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.”
Every single day I see a new reason why I am glad I pulled my daughter out of the hell that is public middle school and put her into online school.
She told me yesterday that boys got into fights in the hallways almost every week. There were definitely fights between kids my middle school, but usually not on school grounds, almost never during the school day, and not constantly for sure. This isn’t some low income, underfunded urban school, we’re in a small city in Indiana.
On top of that, the couple of friends my daughter had in that school vaped and smoked weed. They’re between 12 and 13. Sure, I tried a cigarette at 13, but one cigarette. I didn’t smoke weed until I was a junior in high school.
What the fuck is happening in our schools?
I just wish more parents, especially of girls, had the option to do what we did. We’re lucky that we can survive (just barely) on a single income.
Damn, only a fight every week? They’re daily at my kids’ middle school. And not just the boys.
Just be careful that you don’t “over protect” your daughter, and she ends up going off to college, and now with vastly more freedom and a spectrum of influence needs to “keep it on the rails”. I have seen home school kids lose their shit when that time comes, as they never had to negotiate the gradual increase in both that level of freedom and influences on the way. I think of it much like the Amish Rumspringa (“rite of passage”), in that they go from a sheltered version of the world, to a much wider open one.
Every person I know who was home schooled is socially incompatible and I hope you reconsider your decision for your daughter’s sake. Public school is hell but so is the rest of life after it, you can’t shelter her forever.
And boys fight, it’s part of growing up. I don’t know how you went to a public school and fighting wasn’t common.
Again, online schooling is not the same as homeschooling and she has more friends now than when she was in public school.
Why the fuck would I reconsider my decision to help stop her from being suicidal?
Well that context is kind of important
The context of her mental health may be important, but people not knowing the difference between homeschooling and online schooling is not my fault. Homeschooling is where the parent is the teacher. Online schooling is taught by real licensed teachers. She has classes every day via live video meetings. She has the same textbooks kids in public schools have because they all have Pierson textbooks due to Pierson’s monopoly. It is a state school, not a private school so there is no tuition and it has to adhere to state education standards.
None of that is true about homeschooling.
And I’m sorry, but I am not going to admit culpability for people not knowing the difference between the two and just assuming they’re the same.
Still not developing real social skills in online classes. Social skills is by far the most important thing kids learn during their time in school, the curriculum being good is a bonus.
I know what online school is and you’re still at home. Homeschooling.
As I have already said at least twice now, she has more friends now than she did when she was in public school. She has more self-esteem now that she is no longer in public school. She is asking to go to things like events at the teen room at the library and make friends when she wasn’t even willing to join afterschool clubs about things that interested her.
Maybe read some of my other comments? I go into great detail about this.
You do not know my daughter. You do not know her situation. You do not know what you are talking about. I can see you’re trying to castigate me for being an abusive parent, so just come out and say it.
You’re very dramatic.
Yeah, maybe it’s something about someone implying I’m abusing my child when I am literally stopping her from committing suicide.