WILL JONES
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.
Featured image: The Telegraph
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Starmer has been captured by Islam. Islam is not white.