here's why Adolescence should *not* be shown in schools

i'll say it once and i'll say it again, fuck me, shut up Keir

Just because you have a gender doesn’t mean you understand gender. SAY THAT TWICE. I’ve been saying it for about five years. I have hair but I am not a hairdresser. I make myself drinks but I am not a mixologist. This work; of understanding the social, political and historical context of the gender binary in the West, of how and why we got here, of patriarchal masculinity and misogyny and male violence is a job. It is a specialism. Few people are really good at it.

This month Adolescence gripped the hearts and minds of what feels like every single person in our country. Worldwide, it was viewed 24.3 million times in its first week of release. It was the number 1 show in over seventy countries. Whew. That’s huge numbers of people engaging with a story about male violence against girls and women, patriarchal masculinity, misogyny and the manosphere. And while those of us in this sector and the movement – especially those of us working on the ground with boys of all backgrounds directly – were heartened by everyone’s interest (“they’re finally engaging with our work!”) that can quickly turn into frustration as literally any viewer positions themselves as a leader in shaping perceptions of the themes, issues and complex topics it explored. Maybe they’re passionate about it, have heaps of thoughts and want a discussion, or maybe they’re looking for engagement on socials but wow it makes those of us who spend all out time being intentional and discerning bout your comms because of how serious this work is feel a bit mad (“why is everyone acting like they suddenly have the answers!!!”). The infographic boom from the show is pretty understandable, but fuck me would I love more people to ask themselves “is this the space I work in or am a specialist in?”, “do I actually know shit loads about this?” or “am I the person to be shaping perceptions of this very serious reality?” cause if the answer is no to any of those then by the great god of Tritan (?) I would I’d love you to just sit down and listen.

Answering those questions does become a liiiiitle more complex for the makers of the show, though. Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham probably feel pretty comfortable sharing their ideas on the problem of male violence. I mean, they made this hugely successful piece of art that is resonating deeply across communities, and if the beautifully nuanced narrative outcome is anything to go by, the amount of research and work that went into constructing it must have been hefty. So they know some stuff.

That’s why I understand Stephen Grahams comment about showing it in schools; an off-hand idea made during an interview. Look I get it. And man oh man, I love you Stephen (my scouse king), but there’s a major difference between drawing attention to societal realities and designing and offering the solutions to solve them. One requires deep and thoughtful observation – like their art did wonderfully – the other requires that as well as understanding of change theory, gender, history, feminist theory and insight into how systems and institutions that both reinforce and disrupt systems of power are operating in practical terms. Stephen doesn’t have that, I imagine, and now the PM is backing calls for the show to being screened in schools.

I am known for being both an idealist and pragmatic so look, fuck me of course he is. As someone who has worked in Parliament for two years trying to hold our leaders accountable for their inaction of sexual violence, I know anything that is zero-effort but high-PR-reward is a get out of jail free card for the PM. Perfect for optics, and optics is e v e r y t h i n g. I remember when I found out ministers were speaking on my anti-upskirting campaign in the press in 2018. It was like pulling teeth trying to get them to do it on my terms, so I queried “why now?”. We were told it was “a good news story for them at the moment”, and I knew what that mean. It was June 2018. This was a press tactic to distract from the year anniversary of Grenfell. I wanted to fucking die. I cried for hours. I almost quit. I didn’t do press for a week and reposted everything on Grenfell I saw.

Now that the PM has spoken on it, the press are discussing it WITH ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WHO WORKS IN THIS SECTOR PRESENT. No one who does this every day. No one who understands these topics. Just more politicians. I don’t call a fucking plumber when my my taxes need to be done. Why are their three politicians on a TV show talking about what works in schools? Fuck me. (I can’t stop saying fuck me).

Without knowing how cultural change is built, without experience in what is happening on the ground in schools, how young people respond to these conversations and being trained in safe, best practice to facilitate discussions on misogyny, gendered violence and more, your solutions are not only not fit for purpose or ineffective, they can be dangerous and (a word we use in this work for a well-meaning ignorance that ends up reinforcing the danger itself) colluding.

There’s a big clue for why we shouldn’t show it in the show itself. During the claustrophobic chaos of ep 2 (which depicted the high schools I often work in) viewers witness teachers showing videos in class in place of face-to-face education. This narrative detail is given to reinforce how under-funded, over-worked and unequipped teachers and schools are by a system meant to be supporting them in educating our kids for betterment; it just reveals another another tranquilizer to mechanisms that could have helped divert these kids from harmful ideas in the first place.

This narrative detail is exactly why showing Adolescence in schools is a bonkers; our education system is not able to create intentional, safe, expertly-held spaces for young people to explore and unpick the beliefs and attitudes they have been socialised into (by the manosphere, their parents and society itself), and that is what works. Sorry! But it is. Dangerous socialised community beliefs require safe social and community spaces to disrupt them. Yet felt experiences that create transformational moments of connection, critical thinking and reflection are a rare, rare occurrence in British schools.

Y’know what isn’t a rare occurrence? Gendered-political division. We know the data on how Gen Z’s politics are tracking as pretty divided by gender. It’s not black and white, of course; I meet boys every week that care and want this work, mostly because patriarchy has or is restricting or hurting them, and I meet many girls who are deeply entrenched in internalised misogyny, too. But it’s also true that they’re generally divided. I’m witnessing liberal politics in Tomorrow Woman workshops quite often, progressive politics from trans and NB kids, and my male counterparts are meeting harmful homophobia, misogyny and right-wing political ideas often from young men.

When our young people are divided politically – especially on their understanding of gender – and have no spaces to unpack it, showing them a highly emotional, confronting TV show (which was not made specifically for children) about murder, misogyny and radicalised young men is going to bring up A LOT, and likely to do at least these three things:

1. activate young people who have dealt with violence
2. lead to feelings of defensiveness from young men
3. elicit anger and fear in young women

… all of this without any mechanism in place to catch this? And we call that a solution? No calm, controlled safe spaces for young people to unpack, explore the realities, their feelings about it or their experiences with adults who are trained will just lead to heaps of emotions, dynamics and interactions between young people we have no oversight over. Isn’t that part of the problem we are trying to solve?

You’ve seen the storm on social media since the show aired right? The racist discourse? The victim-blaming Katie? Those saying it’s boring and unrealistic? People being triggered watching it because of experiences of violence? Those claiming its harmful because it didn’t show Katie’s side? Throw all of those thoughts and feelings into a room with teenagers, no emotional or psychological safety procedures and stressed, over-worked teachers and release them all back out into school. Try and convince me something constructive or positive for anyone’s healing and growth will come out of it.

See, turns out you’ve just got to think about it for longer than 5 minutes, Keir.

Holding a mirror up in your art is brilliant. Hold a mirror up to society in the environment of the problem itself and you’re likely to just see more of the same. Hold it up in one that’s doing things differently and safely, and you might just see glimmers of how things could be. A TV show in a school is not the right mirror. An experienced facilitator offering mirrors in gentle, thoughtful ways and creating the right environment, is.

I’m excited for the day when the news is plastered with the face of a victim of male violence, or a TV shows us the reality of it, and instead of just fucking all shouting at each other and throwing ideas around, we can take a pause, say “since this is so important, who knows what to do next? who has been working on this for years?” and point to the right people instead offering a non-ideas that are easy and colluding simply because, let’s face it, we don’t know better, our Government have no interest in solving a reality that our whole system is based upon and because many of us simply want to sound like we know what we’re talking about.

G x