girls in all High Schools, brilliantly brutal and true story about the Muslim grooming gangs, how the police and social workers ignored them, how easily the vulnerable impressionable underage girls were taken in by the sweet talk of ‘love’ and gifts….horrific.